IBM Gives Chicago’s Quantum Campus a Boost With New Investment

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IBM Gives Chicago’s Quantum Campus a Boost With New Investment

(Bloomberg) — Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has scored another win as International Business Machines Corp. is investing in the state’s new quantum and microelectronics park in Chicago.

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IBM and partners including the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will build the first ever national algorithm center for quantum computing in the city’s South Side, the company said in a statement on Thursday. The state will provide a $25 million grant that will help purchase equipment for the IBM project.

The announcement comes five months after PsiQuantum Corp. said it would invest more than $1 billion to become the anchor tenant at Pritzker’s quantum campus. The billionaire governor, who has been trying to turn Illinois into a hub for new technologies, set aside $500 million for quantum as part of the budget passed earlier this year.

“This is first of its kind for us,” Jay Gambetta, IBM vice president of quantum, said in an interview. “What made us choose Chicago is honestly the talent in computer scientists — you have so many computer scientists that graduate from the schools here, as well as applied mathematicians and physicists. And then you’ve also got many industries that are potential early adopters of quantum computing.”

Quantum computers — which rely on “qubits” and can store data in multiple forms: ones, zeros, both, or something in between — are exponentially more powerful than their binary counterparts. Companies including IBM are trying to crack the technology, but skeptics have cast doubt over whether it will ever replace classical computers.

The initial investment will be “in the tens of millions” and maybe reach the “low hundreds” in the next two years, IBM Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna said at a press conference. He declined to provide a precise figure.

IBM’s investment, fueled by the IBM Quantum System Two quantum computer, is aimed at creating the software and algorithms that will allow quantum computing to generate effective commercial applications, Gambetta said. Industries typical of the Midwest including fertilizers, finance, insurance and materials could benefit from the quantum project.

“As we go into this next phase of quantum computing where algorithm are just as important as the hardware, we are making the decision that that we will grow out algorithm footprint in Chicago,” Gambetta said. “The software is where most of the jobs end up, so as we go into the future, this is going to be our core footprint, that’s where we’re going to have our algorithm researchers.”

IBM said it plan to start hiring effort almost immediately, and will have staff at other Chicago locations until the park is complete. The project is slated to create 50 jobs in five years.

In July, PsiQuantum Corp., a Palo Alto, California-based company, said it will build the first utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer in the US at the 300,000 square-foot site at South Works, the old US Steel plant that closed in 1992. Construction of the park moved a step closer when City Council voted this week to approve the rezoning of the area, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Chicago also has one of the country’s longest quantum networks, which runs 124 miles (200 kilometers) and connects the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory to the University of Chicago and the Chicago Quantum Exchange.

“We’re making Illinois the global quantum capital and the center for job growth in the quantum industry – a true center of innovation with the power to solve the world’s most pressing and complex challenges and create jobs and investment for our state,” Pritzker said in the statement.

–With assistance from Shruti Date Singh.

(Updates with IBM CEO comments in sixth paragraph.)

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