PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 21, 2026--
PsiQuantum announced today that the company has signed a Letter of Intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for $100 million in proposed federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act to advance American quantum computing and semiconductor leadership.
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With these potential incentives, combined with co-investment by the company, PsiQuantum will accelerate the domestic manufacturability and performance of critical components for utility-scale quantum computing and the American semiconductor industry, including Barium Titanate (BTO) for higher-performance optical switches, high-temperature single-photon detectors, and advanced packaging approaches.
“Strong technology supply chains are essential for American security and prosperity,” said Victor Peng, Interim Chief Executive Officer of PsiQuantum. “PsiQuantum’s world-leading capability in photonics will help write the next chapter in the history of computing. Thanks to bold action from Washington, our company will continue to invest in manufacturing these cutting-edge components right here in the United States.”
“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”
“The Department of Commerce’s incentives strengthen and accelerate U.S. quantum leadership and technological resilience,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling and energy systems.”
Scaling PsiQuantum Innovations for the Semiconductor and Computing Industries
PsiQuantum’s new engagement with the Department of Commerce reflects the transformative potential of the company’s innovations in high-performance optical switching, photon detection, and advanced packaging for the American technology stack. The company's approach to building fault-tolerant quantum computers leverages existing semiconductor manufacturing to rapidly scale its silicon photonics platform, resulting in new breakthroughs that will also strengthen the American semiconductor industry.
“The semiconductor industry helped make PsiQuantum’s path to fault-tolerant quantum computing possible, and now PsiQuantum’s scalable breakthroughs in silicon photonics will in turn create new possibilities for the future of computing,” said Dr. Pete Shadbolt, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of PsiQuantum. “Our new engagement with the Commerce Department builds on years of collaboration across the U.S. government, and Washington is playing an historically consequential role in helping deliver this emerging technology.”
Investing and Building in America, Partnering Closely with Washington
New potential incentives from the U.S. government would augment PsiQuantum’s major existing investments in America’s quantum and semiconductor supply chains. PsiQuantum’s supply chain is anchored in the United States, and in 2025 the company invested approximately $200 million with hundreds of American suppliers and vendors across 38 states. Leading semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries has partnered with the company on scaling PsiQuantum’s quantum photonic chipset production since 2019.
“GlobalFoundries is excited to partner with PsiQuantum to accelerate photonic quantum computing. Building on our long-standing collaboration, GF’s capabilities in silicon photonics, advanced packaging and system-level integration, combined with PsiQuantum’s proven leadership in photonic architectures, will accelerate the scalable semiconductor foundation needed to enable next-generation quantum systems,” said Tim Breen, Chief Executive Officer of GlobalFoundries.
Today’s announcement comes as PsiQuantum partners closely with the U.S. government to validate the company’s path to utility-scale quantum computing, advance potential quantum applications across a range of critical industries, develop utility-scale quantum infrastructure, and leverage cutting-edge technology dividends. In 2025, the company advanced to the final stage of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) and broke ground on America’s largest quantum computing infrastructure project at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park in Chicago. Since 2022, PsiQuantum has partnered with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Rome, New York, and the latest phase of their partnership will integrate the company’s high-performance BTO electro-switch material into AFRL-designed optical circuits.
About PsiQuantum
PsiQuantum was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company’s mission is to build and deploy the world’s first useful quantum computers. PsiQuantum’s photonic approach enables it to leverage high-volume semiconductor manufacturing, existing cryogenic infrastructure, and architectural flexibility to rapidly scale its systems. Learn more at www.psiquantum.com.
PsiQuantum personnel inside the fiber attach assembly facility at PsiFactory in Milpitas, California. PsiQuantum’s chip-to-fiber coupling technology performs beyond-state-of-the-art, and the company’s future partnership with the Department of Commerce will enable the company to accelerate its advanced packaging technology. (Credit: PsiQuantum)
PAMPLONA, Spain (AP) — Bill Hillmann has been gored three times while running with the bulls in Spain, but he wouldn’t miss this year’s San Fermin festival for anything.
It marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Ernest Hemingway ’s book that launched the future Noble Laureate to literary fame and put Pamplona on the map for millions of people around the world.
Hemingway’s 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises” has captivated generations of readers with its sexy Jazz Age tale of American and British bohemians trying to fill some inner void with the distractions of exotic travel, vast quantities of alcohol and the anguishing pursuit of impossible love.
Its success established “The Sun Also Rises” as a cornerstone of the American literary canon, right up there with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” It also popularized the term “lost generation” to describe the tight-knit group of early 20th-century writers expatriated in Paris. Hemingway's terse style forever changed American literature.
Hillmann, who hails from Chicago, was 19 when Hemingway’s vivid depiction of the bull running festival first enthralled him, especially descriptions of average Spaniards risking their lives sprinting through the streets to guide the bulls to the bull ring during the nine-day festival. It kicks off with a firework blast over a packed plaza on Monday, and the first of eight bull runs is on Tuesday.
“It was the first book I ever read,” Hillmann told The Associated Press in Pamplona as he looked down on the pen where the bulls are held before being set free on the cobblestoned route. “I sat there for about six hours, well past midnight, reading the book. And by the time I was done with that book, I was going to be a writer and I was going to be a bull runner.”
Since that literary encounter, the 44-year-old Hillmann has run with the bulls in Spain hundreds of times, counting both his trips to Pamplona and his participation in dozens more bull runs in other Spanish towns. His infatuation with Hemingway and Pamplona has never waned, even though he nearly died one time that he was gored by a bull horn.
Hillmann’s appreciation led him to earn a doctorate in English, and now it is his turn to teach “The Sun Also Rises” at East-West University in Chicago and write about bull running.
