Loading story…
The U.S. government expanded its push to build domestic quantum computing capacity by announcing $2.013 billion in planned CHIPS and Science Act incentives for nine quantum technology companies and by advancing DARPA support for one of the sector’s leading developers. The Department of Commerce said the funding will target multiple hardware approaches—including superconducting, trapped ion, photonic, neutral atom, and silicon spin systems—and will support manufacturing and engineering work needed for utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers. Planned awards include foundry-focused support for GlobalFoundries and IBM, while other recipients are expected to address persistent technical barriers such as error rates, reproducibility, cryogenic integration, photonic loss, optical complexity, and readout electronics.
DARPA separately expanded its backing of PsiQuantum with a $125 million Stage C agreement under the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), the program’s final phase, to verify the company’s photonic architecture, manufacturing approach, cryogenic systems, and algorithm resource estimates on its Construct platform. PsiQuantum is one of only two companies remaining in QBI Stage C alongside Microsoft, underscoring how federal agencies are concentrating support on designs viewed as credible candidates for large-scale fault-tolerant systems. Officials framed the broader investment drive as a national security and technology leadership priority, while noting that Commerce will take minority, non-controlling equity stakes in CHIPS-funded companies.
Mallory correlates global threat intelligence with your attack surface — know if you’re exposed before adversaries strike.
8 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
PsiQuantum announced on July 22, 2026, a $125 million expanded tasking agreement with DARPA under Stage C of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative. The funding supports DARPA verification of PsiQuantum's photonic hardware architecture, manufacturing processes, cryogenic systems, and algorithm resource estimates.
PsiQuantum appointed Victor Peng as permanent CEO on July 15, 2026, after he had served as interim chief since February.
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced nine letters of intent totaling $2.013 billion in proposed CHIPS and Science Act incentives for quantum technology companies. The package included planned foundry-focused awards for GlobalFoundries and IBM and seven additional company awards across multiple quantum modalities.
DARPA reopened Quantum Benchmarking Initiative Stage A to new entrants in March 2026.
PsiQuantum announced a prior $31.8 million Stage C award from DARPA in September 2025 before the later expanded tasking agreement.
DARPA moved PsiQuantum into Stage C of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative in February 2025, making it one of the companies still under final-phase evaluation.
DARPA advanced PsiQuantum to the second stage of its utility-scale quantum evaluation program in January 2024.
DARPA selected PsiQuantum in January 2023 for the first stage of the Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing program, the predecessor to the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative.
Vulnerabilities, threat actors, malware, products, organizations, and breaches Mallory has linked to this story.
2 references tracked. Mallory keeps watching after this page renders.
Map indicators from this story to your assets and identify affected systems in minutes.
Every observed campaign, victim, and pivot linked to actors named in this story.
Malware, exploits, and IOCs connected to the activity described here.
YARA, Sigma, and Snort rules deployed to your SIEM as soon as they’re published.
Get matching new stories delivered to your team as they break — not the next morning.
Ask questions about this story and take action on the answers.
Other stories Mallory is tracking that overlap on entities, sources, or topic labels.
DARPA’s **Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI)** has drawn scrutiny after reports that **Microsoft** and **PsiQuantum** reached **Stage C** through the earlier **US2QC** program, a pathway aimed at evaluating underexplored architectures with a plausible route to utility-scale quantum computing by 2033. The Stage C designation reflects a **verification-and-validation phase**, not proof that either company’s hardware is technically superior to rivals such as IBM, Quantinuum, or QuEra, which are advancing through different and in some cases more publicly demonstrated development tracks. Public evidence for the two Stage C contenders remains limited and contested. PsiQuantum has disclosed component-level photonic benchmarks but no public logical-qubit demonstration, while Microsoft’s topological-qubit effort continues to face scientific debate over whether the underlying topological states have been convincingly established; a recent **Nature** paper on the robustness of topological gap detection underscores the technical difficulty of validating such signals. Together, the references indicate that DARPA is testing whether these less-proven architectures merit deeper evaluation, rather than confirming that they already work or lead the field.
Aug 3, 2026
U.S. federal experts told a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing that **quantum technology commercialization** will require tighter coordination between government labs and industry, with agencies like **NIST** positioned to co-develop capabilities that private companies can productize. Testimony emphasized that while the application landscape remains early, progress is moving beyond the “noisy intermediate-scale quantum” era, citing **demonstrations of quantum error correction** as a sign of maturation and noting expectations that **fault-tolerant quantum computing** could emerge around 2030. Separately, quantum-software firm **BlueQubit** announced a public “Quantum Advantage Challenge” offering a **0.25 BTC (~$22.5K) prize** to anyone who can recover a private key/hidden bitstring embedded in a **quantum-optimized** search problem. BlueQubit claims its approach can identify a hidden bitstring in a `2^56` search space in under two hours, while asserting classical supercomputers would take years; the challenge is framed as a verifiable demonstration of **quantum advantage** applied to a cryptography-adjacent task, amid broader industry skepticism about prior “quantum advantage/supremacy” claims.
Jun 29, 2026
The White House is preparing executive orders to tighten protection of U.S. quantum research against foreign espionage and speed the federal government’s shift to post-quantum encryption. One draft order would direct the FBI and intelligence community to strengthen safeguards around American quantum work, with concern focused on foreign collection efforts and the long-term threat of **"harvest now, decrypt later"** operations that store encrypted data for future decryption once quantum capabilities mature. A separate order would reportedly require federal civilian agencies to adopt **NIST-vetted** quantum-resistant encryption before the current 2035 target, with draft deadlines of **2029 or 2030** and reporting to OMB for agencies that fall behind. The broader initiative also includes support for the domestic quantum sector through federal research, development, hosting of a government-backed quantum computer by the Departments of Energy and Defense, and expanded Commerce Department planning and financing, building on more than **$2 billion** in previously announced incentives for nine quantum companies under the **CHIPS and Science Act**.
Aug 11, 2026