The U.S. government is not in talks with quantum computing companies to take equity stakes in the firms in exchange for federal funding, a Commerce Department official told CNBC.
“The Commerce Department is not currently negotiating equity stakes with quantum computing companies,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The denial comes after the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said that the Trump administration was in talks with companies including IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum.
During trading on Thursday, Rigetti was up 7%, IonQ was up 7%, D-Wave was up 13%, and Quantum Computing was up 5%.
The Trump administration has taken recent equity stakes in companies and industries seen as vital to U.S. national security.
In August, it took a 10% stake in Intel, the nation’s leading semiconductor manufacturer. It also took a 15% stake in MP Materials, which mines rare earth elements. China has restricted exports of rare earths.
Experts say that the U.S. government’s growing interest in taking stakes in private companies is unprecedented in recent decades.
Trump administration officials such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have argued that the government should benefit from a company’s success, especially where federal funds are involved.
Quantum computing has attracted significant attention in recent years, with some of the most powerful institutions in the world spending millions in a race to develop and build the first useful and practical quantum computer, which could be completed in the next five years, according to optimistic predictions.
When there is a useful quantum computer, it would be able to do tasks that would require so much computing time on a traditional computer that it would be infeasible, such as discovering molecules that could be useful medicines or factoring large numbers.
Right now, there isn’t anything useful that quantum computers can do. The machines are purely for research.
But governments keep a close eye on the technology because it has military implications, including the potential to be able to decipher encrypted military communications.
Although the industry is attracting billions in investments, including from the federal government, it has not generated significant revenue yet.
Quantum computing companies generated under $750 million in revenue in 2024, according to a McKinsey report.
On Wednesday, Google claimed a quantum breakthrough in which it conducted research that showed that a quantum computer can run an algorithm over 13,000 times faster than a traditional computer, and that it could be verified by a second quantum computer, an advancement over past research.
