Leesburg’s Quantum Computing Inc. (NASDAQ: QUBT) said Friday it is planning a new manufacturing and research center to expand its current chip development efforts.
QCI said in an announcement it is “negotiating several offers of federal, state and regional funding incentives” for the project, but did not say what states or localities are in play.
In a statement to the Washington Business Journal, CEO Robert Liscouski said the company has a policy to not mention the states with whom it is engaged "in order to keep the process removed from undue influence or any pressures resulting from such a disclosure."
“We believe the development of a commercially scalable quantum computing chip represents a massive opportunity, and one that QCI is ready to tackle,” Liscouski said in the company's initial announcement.
QCI said it is aiming to grab $30 million in funds for its new facility that will be made available through the recently approved CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing. The federal measure includes $39 billion in manufacturing incentives and $13 billion to support new research and development. Those funds are expected to be doled out at the discretion of state and local governments in early 2023.
“QCI is working closely using its existing relationships with government officials, economic development groups and business communities to marshal the required resources for the endeavor,” the company said in its announcement.
Liscouski said in a statement the company is “heavily engaged with a number of states” that are looking to tap into the CHIPS funding. The QCI facility will be focused on nanophotonics chips, which can send information from one chip to another by sending light through optical waveguides as opposed to the changing voltage of a wire.
The new research center would complement the R&D underway at QCI’s facilities in Hoboken, New Jersey, as well as broaden its quantum research, the company said. The company also has an office in Minneapolis.
QCI began trading on the Nasdaq in July 2021 after three years on the over-the-counter market. It designs software that takes out some of the complexity of coding mathematic equations on computers. It does this by deploying software tools like its quantum application accelerator, known as Qatalyst, to connect with quantum computers through the cloud, enabled through its partnership with Amazon Web Services. That system, it says, makes quantum computing more accessible.
The company’s pursuit of a new R&D facility comes a couple weeks after it raised $7.5 million in funding from a family investor office through a nonconvertible, unsecured term loan.
