Wall Street responded with something it has done only seven times in the company’s more than half-century history.
IBM shares closed Thursday at $252.97, marking a one-day jump of roughly 12%. Week-to-date through Friday, IBM is posting its best-performing week since October 2002.
The catalyst was a federal letter of intent under the Biden-era CHIPS and Science Act to seed IBM’s Anderon, a quantum chip wafer foundry, which will fabricate 300-millimeter quantum wafers in Albany, New York.
A Weekly Rally This Rare Happened Just Seven Times In IBM’s History
A weekly advance of 15% or more in IBM has appeared just seven times since the company went public in 1967.
The most recent comparable episode before this week landed in October 2002, near the bottom of the dot-com collapse, when the stock rose 16% in a week.
On average, IBM was higher one month later in five of six cases and higher a year later in four of six. But the six-month window is the soft spot. The stock won only a third of the time over that horizon, and the average return there is slightly negative.
The CHIPS and Science Act is the 2022 law that uses federal money to bring advanced chip manufacturing back onto American soil.
This week, the Department of Commerce committed $2 billion of it to nine quantum companies. IBM was the largest single recipient with $1 billion. It shares funds with Anderon, which IBM describes as the country’s first pure-play quantum foundry.
A foundry is a contract factory. It does not design the product. It manufactures it for whoever places the order.
The closest analogy is the relationship that already exists in conventional chips, where one specialist factory builds processors for dozens of rival design houses.
Anderon would do the same for quantum hardware, supplying wafers to IBM and to its competitors alike.
Other smaller beneficiaries included GlobalFoundries, Atom Computing, Diraq, D-Wave, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum and Rigetti Computing Inc.(NASDAQ:RGTI)
IBM is matching the federal $1 billion with $1 billion of its own cash, plus intellectual property and staff. In return, the Donald Trump administration takes a minority, non-controlling equity stake.
The structure mirrors recent federal deals in semiconductors and rare earths.
