The U.S. Department of Energy has launched the Quantum Genesis Q Competition, with up to $215 million in planned funding to accelerate development of the world’s first fault-tolerant, scientifically relevant quantum computers. The competition challenges private-sector companies to demonstrate systems with at least 100 logical qubits and advance quantum computing toward tackling meaningful and difficult scientific problems. Complementing the competition, DOE’s Quantum High-Performance Computing Validation and Verification Testbed Lab Call will provide $45 million in planned funding to National Laboratories to develop the capabilities needed to rigorously characterize and validate quantum systems across the computing stack. Together, these efforts will help move quantum computing from technology demonstrations toward a powerful new tool for scientific discovery. They also advance the goals of the President’s Executive Order, Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation, including the Quantum Computer for Application Development and Discovery Science (QC-ADDS) Effort.

The U.S. Department of Energy launched the new Quantum Genesis initiative, which aims to develop and deploy the world’s first fault-tolerant, scientifically relevant quantum computer for research and development by 2028. The Department of Energy has sought community input through a Request for Information on Scientifically Relevant Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing Systems. The Quantum Genesis is a significant first step in carrying out President Trump’s call for a national effort in developing a quantum computer.

(January 16, 2025) The U.S. Department of Energy announced $71 million in funding for 25 projects in high energy physics that will use the emerging technologies of quantum information science to answer fundamental questions about the universe. Awards funded under this program will advance theories of gravity and spacetime, develop quantum sensors that can see previously undetectable signals, and build pathfinder experiments to demonstrate increased discovery reach in searches for dark matter and other new particles and phenomena. The projects were selected by competitive peer review under the DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement for Quantum Information Science Enabled Discovery 2.0 (QuantISED 2.0).

(January 15, 2025) The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is announcing that $625 million is available to support National Quantum Information Science Research Centers. These centers, which are multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary teams, will accelerate the transformational advances in basic science and quantum-based novel-technology platforms needed to develop world-leading capabilities in Quantum Information Science (QIS), and in support of the National Quantum Initiative Act. Each center will integrate multiple levels of innovation, blending basic research, engineering, and technology development in a co-design framework. The centers will deliver prototype novel-technology platforms, capabilities, and major scientific breakthroughs that, in the future, can be further developed into a resource or user-facility capability for the entire QIS R&D community.

(October 24, 2024) The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the U.S. Department of Energy has announced a new program that will pioneer novel approaches to studying chemistry and materials using quantum computing. The Quantum Computing for Computational Chemistry (QC³) program allocates $30 million to support the research and development of scalable, generalizable quantum computing approaches to computational chemistry and materials science which can lead to significant energy impact or reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

(September 30, 2024) The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science (SC) released a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the ‘FY 2025 Continuation of Solicitation for the Office of Science Financial Assistance Program’. This NOFO is the annual open solicitation that covers all research areas in SC and is open throughout the Fiscal Year. Funding opportunities in quantum information science (QIS) are included throughout SC program areas including Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES), High Energy Physics (HEP), and Nuclear Physics (NP).

(September 9, 2024) The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $65 million in funding for 10 projects in Accelerated Research in Quantum Computing, comprising a total of 38 separate awards. This investment targets end-to-end software toolchains to program and control quantum systems at scale, quantum algorithms delivering quantum advantage, and resilience through error detection, prevention, protection, mitigation, and correction. Advancements in these key component areas will demonstrate quantum computing’s utility for scientific research problems in DOE’s mission space by improving all levels of the software stack.

(September 5, 2024) Ten Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) have been funded in nine states by the U.S. Department of Energy. ERFCs are designed to bring together world-class teams of scientists for groundbreaking fundamental research, including research in quantum information science (QIS). Three of the announced EFRC projects are focused on strengthening our understanding of QIS toward the goal of improving future energy technologies. Projects include quantum photonic integrated design, molecular quantum transduction, and quantum sensing and quantum materials.

(August 31, 2023) On August 29, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $24 million in funding for three collaborative projects in quantum network research.