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Illinois Puts $3 Million Behind NSF Quantum Startup Teams

Sead Fadilpašić avatar
BY: Sead Fadilpašić
PUB:
ETA: [ 5 MIN ]

Illinois wants the next wave of federally funded quantum startups to build inside its borders, and it’s putting up money to make the case. Governor JB Pritzker and the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity announced a $3 million X-Labs Fast Fund aimed at teams competing for the National Science Foundation’s new X-Labs awards. The state cash stacks on top of the federal grants, and teams can name Illinois in their NSF applications from the start.

What the money buys

According to a July 8 press release by the government of Illinois, the fund augments federal funding for teams awarded under Phase 0 of the NSF X-Labs opportunity. Teams that win an NSF award can then apply to DCEO and receive the state grant within months, which is fast for public funding. Illinois has already committed around $200 million to attract federal quantum dollars and says it can move that money quickly.

The state cash is not the whole package. Four Chicago quantum organizations, the Chicago Quantum Exchange, P33, the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and mHUB, are adding another $250,000 along with lab space, prototyping facilities, and access to the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park’s equipment, including cryogenic and test-and-measurement gear. The point is to cut the infrastructure bills that eat into an early team’s federal grant.

Why Illinois is making the pitch

The state has spent heavily to reach this position. Pritzker’s administration put $500 million into the IQMP, a 128-acre campus under construction that is meant to rank among the largest quantum sites in the world, and an earlier $200 million into the Chicago Quantum Exchange.

Illinois is home to four of the ten National Quantum Initiative research centers, including Department of Energy centers led by Argonne and Fermilab and two NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes. Those institutes work on quantum sensing and hybrid quantum architectures, the exact focus areas of the two X-Labs calls. Companies committed to the IQMP include IBM and anchor tenant PsiQuantum, along with Infleqtion, Pasqal, Diraq, and Quantum Machines.