Hillmann is just one of many Americans inspired to travel to Spain to see the festival firsthand. Americans are still the leading group of foreigners who run at the San Fermin festival. In 2022, 16% of the bull runners were Americans, the largest percentage among foreigners and four times more than those from neighboring France, according to Pamplona’s City Hall.
Dallas-based tour operator Bruce Anderson, whose company “Running Of The Bulls” has helped thousands of Americans attend San Fermin over the years, says that Hemingway’s work made the festival a bucket-list destination. This year, his company is bringing 1,400 people to the festival, with over two-thirds from the United States.
“There’s a lot of energy, a lot of excitement around just remembering that book and the impact that it’s had,” said Anderson, himself a lifelong Hemingway fan. He spoke in Pamplona’s art deco Café Iruña, which features heavily as a drinking spot in “The Sun Also Rises” and today houses a life-size statue of Hemingway bellying up to the bar.
And Anderson, with his thick white beard, is something of a Hemingway look-alike. Local Spaniards often call out to him: “Papa!” – a nickname for their adopted hero.
Hemingway is etched into the landscape of Pamplona. Hotels and bars have busts of him or signs up that he was once there. Outside the Pamplona bull ring, which also has a statue of the writer, a huge banner hangs in honor of the novel, including a quote that shows how the festival left the writer speechless: “At noon of Sunday, the 6th of July, the fiesta exploded. There is no other way to describe it.”
When Hemingway made his last visits to Pamplona, he would frequent the Perla Hotel; his suite still has furniture from the 1950s when he stayed there. The room, which overlooks the bull run route, also has two glass book cases holding dozens of copies of “The Sun Also Rises.”
“Hemingway did a lot for Pamplona because he made it known around the world,” said Fernando Hualde, who worked for four decades as a receptionist in the hotel.
Hemingway’s local legacy, however, is mixed.
Besides a feminist critique of his hyper masculine public persona, Hemingway has drawn criticism from the animal rights movement for his praise of bull fighters. In “The Sun Also Rises,” he spills far more ink on descriptions of their bravery than on the bull runs.
Animal welfare activist Brook Spurling said during a protest against the San Fermin bullfights that “Hemingway wrote about many, many themes that today would not be accepted into society. He writes about hunting, about war, and we don’t want to be appreciating these themes today.”
Hualde says that some Pamplona residents rue his early promotion of the festival due to the ills of overtourism the sleepy provincial city is now experiencing.
Pamplona has 200,000 residents and receives over a million more people for the festival. While most are Spaniards, around 15% of the revelers are from abroad. And many, especially the younger visitors, follow Hemingway’s example of drinking to excess.
Some locals take pride in spots that weren’t touched by Hemingway. Local literature professor Gabriel Insausti of Pamplona’s University of Navarra recalls being in a bar with a sign that read “Hemingway was not here.”
“In general, Hemingway has become a product of a franchise associated with San Fermin festival that has obscured his novel,” Insausti said. “People know who Hemingway is, but they haven’t read his novel.”
Hillmann said that the high percentage of inexperienced foreigners today makes the Pamplona bull runs particularly dangerous. The last death was in 2009 but gorings and other injuries are common. Novice runners can easily panic and make a wrong move that can cause a pileup or send someone into the path of a bull.
He was badly gored in 2014 when he said a bad maneuver by a fellow runner left him exposed to a bull. He thought he was dying, such was the quantity of blood gushing from his leg.
After another goring in 2017, Hillmann told the AP from his hospital bed in Pamplona that he would not stop running. “People think this is just crazy people running. There is real art. If you pay attention, you can see it,” he said then.
Hemingway's granddaughter, the actress Mariel Hemingway, recalls being treated “like royalty” when she attended San Fermin years ago. Mariel, who has written and spoken about her grandfather as a sufferer of mental illness that led to his suicide in 1961, is convinced his work will endure.
That fascination with death is likewise timeless.
“Identity, love, purpose, and how to rebuild after profound loss ... those themes haven’t ever changed. That’s what’s great about my grandfather,” Mariel Hemingway told the AP from her home in Idaho.
“I think he captured something that will never go away.”
Revelers celebrate as the txupinazo, the traditional rocket marking the start of the San Fermín festival, kicks off nine days of uninterrupted festivities in Pamplona, Spain, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Miguel Oses)
Revelers celebrate as the txupinazo, the traditional rocket marking the start of the San Fermín festival, kicks off nine days of uninterrupted festivities in Pamplona, Spain, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Miguel Oses)
FILE - U.S. runner Bill Hillmann, 35, from Chicago, center left, falls seconds before a Victoriano del Rio ranch fighting bull gored him on his right leg during the running of the bulls of the San Fermin festival, in Pamplona, Spain, Wednesday, July 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza, File)
Animal rights activists participate in a protest against bullfighting ahead of the first running of the bulls during the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, northern Spain, Sunday, July 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Miguel Oses)
San Fermin tour operator Bruce Anderson poses in Pamplona, northern Spain, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Miguel Oses)
Former concierge and receptionist Fernando Hualde holds Ernest Hemingway's novel Fiesta in the Ernest Hemingway Suite at the Gran Hotel La Perla in Pamplona, northern Spain, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Miguel Oses)
Former concierge and receptionist Fernando Hualde reads Ernest Hemingway's novel Fiesta in the Ernest Hemingway Suite at the Gran Hotel La Perla in Pamplona, northern Spain, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Miguel Oses)
Former concierge and receptionist Fernando Hualde poses at the Ernest Hemingway suite at the Gran Hotel La Perla in Pamplona, northern Spain, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Miguel Oses)
Books by Ernest Hemingway are photographed in the Ernest Hemingway Suite at the Gran Hotel La Perla in Pamplona, northern Spain, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Miguel Oses)
