IBM Spins Off the First Pure-Play Quantum Chip Foundry

Analyst(s): Brendan Burke

Publication Date: May 22, 2026

A $2 billion CHIPS quantum package spanning nine companies positions IBM’s 300mm Anderon foundry as the centerpiece of American quantum industrial policy, while spreading smaller bets across competing modalities including trapped ion, photonic, and neutral atom approaches.

What is Covered in this Article

• IBM’s creation of Anderon as a pure-play quantum foundry
• The 300mm fabrication bet versus 200mm CMOS alternatives
• U.S. government quantum industrial policy via CHIPS incentives
• Superconducting silicon’s iteration advantage over trapped ion approaches
• IBM’s ASIC control architecture enabling scalable fault-tolerant systems

The News: IBM and the U.S. Department of Commerce announced on May 21, 2026, a Letter of Intent to establish Anderon, described as America’s first pure-play quantum chip foundry. The initiative is backed by proposed $1 billion in CHIPS incentives from the US Department of Commerce (DoC) and $1 billion in cash from IBM, along with significant contributions of intellectual property, assets, and workforce. The award is the largest allocation within a broader $2 billion CHIPS quantum package that the Commerce Department is distributing across nine companies — including $375 million for GlobalFoundries, $100 million each for D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, Infleqtion, Atom Computing, PsiQuantum, and Quantinuum, and $38 million for Diraq. Anderon will be headquartered in Albany, New York, and will operate as a standalone 300mm quantum wafer fabrication facility, initially supporting superconducting qubit and supporting electronics wafers, with plans to expand into other quantum modalities.

“IBM has pioneered quantum computing for decades. Our work in silicon wafer fabrication has been a key to IBM’s success and will be critical to enable a broader quantum technology landscape that will reshape global innovation and economic competitiveness,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM. Krishna compared quantum to where AI chips were a decade ago and said the new business could generate billions of dollars a year in sales with high profit margins by the mid-2030s.

The government will receive minority equity stakes in each of the nine quantum companies, including IBM’s Anderon, extending a deal structure the Commerce Department has applied to Intel, rare-earths startup Vulcan Elements, and mining company MP Materials. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick stated that these “strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”

$2 Billion CHIPS Act Investment in Quantum Bets on IBM’s 300mm Superconducting Silicon

Analyst Take: The $2 billion CHIPS quantum package reveals a deliberate tiering in the U.S. government’s quantum industrial strategy to concentrate manufacturing-scale capital in 300mm superconducting silicon through IBM’s Anderon while distributing smaller equity stakes across competing modalities to hedge against technology risk. The 50:1 funding ratio between Anderon’s $1 billion and Diraq’s $38 million reflects an assessment that superconducting silicon is the only quantum modality currently capable of leveraging production-grade semiconductor fabrication infrastructure at 300mm scale. The CHIPS allocation directs half its quantum capital toward the single approach that most closely mirrors the classical semiconductor manufacturing model the Act was originally designed to support. As companies pursue superconducting, trapped-ion, photonic, and neutral-atom architectures, the funding structure creates a two-tier quantum ecosystem in which IBM gains access to fabrication infrastructure while competitors receive venture-scale equity investments. The central question is whether this concentration accelerates U.S. quantum leadership by backing the most fabrication-ready modality or creates fragility by underinvesting in alternatives that may ultimately prove more scalable.

The 300mm Throughput Advantage Over 200mm Alternatives

The distinction between 300mm and 200mm quantum wafer fabrication extends far beyond wafer diameter into fundamentally different manufacturing philosophies with compounding implications for development speed. SkyWater Technology operates a 200mm CMOS foundry that has positioned itself to serve government-funded quantum programs, offering hands-on, custom R&D flexibility suited to smaller-volume, research-oriented fabrication — the same environment where IBM’s own early quantum chips were built at its 200mm Yorktown Heights lab.

IBM’s 300mm approach at Albany NanoTech leverages state-of-the-art tools processing wafers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with automation that enables researchers to iterate and implement improvements in rapid cycles of learning. According to Director of Research Jay Gambetta at IBM Think 2026, the shift to 300mm produces device output 30 times faster by increasing complexity by a factor of 10 and tripling the rate of devices produced — an iteration velocity that 200mm facilities cannot replicate without entirely new tooling investments. GlobalFoundries’ $375 million CHIPS award to establish its own quantum-focused business suggests the government sees room for a second 300mm-capable quantum fabrication provider. The implication is that CHIPS funding codifies a manufacturing hierarchy in which 300mm facilities serve as production infrastructure while 200mm environments are implicitly relegated to early-stage research — a structural distinction that may determine which quantum companies can scale beyond laboratory prototypes.

Superconducting Silicon Versus Trapped Ions as a Manufacturing Question

The competition between superconducting qubits and trapped-ion systems is often framed as a physics debate about coherence times and gate fidelity, but the Anderon funding structure reframes it as a question of manufacturing scalability and iteration economics. Superconducting silicon qubits are fabricated using processes analogous to classical semiconductor manufacturing — etching, depositing metals, and treating wafers through automated sequences — giving them direct access to the semiconductor industry’s decades of accumulated tooling, process design kits, in-line testing, and established baseline routes. Trapped-ion systems, such as those developed by IonQ, rely on laser systems, vacuum chambers, and electromagnetic traps that share no infrastructure lineage with 300mm semiconductor fabs and cannot benefit from the same production-scale throughput advantages. Gambetta has stated that superconducting silicon allows faster iteration than optics-based approaches for qubit processing, an advantage that compounds when paired with 300mm fabrication running continuously.

