IBM Stock Rallies On Trump Administration’s $1B Grant: Analysts Say ‘Big Blue’ Could Become First U.S. Quantum Foundry

• IBM announced the launch of Anderon, a standalone quantum chip foundry headquartered in Albany, New York.
• IBM said it would invest $1 billion into Anderon, alongside contributing IP, assets, and a skilled workforce. 
• Stocktwits sentiment for IBM shifted to ‘extremely bullish’ from ‘bearish.’

International Business Machines Corp. shares jumped 12.4% on Thursday – its best in over a year – and gained another 4.6% in overnight trading after the U.S. government announced a proposed $1 billion grant to support the company’s new quantum computing venture, which is expected to become a major domestic manufacturer of quantum chips for IBM and other customers.

IBM’s Quantum Chip Foundry

IBM announced the launch of Anderon, its quantum chip foundry venture, and said it would match the government funding with an additional $1 billion investment, alongside contributing intellectual property, assets, and a skilled workforce. 

Headquartered in Albany, New York, Anderon will operate as a 300-millimeter quantum wafer foundry and “help the nation solidify its leadership at the center of a thriving new quantum industry that is estimated to generate up to $850 billion in economic value by 2040,” IBM said. 

The Department of Commerce on Thursday announced a $2 billion package to support the quantum computing industry, which President Donald Trump has repeatedly described as critical to national security and key to maintaining the U.S.’s technological edge over China. 

IBM was the biggest recipient, while smaller grants were handed out to Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum, and Infleqtion. Shares of the latter also jumped sharply on Thursday.

Analysts See Big Quantum Opportunity For IBM

The development marks a major catalyst for IBM and opens a new business line for the company, analysts said.

“IBM wants to turn its captive quantum fab into an industry fab,” Patrick Moorhead, Chief Analyst at Moor Insights, said on X. 

It “could be America's first foundry purpose-built solely for quantum manufacturing. (It is) not (a) greenfield. IBM has been fabricating Loon and Nighthawk on 300mm at NY CREATES Albany since November 2025. Anderon is the corporate spinout, capitalized for merchant scale,” he said.

Loon and Nighthawk are IBM quantum processor projects announced in late 2025. Loon is an experimental processor designed to test IBM’s future fault-tolerant quantum computing architecture and advanced quantum error correction techniques, according to Reuters. Nighthawk is a more near-term processor platform intended for practical scaling experiments and higher-complexity quantum circuits.

Wedbush said, “while the timelines for developing quantum computing capabilities remain a long-term focus for IBM and have not changed, the firm believes the U.S. government's funding of quantum computing initiatives will act as a new catalyst to the industry with IBM at the helm.”

IBM is expected to make steady progress, and the government’s push provides a more stable pathway to advance quantum computing development, Wedbush said, reiterating its ‘Buy’ rating and $225 price target on the IBM stock. The target is 11% lower than the stock’s last close.

Retail View On IBM Turns Bullish

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment for IBM shifted to ‘extremely bullish’ early Friday, from ‘bearish’ the previous day. Traders argued that, as a large technology company, IBM is better positioned for making notably strides in the quantum sector.

“$IBM All these fake ‘quantum stocks’ already ran 20–30x. Meanwhile, IBM has a real quantum computer. The time has come,” said a trader. 

Another wrote: “Big blue was so oversold anyway, we should have been sitting in the 260,270 range before this! 300+ no brainer in short order.”

Meanwhile, traders appeared to view government involvement or backing as a net positive for stocks, as seen in Intel’s case, where the government took a 10% stake last August. Intel stock has climbed about 600% since then. Meanwhile, last week’s disclosure that Trump personally held stakes in an array of tech companies boosted shares of at least the mid-sized players, like ServiceNow.

Despite Thursday’s rally, IBM shares are down 14% year to date.

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