Leaders of the Pacific Northwest’s computing community gathered in downtown Seattle today to mark World Quantum Day — and Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson gave them one more reason to celebrate. Or rather, 500,000 reasons.
Ferguson took the occasion to announce that $500,000 would be directed from the Governor’s Economic Development Strategic Reserve Fund to support the expansion of IonQ’s quantum computer manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash. The 100,000-square-foot factory opened in 2024 and is ramping up production.
Over the next 18 months, Maryland-based IonQ plans to add about 100 engineering positions in Bothell, paying an average salary of $177,000. Over the next five years, the expansion is projected to generate between 1,200 and 2,000 regional jobs.
The Strategic Reserve Fund makes use of unclaimed lottery prize money for investments that deliver significant job creation and capital investment in Washington state. The newly announced award will go to the Economic Alliance of Snohomish County for building upgrades, workforce expenses and other expansion costs.
The state’s funding is coming on top of more than $14 million in private investment. “Quantum is the future, and it’s being built here,” Ferguson said in a news release.
The news was greeted with applause at Northwest Quantum Day, an all-day conference presented by Northwest Quantum Nexus and co-hosted by K&L Gates.
April 14 is marked as World Quantum Day for a geeky reason: The date (4/14) commemorates one of the foundational numbers of quantum mechanics, Planck’s constant (4.14 X 10-15 eV ⋅ s).
