The Trump administration is pouring cold water on a report that it’s “currently” in talks to take equity stakes in quantum computing companies like IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum, but shares in each of the companies were still comfortably higher Thursday.
“The Commerce Department is not currently negotiating equity stakes with quantum computing companies,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The short statement still has room for investor optimism on the quantum names and the potential for a deal of some sort.
“Currently” could imply talks will be held later, and “equity” could suggest a different structure in any kind of deal. Warrants would give the government the right to buy shares at a set price in the future, rather than an ownership stake now.
“We are continuously engaging with the U.S. government on funding opportunities,” Rigetti said in a statement. “If the U.S. does not lead in supporting these breakthroughs, others will, posing significant risks to our national security.”
IonQ and Quantum Computing declined to comment.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that each quantum firm was discussing minimum funding awards of $10 million in exchange for government ownership.
A federal stake in quantum would be vastly different from the August deal with Intel, a move that essentially bailed out the legacy chipmaker.
Intel, which had $53 billion in revenue in FY2024, was losing market share. The government converted almost $9 billion in grants into a 10% stake, making it Intel’s largest shareholder.
Governments worldwide see quantum as the next big thing, and the U.S. views it as critical to staying ahead of China in the next generation of computing.
But the technology doesn’t work commercially yet.
The quantum firms have minimal revenue and are burning cash to build tech that doesn’t yet work at scale. A federal stake would carry a fair bit of risk as the hyperscalers are already making breakthroughs.
Google, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon already have major quantum programs. Google just announced its Willow chip ran an algorithm thirteen thousand times faster than a supercomputer.
