Illinois Quantum Park Signs MOU With Japan’s Q-STAR Alliance
The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park has signed a memorandum of understanding with Q-STAR, Japan’s quantum industry alliance, to link the two regions’ quantum sectors. The deal, signed at the Global Quantum Forum in Chicago, covers funding access, joint research, technology co-development, and supply-chain links for companies in both countries. As an MOU, it’s a statement of intent that commits no money and starts no projects on its own.
Why the Q-STAR partnership matters
The value here is the partner. Specifically, Q-STAR started in 2021 with 24 Japanese companies and now counts more than 160 members, including Toshiba, NEC, NTT, and Hitachi.
For IQMP, the agreement, which the company announced in a July 23 press release, opens a formal channel into that network, and for Q-STAR members it’s a route into Illinois’s quantum buildout. Harley Johnson of IQMP and Q-STAR’s Hirofumi Mori signed it. As Johnson commented:
“The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park is a place where the world’s quantum companies can build, grow, and develop the technology that has the potential to unlock solutions to the world’s most complex problems. This new partnership with Q-STAR is an important step towards that vision. (…) We’re proud to open the door for Japan’s leading companies to plug into our thriving ecosystem and to advance the longstanding collaboration between the state and Japan.”
How Illinois and Japan built toward this agreement
This isn’t a cold start. Illinois and Japan have traded delegations since 2024, most recently a JETRO-organized visit to Tokyo this March that included IQMP anchor tenant PsiQuantum. Governor Pritzker led an earlier trip to Japan in October 2024, and a Japanese delegation visited Chicago in June 2025. The Illinois Economic Development Corporation helped broker the new agreement.
The IQMP itself, a 128-acre site, broke ground in fall 2025. The executive quotes around the MOU are the usual goodwill language, so the substance is the connection rather than any commitment.