The US government just made its largest single commitment to quantum computing. On May 21, the Department of Commerce signed letters of intent with nine companies to distribute $2 billion in funding under the CHIPS and Science Act, taking a minority equity stake in each in return. IBM gets $1 billion toward a new quantum chip foundry. GlobalFoundries gets $375 million to build the manufacturing infrastructure the broader industry needs.
This is not research funding in the traditional sense. The government is not handing out grants and stepping back. It is taking ownership positions, the same approach it has used recently with Intel and rare earth mining company MP Materials. Washington is treating quantum as a strategic industrial sector, the same way it once treated semiconductors and GPS.
So what is quantum computing, and why does manufacturing matter so much right now?
A quantum computer does not process information the way any device you have ever used does. Instead of working with ones and zeroes, it uses qubits, which can exist in multiple states at the same time. That property lets quantum machines work through certain enormously complex problems, in chemistry, materials science, financial modeling, and logistics, far faster than any conventional computer could. The catch is that qubits are extraordinarily fragile. They collapse under heat, vibration, and electrical noise. Today's machines have hundreds of qubits. Useful commercial applications are expected to require millions of stable ones.
Getting from hundreds to millions requires industrial-scale manufacturing, which is exactly what does not exist yet. That is GlobalFoundries' role in this story. The company already manufactures specialized chips at scale for other industries. Its new Quantum Technology Solutions unit is applying that same capability to the components quantum computers need: the processors, the ultra-cold control chips, and the advanced packaging that connects everything together. Customers already working with GlobalFoundries include PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, Equal1, Diraq, and Quantum Motion.
The critical engineering challenge is temperature. Some quantum computers, including the most common type built on superconducting chips, must operate at temperatures colder than outer space. Control electronics that manage these machines start at room temperature and must function all the way down to near absolute zero. Chips designed for normal conditions perform unpredictably in those extremes. GlobalFoundries is building tools that let chip designers accurately predict how their components will behave at those temperatures before they commit to manufacturing.
Private investment in quantum pulled back sharply between 2022 and 2023, dropping roughly 50 percent globally. US private funding fell even harder. Government money is filling that gap while the technology matures toward a scale where it becomes commercially self-sustaining.
The commercial picture is becoming clearer. BCG's June 2026 analysis found that quantum's inflection point, where the technology starts delivering real value to end users, could arrive by 2030, with the market sitting between $2.5 and $5 billion depending on how fast hardware and software progress. McKinsey's 2026 Quantum Technology Monitor confirmed the industry crossed $1 billion in total revenue in 2025, the first time it reached that threshold, and projects $4.4 billion by 2028.
The industries moving fastest are chemicals and life sciences, where companies are using quantum simulation to model molecules and materials. Finance is active too: banks including JPMorgan Chase have internal teams building quantum applications for portfolio optimization and risk modeling. Logistics and supply chain optimization are also in early pilots.
For most business operators, quantum computing is not something that requires a decision this year or next. GlobalFoundries describes its own program as a three-to-five year effort just to reach a fully qualified manufacturing capability. The technology itself is still at least four years from meaningful commercial scale, and probably longer for most industries.
What does require attention now is one specific and more immediate risk: encryption. The same computing power that makes quantum useful for complex problem-solving could eventually break the encryption protecting most digital communications, financial transactions, and sensitive data. US and EU regulators are finalizing post-quantum encryption standards, with compliance expected to become mandatory for finance, defense, and critical infrastructure sectors around 2030. That is a compliance question for legal and IT teams, not a distant theoretical concern.
The broader takeaway is that quantum computing has moved from a science project into an industrial policy priority. Governments in the US, UK, EU, and China are all funding it at scale. The companies building the manufacturing foundation are getting serious money now. The business applications will follow the hardware, and the hardware is being built.