NSF Awards Over $290M to Eight Quantum Institutes

On August 25, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) announced over $290 million in funding for eight Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes. Three of these institutes are new, and the other five received renewals from previous funding rounds. Each award spans five years, and individual grants range from approximately $28 million to $37.5 million, according to the NSF.

This program is not a single lab or machine, but rather a coordinated network of academic centers. Each center focuses on a specific challenge within quantum computing, sensing, or networking. The NSF established the Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes in 2020 under the 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act. This latest round expands the initiative across 36 universities in 19 states, collaborating with Department of Energy national labs, the Department of Defense, NIST, and over 30 companies, as stated in the NSF’s announcement.

Which eight institutes did NSF fund, and how much did each receive?

The NSF grouped these awards under a single announcement, with individual centers addressing computing hardware, error correction, networking, and sensing.

• NSF PRACTIQAL (Yale, $37.5 million): Tackles quantum error correction across the entire stack, from physical qubits and control electronics to algorithms. Robert Schoelkopf directs the institute, with Michael Hatridge as co-director. One key area of research involves “erasure qubits,” designed to precisely identify when and where an error occurs. Hatridge clarified the scope: the team aims to prove concepts and outline a path toward a large-scale machine, rather than building one themselves. Yale’s faculty involved span applied physics, computer science, and chemistry.
• NSF MARQUIS (Princeton, $27.9 million): Addresses a manufacturing bottleneck in superconducting processors: the Josephson junction. Director Nathalie de Leon highlights that the field has relied on aluminum and aluminum oxide junctions for approximately 25 years. Last year, her group published research on reengineered qubit materials that demonstrated 15 times better performance than leading industry chips, which is a measured lab result, not a commercial product. The institute involves nine research institutions, and its advisory board includes Google Quantum AI, NVIDIA, and MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
• NSF HQAN (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, $37.5 million): One of the three original institutes, HQAN investigates modular quantum computing, which involves networking smaller processing units rather than scaling a single large one. Director Brian DeMarco notes that the modular approach was largely unexplored when the center began but is now featured in the roadmaps of major companies. HQAN reports tangible first-phase results, including entangled states in a four-node superconducting network and atom-array modules with over 1,000 sites, alongside more than 210 peer-reviewed papers. Its second phase adds 16 industry partners, including Google, IBM, IonQ, and Quantinuum.
• NSF QuBBE (University of Chicago, $37.5 million): Focuses on quantum sensing for biology. Utilizes genuine quantum devices such as nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond, protein-based spin qubits, and entanglement-based measurements. During the first phase, work by Peter Maurer and David Awschalom demonstrated that fluorescent proteins can function as spin qubits, opening a path to sensors directly expressed within cells. Director Greg Engel describes the next phase as translating proof-of-principle measurements into practical tools. This is a sensing endeavor, not a computing one, and it does not claim any medical deployment.
• NSF CIQC (Berkeley-connected, first funded 2020): Develops new quantum algorithms and hardware architectures across neutral atoms, trapped ions, and solid-state systems. Applies them to explore novel materials and methods.
• NSF Q-SEnSE (Colorado, first funded 2020): Q-SEnSE targets precision sensing and measurement, including atomic clocks, molecular sensors, and quantum simulation.
• NSF RQS (Maryland, first funded 2021): RQS develops quantum simulation for scientific and industrial applications, encompassing algorithms, systems architecture, and materials science.
• NSF FTQSAA: Investigates methods and materials to enhance the resilience of quantum systems against the fragility of quantum information. Covers both hardware and software.

Why does NSF repeatedly use the phrase “next step”?

NSF director Brian Stone connected this round to four decades of foundational federal research. He called the institutes a “next step” toward practical quantum technology. This phrasing comes from an interested party describing his agency’s program. As Greg Engel, director of NSF QuBBE, said:

“Quantum sensing has reached a point where it can begin to address real biological questions. The next challenge is to make these tools reliable, adaptable, and useful in the complex environments where biology actually happens. This renewal allows us to take that step.” 

How should you interpret the funding figures?

The $290 million will go across eight centers over five years. The result will be modest annual budgets per institute when distributed among dozens of labs and hundreds of trainees.

It’s important to differentiate: HQAN’s first-phase achievements are published and measured. MARQUIS and PRACTIQAL are primarily funded to tackle difficult, unsolved problems. No center in this round claims to have built a fault-tolerant machine, nor does one currently exist. When PRACTIQAL states it will build “a pathway” to industrial-scale error correction, this phrasing honestly reflects the existing gap. Maintain similar skepticism when reading any university press release about a newly awarded grant.

This round provides a reference point for understanding where federal money is directed. It also shows which technical bottlenecks the government deems worthy of a five-year investment. Over the next five years, the research papers and testbeds produced by these centers will indicate whether their missions have translated into tangible results, or if they have joined the long list of quantum ideas that did not scale.