IBM has a $1 billion quantum foundry award. Where do IonQ, D-Wave and Rigetti get their chips?

IBM (IBM) has secured $1 billion in federal support for its quantum chip foundry. Anderon, its subsidiary in Albany, New York, finalized the CHIPS funding agreement with the Commerce Department on Wednesday. We covered the award separately. The question here is who will use the foundry: the announcement names no outside customer, while other listed quantum companies have disclosed their own manufacturing arrangements.

Anderon makes 300-millimeter wafers for superconducting qubits, the tiny metal circuits IBM uses to process quantum information at temperatures near absolute zero. IBM said in May that the foundry would "offer wafer fabrication for multiple quantum technology vendors across the world," beginning with superconducting qubit wafers and supporting electronics. The table below shows how those plans compare with the manufacturing arrangements other companies have disclosed.

The quantum stocks ended Wednesday little changed. D-Wave (QBTS) closed down 0.8% at $16.29, Rigetti (RGTI) down 1.8% at $14.82 and IonQ (IONQ) down 0.5% at $36.85. IBM fell 4.3% to $237.60, according to Robinhood market data.

Award amounts from the Commerce Department's May 21 announcement and each company's September agreement. Stakes for D-Wave, Rigetti and Quantinuum are by our arithmetic from the share counts in their 8-K filings, newly issued shares divided by each company's shares outstanding before the issuance plus the newly issued shares; GlobalFoundries' figure is the company's own. Fab details from company releases.

One question remains unanswered in Anderon's announcement: what equity will the government receive? Commerce said in May that each award would require a minority, non-controlling stake. D-Wave, Rigetti and Quantinuum issued shares at about 15% below their September 4 closing prices. Anderon's release does not specify the equity terms, and IBM has not said which entity would issue shares or how many.

D-Wave's fab belongs to a competitor now

D-Wave's Advantage2 processors are made at SkyWater Technology's plant in Minnesota. SkyWater said in a March 2025 release that the partnership "began a decade ago at the Minnesota fab," and SkyWater chief executive Thomas Sonderman called the work in that release "an example of bleeding-edge technology taking place in a 200 mm fab." A 200-millimeter wafer holds fewer chips than the 300-millimeter wafers Anderon runs.

IonQ closed its purchase of SkyWater on July 31 for $15.00 in cash and 0.4883 IonQ shares per SkyWater share, about $1.8 billion in total. IonQ's release said SkyWater "Will Continue to Serve Customers as a U.S.-based Semiconductor Foundry." It did not name D-Wave. IonQ builds trapped-ion quantum computers.

D-Wave's own $100 million award is for research into "semiconductor process technologies for annealing and gate-model superconducting quantum computing systems," including "advanced dielectric material optimization, interface control, and high-density advanced packaging," according to the Commerce Department. Gate-model superconducting chips are the type Anderon was set up to fabricate. D-Wave's September 8 release says nothing about where its next chips will be made. Chief executive Alan Baratz said the award will help by "expanding domestic quantum capabilities, strengthening the underlying supply chain and bringing increasingly powerful quantum systems to market." D-Wave reported $3.1 million of second-quarter revenue and $546.2 million of cash and marketable securities on August 6.

Rigetti already owns a fab

Rigetti is the one pure-play that makes its own superconducting chips. It says it "designs and manufactures its chips in-house at Fab-1," in Fremont, California, and calls that plant "the industry's first dedicated and integrated quantum device manufacturing facility." Its 108-qubit Cepheus-1 system, deployed this year, tiles together twelve 9-qubit chiplets made there.

The third of the three projects in Rigetti's $100 million award is "fabrication capability for high-connectivity chip architectures." Rigetti has not said where that fabrication work will be done. The money arrives in tranches of $43.9 million, $29.9 million and $26.2 million tied to milestones. Chief executive Subodh Kulkarni said the company was "proud to be selected by the U.S. government to accelerate R&D and progress against our roadmap." Rigetti reported $5.1 million of revenue for the second quarter and $541.3 million of cash and investments.

Marin Ivezic, founder of the consultancy Applied Quantum, who previously held leadership roles at IBM, wrote on his PostQuantum site in June that "the realistic near-term customers are other superconducting companies: Rigetti, IQM, SEEQC, and a handful of smaller players, plus IBM itself." He added that "quantum hardware startups considering Anderon will have to weigh production access against the risk of sharing process knowledge with their largest competitor."

IonQ got no award and owns a foundry

IonQ is the largest of the group by revenue. Neither IonQ nor Quantum Computing Inc was among the nine recipients named on May 21, and the department has not said why. IonQ computes with ions held in electromagnetic traps, not with superconducting circuits, so Anderon's initial line of superconducting qubit wafers does not serve its qubits. Trapped-ion companies still use conventional fabs for the traps that hold the ions: Quantinuum has announced plans for GlobalFoundries to fabricate its next-generation ion traps on 300-millimeter wafers.

IonQ owns SkyWater, whose Minnesota fab supplies D-Wave. IonQ has not disclosed which of its own components are made at SkyWater's plants. IonQ reported $80.1 million of second-quarter revenue on August 5, up 287% from a year earlier, and guided to $280 million to $290 million for the year before adding SkyWater. It listed $2.0 billion of cash and investments after paying for the acquisition. Chairman and chief executive Niccolo de Masi said at the closing that "secure chip design, fabrication, and packaging will deliver vertical integration across our full stack of quantum applications."

The rest of the field

Quantinuum, which trades on the Nasdaq, said GlobalFoundries "will be one of several of Quantinuum's foundries enlisted to fabricate its next-generation ion traps," on 300-millimeter wafers. GlobalFoundries signed its own $375 million award on September 8 to build a foundry for several kinds of quantum chip. Brendan Burke, research director at Futurum Group, described that in May as a sign "the government sees room for a second 300mm-capable quantum fabrication provider." Quantinuum shares closed up 7.0% at $52.04 on Wednesday.

Quantum Computing Inc runs a 150-millimeter photonic chip line in Tempe, Arizona, using thin-film lithium niobate, and bought the packaging house NHanced Semiconductors for $73.1 million this year for a second fab. Its second-quarter revenue was $5.6 million. It received no Commerce award, and its chips use light, not superconducting circuits, so Anderon's wafers are not a fit for it either.

The four pure-plays remain well below their October 2025 highs. By our arithmetic from Robinhood data, IonQ is down 56% from its peak, D-Wave 65%, Quantum Computing 69% and Rigetti 75%, and all four set 52-week lows on March 30. The government's May program was worth $2.013 billion across nine companies. Anderon's $1 billion is the largest single piece of it.

Ivezic put the open question this way: "How much process isolation Anderon can credibly offer to, say, Rigetti will determine whether the open-foundry model is a real industry utility or an IBM cost-sharing arrangement with a broader label."