In other urban areas, this idea would likely take off. In Chicago however, our sky-high tax rate (RE and state income) make this a rough place to do business. Add our crime and anti-business state/city regulation policies, and you have the only Midwestern state losing population.
Did I mention that the South Work site has immense pollution issues to clean up and the cost of bringing modern utilities there is sky-high?
Chicago Wants to Build the Silicon Valley of Quantum Computing
An industrial park taking shape on an old steel mill site provides a glimpse into the quantum future
By Steven Rosenbush, WSJ
Dec. 4, 2024 6:00 am ET
CHICAGO—For decades, the labs of Illinois and surrounding states have nurtured breakthroughs in nanotechnology, the life sciences and the internet itself. Time and again, the researchers behind those developments have gone elsewhere to commercialize their ideas.
But business and political leaders in the region are determined to break that pattern by putting a bear hug around the next likely technological leap: quantum computing that leaves contemporary computers in the dust.
If they are successful, the effort could create an updated model for economic development, in which regions are able to ride the ongoing waves of technological disruption. In Chicago, the development effort is focused on the future, rather than trying to catch up with established hubs such as Silicon Valley. With quantum, it is concentrating public and private resources on one opportunity, albeit a large one, rather than broader themes such as “technology” or “innovation.” And rather than starting from scratch or taking a hyperlocal focus, it is building on existing regional resources.
The city will be home to the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, to be located on 128 acres of the old South Works site where U.S. Steel once employed 20,000 people. Related Midwest is lead developer for the park and surrounding property, a longstanding passion project for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. The anchor tenant is PsiQuantum, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that plans to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer on the order of 1 million quantum bits, or qubits, which it said would give it the most power of any quantum computer at launch alongside the company’s project in Brisbane, Australia.
PsiQuantum’s efforts are designed to quickly scale up, partly by taking advantage of existing infrastructure used in the established industries of microelectronics and photonics.
Developers hope to break ground in early 2025, pending final city approval.
“We have multiple examples of cutting-edge battery research, nanotechnology research and biotech research that started here at our universities and national labs, but the companies don’t grow here or they move to the coast because the VCs require them to,” said Kate Waimey Timmerman, chief executive of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, a consortium that connects universities, national labs and companies involved in quantum computing.
Pure research can’t develop into businesses without sufficient support of accelerator programs and capital. It’s a broader Midwest problem, according to Timmerman, a neuroscientist by training.
“We have a right to win in quantum because of that research base, but on top of that we see the gaps that normally prevent this region from becoming an innovation ecosystem, and we’re intentionally trying to fill them,” she said.
Illinois is investing $500 million in IQMP, as the quantum park is abbreviated, and the city of Chicago and Cook County are investing $5 million each. PsiQuantum will receive $200 million in further incentives from the state, requiring the company to create at least 154 full-time jobs as it builds out what it says will be the first U.S.-based utility-scale quantum computer in 2028.
The park is also slated to host a center where companies will develop applications to run on hardware such as the PsiQuantum system. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will operate a proving ground at the park, evaluating the efficacy of quantum projects.
The park has been reaching out to locally based companies about engaging with its work, including at the application center. And planners are collaborating with the quantum labs that already exist in the region at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, the Fermi National Accelerator Lab and the Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University.
A Boston Consulting Group forecast prepared for the Chicago Quantum Exchange projects that total global quantum economic value creation will reach nearly $1 trillion by 2035, up from about $3 billion today.
Assuming continued public investment and support in the region, Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana’s share of that windfall could reach nearly $80 billion by 2035, up from roughly $60 million, the forecast said.
More than a science project
IQMP can be a boon to the local economy by helping local startups get off the ground and creating incentives to existing quantum-focused companies and critical supply-chain partners to establish a presence at the park, according to PsiQuantum Chief Business Officer Stratton Sclavos.
Quantum applications could have a huge impact on areas such as the creation of new drugs, Sclavos said. Today, that means using classical computers to synthesize and test up to 200,000 potentially promising compounds, a process that might take 10 years and have a failure rate of 90%, he said.
A quantum-based effort might instead focus on high-precision simulation of 200 compounds that the system has targeted. “We’re not trying to pattern-match it to other things that work. We’re saying this is what you should look for,” Sclavos said.
The question for IQMP is how to harness that kind of power for new and existing companies in the region. To that end, Sclavos said, PsiQuantum is working with the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago, Chicago State University and other colleges and universities to begin developing the workforce that will support the core research at the park.
PsiQuantum for its part will benefit from the infrastructure already in place for the chip-making industry. It’s working with Global Foundries to manufacture its silicon photonic quantum chips and has integrated new advanced materials and tools to meet the specifications needed for fault-tolerance, which is crucial given the propensity for error in fragile quantum systems. And unlike quantum companies relying on new and less-established technologies, PsiQuantum says its use of existing photonics will reduce costs and improve its scale, time to market and usefulness.
“We’re not building a science project,” Sclavos said.
Taking it to the next level
Illinois already has four of the top 10 federally funded quantum research centers in the U.S., including facilities at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, Fermilab and Argonne. The combination of that traction and the planned park is what makes executives and officials think this round of breakthrough R&D will be different for the region.
“Now let’s take this to the next level. Let’s capitalize on it,” said IQMP Director and CEO Harley Johnson, who also serves as associate dean for research in the Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Timmerman said it’s critical to reach the faculty, graduate students and postdocs focused on quantum technology and convince them that they have local resources to get their research to the next step. “It requires a lot of things this region historically has not had,” she said, “but we are doing it with quantum.”
Write to Steven Rosenbush at steven.rosenbush@wsj.com
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