IBM Stock Drags Dow Nearly 650 Points Lower Despite $1 Billion Quantum Foundry Award

IBM shares fell sharply on Wednesday, September 16, making the company one of the heaviest drags on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which dropped nearly 650 points on losses concentrated in IBM and Boeing. Earlier in the session the Dow had shed 175 points and then 338 points before the declines deepened, with IBM ranked as the worst-performing Dow component for the day, contrasting starkly with Honeywell International, which gained 7.5% to top the index.

The selloff came on the same day IBM announced a significant win for its quantum computing ambitions. Anderon LLC, an IBM company, finalized a $1 billion award under the CHIPS and Science Act with the U.S. Department of Commerce to expand research, development and manufacturing at a 300mm pure-play quantum wafer foundry in Albany, New York. IBM is also committing $1 billion of its own capital to Anderon, bringing total announced government and IBM support to approximately $2 billion. The foundry is designed to manufacture specialized wafers for superconducting qubit arrays, quantum input/output signaling and readout components, with plans to accommodate additional quantum computing architectures over time.

Anderon described its first quantum wafers as already moving through the Albany facility, marking an early step toward commercial-grade quantum chip production. For IBM, the foundry is intended to provide manufacturing capacity to support its broader quantum computing roadmap while also offering wafer fabrication services to outside companies across the quantum ecosystem. The positive news was not enough to lift the stock, however, as broader market pressure and IBM-specific selling weighed on shares throughout the session.