Pritzker announces plan to make Chicago quantum technology capital
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The Illinois economy is poised to take a “quantum leap.”
Leaders from Fortune 500 companies, tech start-ups, and universities joined Governor JB Pritzker Monday to announce a plan to make Chicago the nation’s “quantum technology capital.”
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The announcement took place at M-Hub, a business incubator on Chicago’s Near West Side. It is home to prototype shops and laboratories. It’s where science meets industry to build the physical technology of tomorrow.
“This is technology that is growing, burgeoning and is going to be part of people’s everyday lives, let’s call it a decade from now,” Pritzker said when speaking about quantum tech.
Quantum tech has the potential to transform almost every aspect of our lives from cyber security to health care and from energy use to supply chain management, helping to find solutions to problems that would take standard computers thousands of years to calculate.
On Monday, top executives from Fortune 500 companies like IBM and Microsoft joined leaders of tech start-ups and professors from top universities as Pritzker announced a plan for the state to invest $500 million in efforts that would cement Illinois’ status as the nation’s leading quantum tech hub.
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“Think about what happened in Silicon Valley 40 or 50 years ago, and what it has led to,” Pritzker said. “The opportunity therefore for Illinois to lead the next wave of technology development and what that might mean for our economy and the people who live here over the next ten, 20, 30 years.”
The initiative is known as the Bloch Quantum Tech Hub and – and is projected to create 30,000 jobs and generate $60 billion in economic impact for the Chicago area over the next decade.
“For the average person who lives in Illinois, this means job opportunities, it means economic growth and development,” Pritzker said.
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