IBM Acquires HRL Laboratories to Add Electron Spin Qubits to Its Quantum Strategy

International Business Machines said its subsidiary Anderon won a US$1b federal award to build a U.S. quantum chip foundry, alongside a further US$1b IBM commitment to the project. The planned facility is described as the first stand-alone quantum wafer foundry in the U.S., focused on quantum chip manufacturing under CHIPS Act funding. IBM also announced a partnership with regulatory intelligence provider CUBE to integrate real time global AI rule monitoring into watsonx.governance. The Anderon quantum foundry award and CUBE tie up together represent a US$2b quantum and governance push by the company.

Nvidia launched CUDA-Q Logical, an open-source orchestration layer built into its CUDA-Q platform, on September 14. The tool is designed to help researchers develop applications for fault-tolerant quantum computers using logical qubits, and it is available on GitHub. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, IQM Quantum Computers, Sandia National Laboratories, Infleqtion, QCDesign, and Quantum Motion are already using the technology. The launch supports Nvidia's broader strategy of making its GPUs the key classical computing layer for hybrid quantum-classical systems, though Jensen Huang said in January 2025 that useful quantum computers could still be 15 to 30 years away, a view tied to the unresolved challenge of scaling quantum hardware. Hedge fund ownership of Nvidia rose from 275 funds at the end of Q1 2026 to 285 funds at the end of Q2 2026, while short interest stood at 1.29% of float as of August 31, 2026.

Anderon, an IBM subsidiary, finalized a $1 billion research-and-development award from the U.S. Department of Commerce on Wednesday under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. The funding will support Anderon's efforts to advance quantum wafer manufacturing at its facility in Albany, New York, where a 300-millimeter quantum wafer foundry serves customers across the quantum industry. IBM has put up $1 billion of its own money alongside the federal award, and production is underway with quantum wafers already in process. The Anderon award is part of a broader $2 billion package distributed across nine quantum computing companies under the CHIPS and Science Act, with GlobalFoundries in line for $375 million and D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Infleqtion each expected to receive $100 million; each of the nine firms will give the federal government a minority ownership stake in exchange for the funding. The finalization follows a letter of intent between IBM and the Commerce Department announced in May, and last week Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum, and Quantinuum each finalized $100 million deals with the department. IBM stock fell 3.3% on Wednesday and has declined nearly 19% this year.