Catenaa, Thursday, October 23, 2025- President Trump’s administration is in talks with several quantum-computing companies to take equity stakes in exchange for federal funding.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that companies including IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum are discussing the government becoming a shareholder as part of the agreements.
The discussions include minimum funding awards from Washington of $10 million each.
Other companies, such as Quantum Computing and Atom Computing, are considering similar arrangements.
Shares of IONQ, Rigetti, D-Wave Quantum, and Quantum Computing surged over 7% on Thursday morning after the report.
Earlier this year, Trump said the US would take a 10% stake in Intel that converts government grants into an equity share, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America.
Other deals include an agreement for the Pentagon to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company, MP Materials to boost output of rare earth magnets, and the US government’s winning a “golden share” with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Japan’s Nippon Steel to buy US Steel.
US Deputy Commerce Secretary Paul Dabbar, a former quantum-computing executive and Energy Department official, is leading the funding discussions with companies in the industry, the WSJ report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
In February, Microsoft unveiled a new chip that it said showed quantum computing is “years, not decades” away, joining Google and IBM in predicting that a fundamental change in computing technology is much closer than recently believed.
