Anderon, the pure-play quantum foundry IBM spun off in May, finalized its $1 billion CHIPS and Science Act award with the U.S. Department of Commerce, converting a letter of intent into a binding agreement. Futurum views the finalization as the completion of the capital stack behind quantum’s first merchant manufacturing test, and the open question now shifts from funding to whether a customer base beyond IBM materializes for specialized quantum wafers.
What Is Covered in This Article:
- Finalization of Anderon’s $1 billion CHIPS award with the Department of Commerce, first announced as a letter of intent in May
- The $2 billion capital stack: $1 billion in federal R&D funding plus $1 billion in IBM investment behind a 300mm pure-play quantum wafer foundry in Albany, New York
- First quantum wafers now running through the facility, supporting superconducting qubit arrays, quantum I/O signaling, and readout signal chain components
- Futurum’s quantum foundry thesis: $13.8 billion committed to US quantum manufacturing and the merchant-versus-captive fabrication divide
- Competitive positioning versus IonQ’s SkyWater capacity, Google’s in-house fab, Rigetti’s Fab-1, PsiQuantum’s GlobalFoundries line, and Quantinuum
The News: Anderon LLC, an IBM (NYSE: IBM) company, announced on September 16 that it has finalized a $1 billion award under the CHIPS and Science Act with the U.S. Department of Commerce to accelerate R&D for quantum wafer manufacturing. The agreement converts the letter of intent between the Department and IBM announced in May into a binding award. Anderon operates a 300mm pure-play quantum wafer foundry headquartered in Albany, New York, funded by an additional $1 billion investment from IBM, and offers quantum wafer manufacturing to customers across the ecosystem. Its wafers support superconducting qubit arrays, quantum input/output signaling, and readout signal chain components, with expansion to other quantum modalities planned. The company reports that its first quantum wafers are now running through the manufacturing facility.
“This agreement with the Department of Commerce strengthens our ability to deliver the manufacturing scale the quantum industry needs,” said Mukesh Khare, CEO of Anderon.. “IBM’s quantum roadmap requires a manufacturing foundation that can scale at the pace our work demands,” said Jay Gambetta, Director, IBM Research and IBM Fellow.
Anderon Finalizes $1 Billion CHIPS Award. Who Buys Quantum Wafers Besides IBM?
Analyst Take: Anderon’s finalized agreement completes the capital formation Futurum has tracked since May, when a $2 billion CHIPS Act commitment first put federal money behind IBM’s 300mm superconducting silicon. A letter of intent is a policy signal, but a finalized award is a contract, and the distinction matters in a CHIPS program whose commitments have been renegotiated, restructured, and in some cases converted to equity positions over the past two years. The pure-play quantum foundry now has $2 billion in committed capital, first wafers moving through a production-scale 300mm fab, and a federal counterparty on signed paper. Futurum’s June quantum foundry report asked whether this venture could become the TSMC of quantum. The financing question is now closed. What remains open is the demand question: TSMC became TSMC because fabless customers existed in volume, and the quantum industry has not yet demonstrated that a merchant market for quantum wafer manufacturing exists.
The Finalized Award Completes a $13.8 Billion Bet on Quantum Wafer Manufacturing
Futurum counted $13.8 billion committed to US quantum manufacturing across CHIPS Act incentives, IBM’s five-year $10 billion roadmap, and IonQ’s SkyWater acquisition, and Anderon sits at the center of that tally. The foundry’s economics rest on an estimate that IBM’s 300mm fabrication produces quantum chips 30 times faster than the 200mm research lines the industry grew up on. The precision case is that superconducting qubit yields depend on Josephson junction uniformity that research fabs struggle to deliver, and a production-scale 300mm line with mature process control attacks that variance directly. First wafers running through the Albany facility 4 months after the spinoff announcement suggests the venture inherited working process technology rather than a greenfield ramp. The September finalization also lands 4 weeks after IBM joined and cooled its first modular cryogenic systems, which means IBM now controls repeatable manufacturing at both ends of the superconducting stack: the wafers that become processors and the refrigerated cells those processors occupy. IBM has spent 2026 converting every scarce input in superconducting quantum computing into owned, fundable infrastructure, with the federal government underwriting the wafer end.
