D-Wave and Rigetti join the wave of $100M quantum CHIPS awards finalized this week

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D-Wave and Rigetti both finalized definitive $100 million agreements with the US Department of Commerce this week, joining Quantinuum in converting earlier letters of intent into signed CHIPS and Science Act funding deals within days of each other. The awards trace back to a May 2026 Commerce Department announcement of 2.013 billion dollars in planned CHIPS funding across nine companies, including Atom Computing, Diraq and Infleqtion, aimed at accelerating US leadership in quantum computing manufacturing and supply chains

D-Wave's funding will support scaling its annealing and gate-model systems toward planned 100,000-qubit and 10,000-qubit systems respectively, with CEO Alan Baratz calling it recognition that US quantum leadership requires not just breakthrough research but the ability to scale, commercialize and manufacture the technology domestically. Rigetti's award specifically targets technical challenges in scaling and advancing its superconducting quantum computing systems. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had framed the broader initiative as leading the world into a new era of American innovation when the original letters of intent were announced

The near simultaneous finalization of multiple separate company agreements within the same week suggests the federal government is moving through this funding portfolio methodically rather than the process stalling out after the initial announcement. Curious what people think about this specific funding model, spreading 100 million dollar awards across several different hardware approaches, annealing, superconducting and trapped-ion among them, does that genuinely accelerate the field by hedging across approaches, or dilute impact compared to concentrating funding behind one or two clear frontrunners

D-Wave Finalizes $100M U.S. Government Agreement for Quantum Computing R&Dthequantuminsider.com