- IBM has completed its acquisition of HRL Laboratories to speed a quantum program aimed at a fault-tolerant computer, IBM Quantum Starling, in 2029.
- The company is set to receive roughly $2 billion in proposed U.S. government backing.
- Faster quantum progress raises concerns about the long-term security of Bitcoin.
IBM (NYSE: IBM) has closed its acquisition of HRL Laboratories and plans to involve the lab in speeding up a quantum-computing project.
IBM is expecting that the project will deliver a working fault-tolerant machine before the end of the decade.
IBM acquired HRL Laboratories for its quantum computing project
IBM has announced the completion of its acquisition of HRL Laboratories. IBM says it will use HRL to speed up its quantum work, but did not disclose the details and terms of the deal.
IBM has told clients and investors for years that it intends to ship the first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, a system it calls IBM Quantum Starling, in 2029.
The company already runs more than 90 quantum systems and counts over 325 Fortune 500 firms, universities, and government agencies among the users of its fleet.
On August 19, IBM reported that its engineers linked and cooled the first pair of modular cryogenic cells at the company’s Poughkeepsie, New York, site. The coupled modules reportedly each stand roughly eight feet tall and about as wide, and run below 15 millikelvin, colder than deep space by a factor of more than 180.
IBM explains on its blog that older cylindrical fridges force long, noisy links between processors, while the box-shaped cells sit side by side with short connections, joined into a shielded “tunnel” that keeps each chip near absolute zero. I
IBM ties chips together with what it calls L-Coupler technology, so many processors can act as one. The company says the two-cell demonstration validates an approach meant to house hundreds of processors and feed Starling, a machine that is expected to run some 20,000 times the calculations of current hardware.
How does the U.S. government support IBM?
In May, IBM and the U.S. Department of Commerce announced Anderon, described as America’s first pure-play quantum foundry. The project is backed by a proposed $1 billion CHIPS award with a matching $1 billion in cash from IBM.
It is to be headquartered in Albany, New York, and from there fabricate 300-millimeter quantum wafers for multiple vendors.
Anderon’s Chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna, said IBM’s decades in silicon fabrication would be important in the development of the quantum technology industry. The companies pegged the sector’s potential at up to $850 billion in economic value by 2040.
Cryptopolitan separately reported a $2 billion government effort that spanned nine quantum firms, with IBM in line for about $1 billion, GlobalFoundries near $375 million, and D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Quantinuum around $100 million apiece. IBM shares rose more than 6% on the day that news broke.
Cryptopolitan’s recent reader poll found that 47% expect quantum computing to break Bitcoin by 2035. The threat mechanism is Shor’s algorithm, which a large enough quantum computer could use to work backward from a public key to the private key that made it. Google researchers estimated this year that the hardware requirement to achieve the task is fewer than 1,200 logical qubits and under 500,000 physical qubits.
A separate paper from Caltech and Oratomic later brought estimates as low as 10,000 qubits using a neutral-atom architecture.
However, the largest elliptic-curve key ever broken on real quantum hardware is 15 bits, achieved in April 2026 by researcher Giancarlo Lelli. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s keys are far more secure at 256 bits.
Still, there is an estimated 6.5 to 6.9 million BTC sitting in addresses that have their public keys exposed.
Notably, Bitcoin developers merged BIP-360, the network’s first formal quantum-resistance proposal, on February 11.
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FAQs
What did IBM acquire, and why?
IBM completed its acquisition of HRL Laboratories, according to a newswire release, saying the deal is meant to accelerate its quantum-computing work.
When does IBM expect its first fault-tolerant quantum computer?
IBM is targeting 2029 for IBM Quantum Starling, its planned first large-scale fault-tolerant system, and says its newly linked modular cryogenic cells are a key step toward it.
Could quantum computing threaten Bitcoin?
In theory, a sufficiently large quantum computer running Shor's algorithm could derive private keys from exposed public keys, with an estimated 6.5 to 6.9 million BTC at risk; in practice the largest key broken on real quantum hardware is 15 bits, against Bitcoin's 256.
Hannah Collymore
Hannah is a writer and editor with nearly a decade of blog writing and event reporting experience in the crypto space. At Cryptopolitan, Hannah contributes to the news page, reporting and analyzing the latest developments in DeFi, RWA, crypto regulation, AI and frontier tech industries. She graduated from Arcadia university with a degree in Business Administration.
