After IonQ Buyout, SkyWater Reiterates Role as Quantum Foundry - EE Times

After quantum computing company IonQ acquired SkyWater in July this year, the subsidiary said it is pledging to treat its quantum chip customers equally, including parent IonQ.“IonQ is treated as a customer of the foundry, just like anyone else,” SkyWater’s new SVP of quantum technologies Mihir Bhaskar told EE Times. “For all quantum customers SkyWater serves, their data and information remain strictly with the dedicated SkyWater team manufacturing their devices.”Bhaskar, a quantum technologist for 15 years, founded Lightsynq, specializing in photonic interconnects and quantum memory, in 2024. IonQ acquired the company in 2025.“Since joining IonQ, I’ve helped lead technology strategy, including assisting with the acquisition of SkyWater,” Bhaskar said. “With SkyWater now in place, the most exciting role for me is leading the SkyWater Quantum Solutions business unit to support all our quantum customers.”SkyWater has nine “major” quantum customers, according to Bhaskar. Startup competitor Anderon has parent IBM as its primary customer and is looking for more.“Priority number one for any business—especially in the foundry space—is protecting customer intellectual property,” Bhaskar said. “If your customers don’t trust you, you can’t do business. It is critical in the foundry business because customers bring highly sensitive IP and designs, trusting us to manufacture them.”SkyWater has been making quantum chips for about 10 years. Its customers include IonQ, PsiQuantum, Qolab, and QuamCore.Qolab and QuamCore are building what Bhaskar described as “potentially disruptive” superconducting technologies that may eliminate the well-known “chandelier” design from quantum computers.“A major challenge in scaling superconducting qubit systems used by players like IBM, Google, and Rigetti is wiring and controlling larger numbers of qubits without creating a massive, tangled mess of cables,” Bhaskar said. “SkyWater is building a platform with QuamCore to solve these high-density integration and routing challenges.”The “modalities”, or techniques, that quantum chip companies use to make qubits include trapped ions, quantum dots, silicon vacancies in diamond, photonics, and superconducting.Bhaskar said every one of those modalities ultimately relies on either superconducting or photonic methods to move quantum information.“We support all major modalities,” Bhaskar said. “That might sound impossible for a single foundry, but fundamentally, there are only two ways to transport quantum information across a chip or system.”SkyWater offers its SC250 (superconducting) and SP90 (photonics) platforms together with its technology-as-a-service model that provides early-stage process customization to prove manufacturability.“While we offer baseline process design kit platforms [PDKs], our core business model accommodates custom process development within a volume manufacturing environment,” Bhaskar said. “We develop new processes outside standard PDKs to make breakthrough innovations manufacturable for the first time.”IBM established Anderon with the help of the U.S. government in May this year as the “world’s first” pure-play quantum chip foundry. The U.S. Department of Commerce awarded Anderon $1 billion under the CHIPS Act early in September to scale production. IBM is Anderon’s main customer.Specific to the U.S., additional domestic capacity can help address supply chain constraints, provide manufacturing redundancy, and give quantum companies more options as they move from research prototypes toward production, Heather West, IDC’s quantum research lead, told EE Times.Anderon offers customers wafers supporting superconducting qubit arrays, quantum input/output signaling, and readout signal chain components, new CEO Mukesh Khare told EE Times. The company plans to expand to other quantum modalities, such as spin qubits, he said.U.S. government investment in domestic quantum semiconductor manufacturing is a “fantastic step” for the entire ecosystem, Bhaskar said.“Competitors like Anderon are building new 300-mm facilities for future capability,” Bhaskar noted.SkyWater supplies its quantum customers from two 200-mm facilities in Minnesota and Florida as well as a 300-mm advanced packaging facility in Florida for chiplet integration and new materials.“SkyWater is already shipping quantum wafers today and has been doing so for the last decade,” Bhaskar noted. “Our active capacity has powered the last several generations of quantum innovation and will continue to power the next. While others are working toward becoming a quantum foundry in the future, SkyWater is already the operational quantum foundry today.”U.S. Awards Anderon $1B for Quantum Wafer ManufacturingFrom Qubits to Workflows: Rethinking Quantum ComputingIonQ to Acquire Skywater and European Strategy RELATED TOPICS: IP (INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY), QUANTUM, SEMICONDUCTORS COMPANIES: IONQ, SKYWATER TECHNOLOGY Alan has worked as an electronics journalist in Asia for most of his career. In addition to EE Times, he has been a reporter and an editor for Bloomberg News and Dow Jones Newswires. He has lived for more than 30 years in Hong Kong and Taipei and has covered tech companies in the greater China region during that time. You must Register or Login to post a comment.This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.