The U.S. Just Bet $1 Billion on Quantum Chip Manufacturing

The U.S. Department of Commerce has finalized a CHIPS and Science Act R&D award of up to $1 billion for Anderon, a quantum foundry IBM established earlier this year. The 16 September announcement backs a manufacturing service for IBM and other quantum-hardware developers.

IBM is matching the award with $1 billion in cash and contributing intellectual property, assets, and skilled workers. Headquartered in Albany, N.Y., Anderon builds on an existing operation at Albany NanoTech, where IBM has made quantum wafers for more than five years, says CEO Mukesh Khare. That existing infrastructure has helped Anderon get started: Its first wafers are already moving through a production-scale, 300-millimeter line.

Quantum computing “is moving from science to real commercial impact now,” Khare says. “That means the industry also needs a more stable manufacturing source for building quantum chips.”

If Anderon is successful, it could do for quantum hardware what TSMC did for conventional chips: let companies focus on designing chips without each one having to build a multibillion-dollar factory for the underlying hardware.

What an Automated Quantum Fab Can Offer

IBM says shifting much of its quantum wafer R&D from the 200-millimeter fabrication lab at the IBM Research headquarters in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., to the Albany 300-millimeter line, beginning in 2021, doubled chip-development speed and increased its chips’ physical complexity tenfold. Round-the-clock processing shortened fabrication cycles, and advanced manufacturing techniques enabled more elaborate wiring and qubit connections. Anderon draws on Albany NanoTech’s manufacturing capability and IBM’s experience deploying more than 90 quantum systems since 2016. The challenge now is extending those capabilities to outside designers. Anderon’s potential customers include processor developers without fabs, system builders, and national laboratories. Even companies with their own manual chipmaking facilities may be interested in outsourcing fabrication to an automated foundry. Rigetti Computing, for example, another CHIPS Act R&D award winner, is in talks with Anderon, according to CEO Subodh Kulkarni.

Rigetti currently makes processors on 150-millimeter wafers in its manual fab in Fremont, Calif. Kulkarni puts its yield near 50 percent, which he says is “good enough” for R&D when specs are changing frequently. But Anderon promises more reliable automated chip production that companies like Rigetti could retain to advance their own chip development. “We find that to be very attractive,” Kulkarni said, “not because of capacity, but because of capability.”

Like conventional silicon foundries, Anderon plans to offer process design kits, or PDKs, specifying the rules designers must follow to use its manufacturing processes. “They design, we build,” Khare says. Customization will also be available, he said, and the foundry will protect clients’ intellectual property and operate neutrally, including for IBM’s competitors.

Making that model work will require predictable fabrication. For superconducting qubits, a critical component is the Josephson junction, which consists of two superconductors separated by a thin insulating barrier. Variations in junction area and barrier thickness can change critical current and qubit frequency, potentially creating unwanted frequency overlaps and reducing chip yield.

Anderon’s automated line could help control variation through repeatable patterning, deposition, and oxidation, with in-line testing to identify process drift. But customers will need to measure the actual improvement in qubit performance, Kulkarni says.

Anderon’s latest-generation 300mm quantum wafers. Anderon

Much of the fabrication equipment overlaps with that used for silicon chips, although superconducting circuits require specialized materials and process steps. Anderon advertises superconducting qubit arrays, microwave components, and through-silicon connections. But extending manufacturing capabilities to other quantum technologies, like trapped ion or photonic qubits, would require additional process development that Anderon has not publicly detailed yet.

Semiconductor spin qubits can already be fabricated on conventional chip production lines, says Lieven Vandersypen of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, while superconducting qubits require specialized steps that may require new development.

A dedicated quantum facility could spread costs and support the development of processes optimized for quantum devices, according to Vandersypen. “Understanding how to make this transition is timely and important,” he says.

Manufacturing capabilities alone will not make Anderon quantum computing’s TSMC. It also needs sustained demand beyond IBM. Designers have alternatives. Vandersypen points to QuantWare’s investment in its own wafer-scale facility and Belgium’s imec, which supplies prototype quantum chips rather than pursuing high-volume manufacturing. “Time will tell which model will prevail. Perhaps both will co-exist,” he says.

Commerce is backing several approaches to strengthen U.S. competitiveness in the global quantum market. While Anderon’s award is the largest so far, Commerce has finalized up to $375 million for GlobalFoundries and up to $100 million each for Rigetti, D-Wave, Quantinuum, and PsiQuantum. Those awards support manufacturing for multiple quantum architectures and address bottlenecks including readout electronics, cryostats, superconducting materials, optical components, and photonic packaging. Shared wafer fabrication is one piece of the larger engineering effort.

Khare says he can deliver wafers to outside customers by the end of the year. For potential customers such as Rigetti the test will be how reliably those chips meet increasingly demanding designs. As Kulkarni puts it: “If we tighten the specification, what would the yield be?”