Pritzker IDs sites for quantum computing venture with DOD

The latest plan for a commercial real estate conversion holds the potential to take Chicago beyond its industrial past and put the city’s South Side on the cutting edge of the post-industrial future.

Such hopes were spurred when Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker unveiled plans for the state to work with the U.S. Department of Defense’s research and development agency to further expand quantum research in Illinois, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. 

The hope is that the  emphasis on quantum research — a relatively new field that ranges from research to detect diseases immediately through changes to the body at a molecular level to securing digital communications — would take shape at a campus dedicated to the field. Leading candidates include two sites on the South Side: the former U.S. Steel South Works, and an old Texaco oil refinery in the Lockport neighborhood.

The steel mill site is in the hands of Japan-based Nippon Steel, which recently bought U.S. Steel’s remaining assets. Chevron Corporation owns the old Lockport refinery.

A location would be selected in conjunction with entities that are expected to be part of the campus, Pritzker said.

The state would work with the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to develop quantum computing technologies as part of a “Quantum Benchmarking Initiative,” or “QBI.” 

“We’re the only state that put forward a quantum campus and quantum plan,” Pritzker told the outlet. “And the federal government stepping up and becoming an important partner, particularly DARPA, is a lot of validation.”

DARPA’s mission is to foster technologies with applications for national security — it is generally credited as the chief agency behind the development of the Internet.

Pritzker has been pushing to make Chicago “the Silicon Valley of quantum development.”

The area has an existing base of assets in the field, including research efforts at the University of Chicago and the Chicago Quantum Exchange, a seven-year-old joint venture of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne and Fermi national laboratories. The exchange is based at the University of Chicago’s campus, in the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park, and includes the school as well as the University of Illinois, Northwestern University, Purdue University in Indiana and the University of Wisconsin as partners.

Pritzker’s 2025 budget allocated $300 million in state investment to go toward the development of a campus. DARPA has indicated it will spend “up to $140 million” on a local project.

The state projects a fully developed quantum campus would bring “tens of thousands, and perhaps more, jobs.”

Chicago is already home to the Chicago Quantum Exchange, launched in 2017 with Argonne and Fermi national laboratories, and it has one of the largest teams of quantum researchers in the world.