The Trump Administration Sinks Billions into Nine Quantum Companies – Moby
THE GIST
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Nine quantum-computing companies got a boost to their stock prices Thursday after the Trump Administration announced $2 billion in grants to the relatively young and unknown industry, per the WSJ.
The Department of Commerce, led by everyone’s favorite hype man Howard W. Lutnick, will give $1 billion to IBM’s new quantum spin-off company “Anderon,” sending IBM’s shares up over 8% on the news. In exchange for that $1 billion, the U.S. government is taking a minority equity stake.
WSJ listed some other notable names in the industry, but at the bottom of their report were three quantum startups, one of which Donald Trump Jr. ‘s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, backed last year
WHAT HAPPENED
The $2 billion didn’t just fall out of the sky. It comes from the CHIPS Act, which former President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022.
Other firms set to receive the money include chip-maker GlobalFoundries, which is set to receive $375 million. D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Infleqtion are each set to receive $100 million, and startup Diraq could receive a $38 million grant.
The federal government owns about 1% of GlobalFoundries. The federal government will take a small stake in each of the firms, which saw the news boost their stock prices.
Other private companies to receive grants include Atom Computing, Quantinuum, and PsiQuantum, which closed a $1 billion Series E last year, giving the young startup a $7 billion valuation, per Reuters.
WHY IT MATTERS
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Quantum computing chips add a new dimension to every industry from logistics, encryption, to defense tech.
1789 Capital officially invested in PsiQuantum about eight months after the Trump Administration’s newfound interest in quantum. 1789, where Don Jr. is a partner, hasn’t necessarily seen any gain relative to that valuation. That said, PsiQuantum’s valuation immediately before the Series E round was $3.15 billion, so the hype train is still very real. It’s notable that other new investors alongside other major institutional players included BlackRock, Temasek, and Nvidia’s venture capital arm (NVentures).
When the Pentagon overhauled its priority list from 14 categories to just 6 in November 2025, quantum earned its own dedicated post, “Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance (Q-BID),” signaling how seriously defense leadership takes the technology. The recent Commerce grants and record $1.5 trillion FY27 defense budget are essentially a green light for the industry, following the familiar playbook of private companies like IBM and PsiQuantum building infrastructure while the DoD manufactures demand, a dynamic that Donald Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital has positioned itself squarely in the middle of.
As WSJ put it, quantum “turbocharges scientific research.” Quantum doesn’t replace traditional AI infrastructure like GPUs, but rather adds to the U.S.’s AI stack. The Trump Administration is making these investments with a wary eye toward China.
Given AI’s winner-take-all dynamic, that’s the kind of moat nobody catches up to.
WHAT’S NEXT
The WSJ reported IBM is investing $1 billion of its own cash to stand up Anderon — what the company calls “America’s first pure-play quantum foundry” — in Albany. But PsiQuantum and GlobalFoundries are already cranking out quantum chips at their facilities.
If and when quantum moves from promise to production over the next few years, PsiQuantum — a company backed by Don Jr., the president’s oldest son and sole trustee of his revocable trust — could find itself in a position analogous to Nvidia circa 2023: the supplier nobody could see around the corner that one day, everyone needed.
