D-Wave Quantum lands up to $100 million in CHIPS funding for its next quantum machines

D-Wave Quantum (Nasdaq: QBTS) executed a definitive agreement on November 10 with the U.S. Department of Commerce for up to $100 million in federal research and development funding under the CHIPS and Science Act, the company said. It is the clearest signal yet that the U.S. government intends to fund quantum hardware the way it funded semiconductor fabs, and the award arrived with the details investors have been waiting for: what the money buys, how it is paid out, and what the government gets in return.

The agreement funds two machines. One is a next-generation annealing system targeting 100,000 qubits, engineered for combinatorial optimization, materials simulation and artificial intellige…