IBM, Google said to give $150M to US, Japanese universities for quantum research
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IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) are giving $150M to two universities in the U.S. and Japan for quantum computing research in an effort to stay ahead of China.
IBM (IBM) is providing $100M, while Google (GOOG) (GOOGL) is forking over the other $50M, of which the combined sum will be split between the University of Chicago and the University of Tokyo, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
"We have to count on our allies more for primary research," said Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, was quoted as saying by The Journal.
Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago, added that the U.S. erred in letting Chinese students work at American universities in fields such as quantum computing. 
"We were funding them," Emanuel explained, according to The Journal. "We were not only funding them, we were training them, educating them to come back and compete against us."
The aim of the funding is to create a quantum supercomputer in a decade that has 100,000 qubits.
Quantum computing lets computers process significant more data at a faster rate than traditional computers.
A signing ceremony is set to occur in Hiroshima, Japan this weekend at the G-7 meetings.
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