A major government-backed quantum research project in Illinois will test the limits of quantum computing — and also how much America is willing to invest in a still very experimental technology. PsiQuantum, a California-based quantum computing firm, announced this morning that it’s partnering at the local, state and federal levels to build what would be the world’s largest quantum computing facility at a former steelworks in Chicago. Drawing on a previously established partnership between the State of Illinois, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Department of Energy to boost quantum in greater Chicago, PsiQuantum promises to bring a quantum computer with one million qubits online at some point after 2027. Illinois’ Gov. J.B. Pritzker — a potential vice presidential pick — praised the project in a statement, calling it a “crucial” commitment to quantum, and engaged in a little hometown boasting by saying it “cements our status as a global hub for quantum computing.” (Chicagoland happens to be represented in part by Democratic Rep. Bill Foster, the only physicist in Congress.) But as so many would-be recipients of CHIPS and Science Act cash know, announcing a federal research project is one thing and actually getting it off the ground is another. Priorities in government change fast, and with a technology still as nascent as quantum researchers have to keep lawmakers’ and agencies’ interest — hoping their investments can pay off quickly enough to justify a long-haul project. The Chicago project depends on a web of financing from various sources at different levels of the government stack: Illinois pledged $500 million to the planned Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park (IQMP) in its 2025 budget, and PsiQuantum says the newly announced federal Quantum Proving Ground project will direct $280 million to the IQMP. One thing the Chicago project is not is an official “tech hub” under Biden’s new innovation-funding program. PsiQuantum is a corporate partner of a consortium called the Chicago Quantum Exchange, which did indeed apply for the CHIPS and Science tech hub funding but was ultimately passed over when the Biden administration announced the 12 winners earlier this month. Why not? One reason might be that it’s a little too future-facing. Zachary Yerushalmi, the CEO of Colorado’s Elevate Quantum — the only quantum consortium to win funding as an official tech hub — called Chicago’s application “serious competition” for the money, but argued that Colorado’s focus on commoditizing the technology won it the day. “There are closer quantum technologies, like atomic clocks and quantum sensors and enabling hardware that are actually in market today, and the center of the world for that is in Colorado,” Yerushalmi said. “Chicago, they were an incredible hub … [but] We suspected that they were only going to choose one, and so ultimately it’s just the dynamics of the competition, but we're sad about it.” With hundreds of millions of dollars now pouring into the Chicago project — announced just two weeks after the list of tech hub winners — the area’s quantum scientists and engineers will have their hands full regardless. PsiQuantum’s promised million-qubit quantum computer is significantly larger than the 100,000-qubit computer planned by IBM in its “road map” for practical quantum computing published last year. In order to build it, PsiQuantum is betting on a form of quantum computing that involves photonic integrated circuits, something the company itself calls the “ugly duckling” of the various approaches to quantum. It argues that those won’t require as much cooling as the superconducting materials used in most quantum computers — and because they’ve already been extensively studied for other applications, PsiQuantum can easily tap into the existing research ecosystem for “classical” computing. Yerushalmi’s consortium is building lab and fabrication facilities to help companies get photonic integrated circuits faster, something he said could speed up the pace of quantum development worldwide. That, ultimately, is the bet that Congress, the states and agencies like DARPA are hoping will pay off in funding both commercial and research-focused quantum projects: That what benefits one benefits the other, keeping the U.S. at the forefront of a potentially revolutionary technology. “If we're doing it right like [Belgian semiconductor R&D hub] IMEC, we’ll make every single type of quantum technology go way faster,” Yerushalmi said. “From a bipartisan lens what's cool about this is we're not picking winners, right? We're not saying ‘this is the quantum company,’ we're making every single technology go a whole hell of a lot faster.” Christine Mui contributed to this report.
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