IBM commits $10 billion to fault-tolerant quantum computers by 2029 - Yahoo Finance
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IBM commits $10 billion to fault-tolerant quantum computers by 2029 Quartz · NurPhoto / Getty Images Cris Tolomia Wed, June 3, 2026 at 10:52 AM EDT 2 min read IBM -6.67% IBM announced plans to invest more than $10 billion in quantum computing over the next five years, targeting the delivery of the first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029. According to the company, the funds will be directed toward a range of priorities including R&D, capital expenditure, manufacturing, ecosystem partnerships, and mergers and acquisitions. IBM said the 2029 system, called Starling, will be capable of executing 20,000 times more operations than current systems. A subsequent system, IBM Quantum Blue Jay, is planned to run one billion quantum operations across 2,000 qubits. "The quantum era is no longer ahead of us, it has started," IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna said in a statement. "The pace of discovery with quantum computers is accelerating rapidly and this investment powers our ability to deliver the next generation of quantum hardware, software, and manufacturing." Globally, IBM has deployed over 90 quantum systems — a figure the company says exceeds the combined total of every other player in the industry — with more than 340 organizations running real workloads on its machines. Since 2017, the company has signed more than $1.1 billion in contracts with clients, the company said. Thursday's announcement gave IBM shares a 3.5% lift, according to Barron's, while pure-play quantum names outpaced those gains by a wide margin — Rigetti Computing surged 9.8%, and both IonQ and D-Wave Quantum added 7.3%, Barron's reported. The announcement comes shortly after IBM was named as the largest beneficiary of a $2 billion government quantum funding package, under which the Trump administration is taking equity stakes in nine quantum computing companies using funds from the 2022 Chips and Science Act. IBM is set to receive $1 billion from the Commerce Department for a new stand-alone quantum chip foundry called Anderon, to be based in Albany, New York. IBM said it will match that grant with $1 billion of its own cash, along with intellectual property, assets, and staff. IBM described Anderon as the first purpose-built quantum wafer foundry in the U.S., built to serve a broad range of outside customers. For IBM, the arrangement involves a $1 billion cash contribution from the Commerce Department matched by $1 billion from IBM itself, together seeding Anderon as an independent quantum foundry. Gambetta, who was elevated from his prior role as vice president of quantum to lead IBM's entire research division, framed the foundry as a way to ensure the manufacturing side of the business can keep pace with the company's accelerating hardware ambitions. IBM said it expects its partners to demonstrate quantum advantage — the point at which quantum computers outperform classical machines on useful problems — in 2026.