IBM will buy HRL Laboratories from Boeing and GM — a second quantum horse: silicon spin qubits

IBM signed a definitive agreement to acquire HRL Laboratories, the flagship R&D institution jointly owned by Boeing and General Motors, to broaden its quantum program with HRL's silicon spin-qubit expertise. IBM didn't disclose a price; the deal is expected to close by the end of Q3 2026, and HRL's chips will be produced at IBM's New York facility going forward. The move gives IBM a second qubit modality alongside the superconducting approach behind its roadmap to a fault-tolerant Starling system by 2029 and a larger Blue Jay by 2033, part of a five-year, $10B+ quantum investment.

Why it matters

A modality hedge is a statement about uncertainty at the top of the field: even IBM, the standard-bearer for superconducting qubits, is buying insurance that silicon spin qubits — which could ride existing semiconductor manufacturing — might scale better. That's a different bet than the photonic path DARPA just validated at PsiQuantum or the neutral-atom and trapped-ion camps, and consolidation this early says the winning architecture still isn't settled. Buying HRL from Boeing and GM also pulls decades of defense-grade spin-qubit research into a commercial roadmap, the same institutional-knowledge play that has made Quantinuum's trapped-ion lineage valuable.

What to watch

Deal close by Q3-end and any disclosed price, whether IBM commits a product milestone to the spin-qubit line (not just research), and how a two-track roadmap affects its Starling/Blue Jay timelines.