The CHIPS package does include funding for companies pursuing alternative modalities but these awards are equity investments rather than manufacturing infrastructure capital, a distinction that reveals the government’s assessment of which approaches are fabrication-ready versus research-stage. The takeaway is that the funding structure creates a structural manufacturing advantage for superconducting architectures that competing modalities cannot offset through qubit-quality improvements alone, potentially tilting the long-term competitive landscape through infrastructure economics rather than physics breakthroughs.

IBM’s ASIC Architecture as the Control-Layer Enabler

Anderon’s mandate to fabricate both superconducting qubit wafers and supporting electronics wafers reflects the reality that scalable quantum computing depends as much on classical control infrastructure as on the qubits themselves — a systems-level challenge that too few companies are addressing. IBM is developing four custom ASICs — a decoder, a two-qubit gate controller, a single-qubit controller, and an amplifier — designed to handle quantum control at scale, with these circuits expected to converge around 2029 at the point where power consumption becomes manageable at up to 3 megawatts per system. This ASIC-based control architecture addresses a bottleneck that no amount of qubit improvement alone can solve.

The supporting supply chain IBM has assembled — including ULVAC for cryogenics, TDK for microcomponents, and specialized flex cables — demonstrates that quantum system manufacturing involves an ecosystem extending well beyond qubit fabrication. Trapped-ion and photonic systems face analogous control challenges but cannot leverage 300mm semiconductor fabrication for their control electronics in the same tightly integrated manner that superconducting architectures permit, creating a compounding systems-integration advantage. The implication is that Anderon’s long-term value may derive as much from manufacturing classical control ASICs as from producing qubit wafers, given that IBM’s 2029 fault-tolerant target depends on these four circuits reaching production maturity simultaneously.

Government Capital Creates a Two-Tier Quantum Ecosystem

The $2 billion CHIPS quantum package distributes funding across nine companies but does so in a manner that creates a clear structural hierarchy rather than an even playing field. IBM receives $1 billion in manufacturing infrastructure capital to build a dedicated foundry; GlobalFoundries receives $375 million to establish a quantum-focused business with 300mm capability; and seven additional companies receive between $38 million and $100 million in equity investments that fund research and development but do not create shared manufacturing infrastructure. The equity-stake structure — with the government taking minority positions in each company — suggests a portfolio approach to technology risk, but the dramatically unequal allocation sizes reveal a conviction that superconducting silicon fabrication warrants infrastructure-scale investment while other modalities warrant venture-scale bets. Too many companies are operating in the early stage of quantum hardware development, and the government’s manufacturing bet may accelerate the consolidation that Futurum research has identified as necessary for the industry to reach commercial viability. Anderon represents not just a foundry but a de facto industrial policy choice that will shape which quantum modalities survive the transition from research prototypes to manufactured products at scale.

Read the full announcement on IBM’s website.

What to Watch

• Whether the seven equity-funded quantum companies — including trapped-ion, photonic, and neutral-atom approaches — can secure separate manufacturing and advanced packaging infrastructure funding to close the fabrication gap with superconducting silicon.
• How GlobalFoundries’ $375 million quantum business develops relative to Anderon, and whether it pursues the same superconducting modality or diversifies into alternative qubit fabrication.
• The pace at which IBM’s four custom ASICs progress toward the 2029 convergence point, where power becomes manageable at 3 megawatts per system.
• Whether Anderon attracts non-IBM superconducting qubit companies as fabrication customers, validating the multi-tenant foundry model.
• How the equity stake structure affects governance and strategic independence of smaller quantum companies now partially owned by the U.S. government.

Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process: This content has been generated with the support of artificial intelligence technologies. Due to the fast pace of content creation and the continuous evolution of data and information, The Futurum Group and its analysts strive to ensure the accuracy and factual integrity of the information presented. However, the opinions and interpretations expressed in this content reflect those of the individual author/analyst. The Futurum Group makes no guarantees regarding the completeness, accuracy, or reliability of any information contained herein. Readers are encouraged to verify facts independently and consult relevant sources for further clarification.

Disclosure: Futurum is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.

Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum as a whole.

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Brendan is Research Director, Semiconductors, Supply Chain, and Emerging Tech. He advises clients on strategic initiatives and leads the Futurum Semiconductors Practice. He is an experienced tech industry analyst who has guided tech leaders in identifying market opportunities spanning edge processors, generative AI applications, and hyperscale data centers. 

Before joining Futurum, Brendan consulted with global AI leaders and served as a Senior Analyst in Emerging Technology Research at PitchBook. At PitchBook, he developed market intelligence tools for AI, highlighted by one of the industry’s most comprehensive AI semiconductor market landscapes encompassing both public and private companies. He has advised Fortune 100 tech giants, growth-stage innovators, global investors, and leading market research firms. Before PitchBook, he led research teams in tech investment banking and market research.

Brendan is based in Seattle, Washington. He has a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Amherst College.