finance
U.S. Commerce Department Signs $2 Billion in Quantum Computing Deals
The Commerce Department signed letters of intent last month to award just over $2 billion to nine quantum computing companies. The funding targets manufacturing scale and aims to reach a cryptographically relevant quantum computer ahead of other nations.
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The U.S. Commerce Department signed letters of intent last month to award just over $2 billion to nine quantum computing companies. The funds support fabrication facilities and hardware development across superconducting, trapped ion, photonic, and neutral-atom approaches.
IBM is slated to receive $1 billion to establish a quantum-grade superconducting wafer foundry. GlobalFoundries will receive $375 million for a multi-architecture fabrication plant. The remaining $636 million is divided among seven companies building quantum computers.
The Commerce Department views quantum computing as past the experimental stage and seeks to accelerate development of machines capable of breaking current public-key cryptography. Officials stated the investment represents industrial policy intended to generate long-term returns.
Pruden wrote that post-quantum cryptography migration requires simultaneous adoption across millions of independent systems. Partial upgrades leave remaining systems exposed, and no single entity can mandate changes across Bitcoin wallets, custodians, and exchanges.
NIST standards set deadlines for federal systems: RSA-2048 and ECDSA at 112-bit security are deprecated in 2030 and disallowed in 2035. National Security Memorandum 10 directs federal agencies to address quantum risk on the same timeline. The Clarity Act, now moving through Congress, could require U.S. digital-asset custodians, exchanges, and stablecoin issuers to publish post-quantum migration plans aligned with those dates.
