State-backed quantum park plan expands with new company

Another company is joining the state-backed research and business facility on Chicago’s South Side.

Colorado-based Infleqtion will set up shop at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, or IQMP. There, they plan to build a “neutral atom” quantum computer and expand their Illinois workforce.

That technology is one of several ways to build quantum computing and it's the method that Infleqtion and its investors have bet big on. Last month, the company announced it raised $100 million in Series C funding.

Infleqtion CEO Matthew Kinsella, who displayed one of his company’s “quantum cores” at a news conference last week, said the technology already is more effective than traditional methods at sensing time, radio waves and inertia.

“There’s these other products that neutral atoms can build that have real quantum advantage today, like our optical quantum clocks or our quantum RF antennas or the ability, ultimately, to navigate without GPS,” Kinsella said. “That’s truly valuable today.”

The company is set to receive $5.3 million in tax credits from Illinois as part of its expansion in the state. The tax break is through the state’s Manufacturing Illinois Chips for Real Opportunity, or MICRO, program.

PsiQuantum, the first “anchor tenant” at IQMP and a major quantum technology company, received the first MICRO tax credit last year, the value of which the state pegs at about $92.1 million.

Diraq, IBM and the U.S. Department of Defense have all announced plans in the past year to set up or expand existing facilities in the Chicago region.

Quantum shore

It’s all part of Gov. JB Pritzker’s plan to make Illinois “a global capital for quantum computing.”

“We have made an aggressive pitch to this burgeoning industry: Come build the future right here in the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said at the first Global Quantum Forum held last week in Chicago.

That pitch has been backed by significant state funding. Last year, the legislature allocated $500 million for a “quantum campus” development, which eventually became the IQMP. The PsiQuantum deal alone cost the state another $200 million, including its MICRO tax credit.

The quantum park, which is set to break ground this year, has attracted significant attention from the quantum industry.

Kinsella said the U.S. has three main hubs of the quantum industry: Chicago, Boston and Boulder, Colorado.

“And Chicago is emerging as one of, if not the, lead of those,” Kinsella said, noting Pritzker’s vocal support, the state’s financial backing and the cost of living in Chicago have contributed to that.

The Global Quantum Forum was a two-day conference organized by the think tank Chicago Council on Global Affairs as well as the economic development organizations P33 and Intersect Illinois. It included representatives of dozens of quantum companies, as well as of labor groups, academic institutions and other economic development organizations.

Intersect Illinois CEO Christy George noted the Chicago region’s two national labs and universities have contributed to Chicago’s growing reputation in the quantum world. She also noted the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign produces “more engineers than Caltech, MIT and Stanford combined.”

“Our region clearly has the talent, the infrastructure and the resources to lead the quantum revolution,” Intersect Illinois CEO Christy George said.

Local reactions

The development of the IQMP has sparked positive and negative reactions from community leaders in the neighborhoods surrounding the planned site.

As attendees arrived at the forum held at a venue in downtown Chicago, a handful of protesters from Chicago’s Southeast Side waited outside.

“It’s a former brownfield that still needs to be cleaned up and the community is worried what’s already in it,” Amalia NietoGomez, executive director of Alliance of the SouthEast told Capitol News Illinois at the demonstration.

While NietoGomez called for a “community benefits agreement” — a binding contract to provide certain benefits to a community around a development — several people involved in the IQMP defended the project’s benefits.

“There have been attempts to do things on that site that have not panned out,” Pritzker said. “This has hypercharged, supercharged an endeavor to bring jobs, to bring economic opportunity to the area.”

Chicago Alderman Peter Chico, who represents the area, said there has been a “good level” of community involvement in the project so far. He pointed to several community meetings and meetings with individual community groups.

Chico also noted that interest in quantum technology already has provided benefits to the community. Fermilab recently ended a 10-week program that offered lessons in quantum physics and engineering. Several students, according to Chico, have since started internships in the “quantum ecosystem.”

“The educational component is most important to me,” Chico said. “That’s where we got community buy-in. When you talk to parents, that’s where you see their eyes open up and their ears perk up.”

• Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.