A Pure-Play Foundry With One Anchor Customer Is a Captive Fab in Waiting
The customer roster remains undisclosed and, on the available evidence, may be a roster of one. Anderon describes itself as a pure-play foundry serving customers across the ecosystem, yet its founding customer is its parent and its process technology is tuned to the superconducting modality IBM champions. Pure-play status is earned through revenue diversity, and no external customer has been named since the May announcement. The structure of the award adds a second caution that this is a CHIPS R&D award rather than a manufacturing incentive, the Department of Commerce announcement discloses no milestone or disbursement terms, and “up to $1 billion” language leaves the pace of federal funding contingent on terms neither party has published.
The addressable merchant market is also structurally narrow today. The best-funded superconducting programs run their own fabs, trapped-ion and photonic vendors need different processes entirely, and the remaining prospects are startups and national laboratories whose combined wafer volumes are modest. Anderon’s expansion plans beyond superconducting wafers acknowledge this ceiling. Until external design wins appear, the venture functions as a federally subsidized captive fab for IBM’s roadmap toward Starling in 2029, and IBM’s $1.1 billion in quantum contracts signed since 2017 is the revenue base that matters, with wafer sales a rounding error against it.
Vertical Integration Is Removing Merchant Capacity Just as Anderon Offers It
Mapped against the field, Anderon’s merchant pitch arrives at a moment when the rest of the industry is buying its fabrication capacity rather than renting it. IonQ spent $1.8 billion acquiring SkyWater, converting an independent foundry that had supplied superconducting and photonic fabrication to the broader ecosystem into captive capacity for a trapped-ion roadmap. Google fabricates its Willow-class superconducting chips, at 105 qubits with demonstrated below-threshold error correction, in its own Santa Barbara facility and has shown no interest in external supply. Rigetti has operated its own Fab-1 since 2017. PsiQuantum takes the opposite approach and manufactures its photonic chips on GlobalFoundries’ standard 300mm line, which demonstrates that a conventional foundry can serve quantum when the process is CMOS-compatible; superconducting qubits are not, and that gap is Anderon’s opening. Quantinuum’s trapped-ion hardware sits outside wafer-scale superconducting fabrication altogether.
Consolidation of merchant capacity strengthens Anderon’s position as the only specialized quantum foundry accepting external customers, and the same consolidation reveals how few customers remain to accept. Anderon’s decisive market test will arrive when a non-IBM superconducting program, most plausibly a well-funded startup or a sovereign quantum initiative places a named order. One such win validates the pure-play model, and its continued absence leaves the foundry as an IBM cost center with a federal subsidy.
What to Watch:
- Whether Anderon names external customers beyond IBM, and whether any are sovereign quantum programs
- Whether Commerce or Anderon disclose milestone and disbursement terms behind the “up to $1 billion” award
- Whether Anderon wafer output supports Nighthawk processor installations later in 2026 and IBM’s 1,000-programmable-qubit linkage target for 2027
- Whether Anderon announces process support for quantum modalities beyond superconducting qubits
- Whether IonQ’s SkyWater capacity or GlobalFoundries answers with a competing quantum-specialized wafer offering
See the complete announcement of the finalized award on the IBM newsroom.
Sources
- Anderon, an IBM Company, Finalizes Agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce for a $1 Billion CHIPS Award to Accelerate R&D for U.S.-Based Pure-Play Quantum Foundry, IBM, September 2026
Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process: This content has been generated with the support of artificial intelligence technologies. Due to the fast pace of content creation and the continuous evolution of data and information, The Futurum Group and its analysts strive to ensure the accuracy and factual integrity of the information presented. However, the opinions and interpretations expressed in this content reflect those of the individual author/analyst. The Futurum Group makes no guarantees regarding the completeness, accuracy, or reliability of any information contained herein. Readers are encouraged to verify facts independently and consult relevant sources for further clarification.
Disclosure: Futurum is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum as a whole.
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Author Information
Brendan is Research Director, Semiconductors, Supply Chain, and Emerging Tech. He advises clients on strategic initiatives and leads the Futurum Semiconductors Practice. He is an experienced tech industry analyst who has guided tech leaders in identifying market opportunities spanning edge processors, generative AI applications, and hyperscale data centers.
Before joining Futurum, Brendan consulted with global AI leaders and served as a Senior Analyst in Emerging Technology Research at PitchBook. At PitchBook, he developed market intelligence tools for AI, highlighted by one of the industry’s most comprehensive AI semiconductor market landscapes encompassing both public and private companies. He has advised Fortune 100 tech giants, growth-stage innovators, global investors, and leading market research firms. Before PitchBook, he led research teams in tech investment banking and market research.
Brendan is based in Seattle, Washington. He has a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Amherst College.
