Construction of the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park is underway on a lakeside plot that once received iron ore for a 20th-century steel mill. The site, a former U.S. Steel facility on Chicago’s South Side, will host what local leaders describe as one of the largest quantum computing campuses in the world. The project aims to commercialize quantum technology — computing that harnesses subatomic particles to process information in fundamentally new ways — and to accelerate Illinois’s economic growth.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker marshaled $500 million in state funding for the park after first proposing it. “We need to do more than just attract manufacturing and build out agriculture in our state,” Pritzker said in an interview. “We need to be in industries that are growing much faster than that, and now we are.” He added that companies have so far pledged roughly $5 billion of investments in the site.
Harley Johnson, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign engineering professor and the project’s CEO, said from the construction site that the park aims to create an industry that retains local talent. “Right now we export a huge number of scientists and engineers to the coasts,” Johnson said. The park, he said, aims “to create an industry that retains all that talent.”
PsiQuantum, a quantum computing company, plans to install one of the world’s biggest quantum computers at the park, with components arriving this summer. IBM also plans to install its own quantum computer at the site, alongside a research team and a consulting business that it said would employ 750 people by 2030. Startups from France, Colorado and Australia have committed to installing quantum computers and conducting research and development at the park.
Companies have committed to creating about 1,000 permanent jobs at the park, according to Johnson, who estimated that several thousand jobs could be on-site within five to 10 years. The roles will range from Ph.D.-level scientists to technicians and skilled laborers, he said. Chicago’s community college system is preparing to start an apprenticeship program to supply technical skills.
Quantum computers have crossed important milestones, such as performing calculations that traditional supercomputers cannot. But technical obstacles remain in scaling them up and commercializing them. Pete Shadbolt, PsiQuantum’s chief scientific officer, said that while progress has been rapid, no company yet has the “real dream machine” needed for serious revenue. “A lot of amazing progress is being made, but I think it’s fair to say nobody yet has the real dream machine that they want to make serious revenues,” Shadbolt said. “That’s all in the future for everybody.”
The neighborhoods around the park have long needed a new economic engine. U.S. Steel and other mills once employed tens of thousands of workers but never recovered after downsizing and closures in the 1980s and 1990s. Crumbling walls of a structure that once stored iron ore are still visible in one corner of the quantum park.
Jorge Perez, 53, the son of a steelworker who still runs a small bakery a few blocks west of the park, recalled that his father urged him to sell it, figuring the neighborhood was beyond repair. Perez waited. “I told him, I think something is going to happen here, it’s coming,” he said. “And it just took 32 years for it to happen.” Hoping for future business, Perez has started selling “quantum donuts.”
The park is racing to establish Illinois as the nation’s quantum flagship as other cities, including Boulder, Colorado, also compete for prominence. President Donald Trump on Monday signed two executive orders aimed at speeding development of quantum technology. PsiQuantum expects to start running performance tests on its Chicago computer by early next year and to scale it up over time, with a commercially useful machine likely by the end of the decade.