IBM Spins Off the First Pure-Play Quantum Chip Foundry

Summary

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 ...