How much of announced quantum funding is committed money?

Status as of November 8, 2026. Quantum computing produced roughly six billion US dollars of money headlines in 31 days. Rosetta Quantum logged each one, read the instrument behind the number, and sorted announced from committed from received. The split: 53% of the USD headline value has actually closed — and the single largest number in the sample appears in no company release and no filing.

What did one month of quantum money headlines announce?

Between October 8 and November 8, 2026, the Rosetta Radar logged nine money events: a $350M Pentagon package, a $2.0B equity raise, a ≈$2.3B acquisition agreement, a $1.15B acquisition closing, a $27M letter of intent, a €9.1M seed round, €102.5M of vendor backlog, and £185M of UK public money. Every row below carries its instrument and its source — because the instrument, not the headline, says whether money moved.

How much of it has actually closed?

53% by dollars — and the distinction does the work. The five USD-denominated events total $5.98 billion of headline money: $350M (package) + $2.0B (offering) + $2.3B (reported price) + $1.3B (Elisity, counting its «up to $1.3B» headline) + $27M (LOI). Of that, $3.15 billion (53%) has verifiably closed: $2.0B in cash — IonQ's offering, which its Q3 release dates as closed on October 16, 2026 — and $1.15B in stock issued at the Elisity closing per IonQ's 8-K. The remaining $2.83 billion (47%) has closed nothing as of November 8: ≈$2.3B is a price that exists in press coverage but in no Intel document, $150M is a loan commitment still subject to due-diligence conditions, ≈$200M + $150M are ceilings, and $27M is a letter of intent that its own filing labels non-binding.

Two honesty notes on that 53%. First, it is carried almost entirely by one company's own actions: strip IonQ's raise and the closed share of the remaining $3.98B falls to 29%. Second, counting instruments instead of dollars flips the picture — of the seven USD instruments in the sample, five have moved nothing. The euro and sterling rows will be found classified in the table above but excluded from the aggregate: Rosetta applied no currency conversion.

What do the money words actually mean?

They form a hardness scale, and the sample happens to contain almost every step of it. At the hard end sits recognized revenue — money that arrived: IonQ reported $173.8M for Q3 2026 (up 336%, consolidating its acquisitions; IonQ IR, Nov 5) and IQM €8.86M (up 50.7%; Quantum Computing Report, Nov 5). One step down, a closed equity sale ($2.0B, cash) and stock issued at closing ($1.15B — real consideration, but its realized value will move with the share price). Then signed orders (IQM's €102.5M backlog, including a finalized €33M LUMI AI Factory contract) and an awarded grant (EIC Pathfinder, €2.2M). The soft half starts at a budget or procurement line (the UK's £138M will be spent through cross-government procurement; the £35M calls will open in February 2027), continues through a definitive agreement that has not closed (Intel–Classiq), a conditional loan commitment (OSC's «up to $150M», unexecuted), an earnout ceiling (Elisity's «up to $150M» through January 2028), and ends at the softest instrument that still makes headlines: a non-binding LOI ($27M, Horizon–Entropica).

Is «backlog» hard money?

Harder than an announcement, softer than revenue — and the fine print matters. IonQ's headline backlog «grows to $1.2 billion», but the body of the same release uses the accounting term, remaining performance obligations, and defines it as including «funded and unfunded amounts» (IonQ IR, Nov 5). IQM, a listed company reporting under quarterly review, puts its order backlog at €102.5M as of September 30, 2026, up 52.3% year to date, with €42.2M of new orders in Q3 alone (Quantum Computing Report, Nov 5). Both figures are signed-contract money, which is why Rosetta scores backlog on the hard half of the scale — but neither is cash received, and one of them tells you so in its own definition.

How do you re-classify a funding headline in five steps?

1. Find the instrument word. «Closed» and «issued» are events; «agreement», «commitment», «letter of intent», «up to» and «call» are intentions with paperwork.
2. Look for the number in a filing. The sample's largest figure — ≈$2.3B for Intel–Classiq — appears in no Intel release and no filing; it is a press price. The $1.15B and $27M figures, by contrast, sit in an 8-K and a 6-K respectively.
3. Ask what changed hands. Cash received, stock issued, contract signed — or conditions pending. The OSC loan is a commitment whose own coverage lists four categories of unmet conditions.
4. Treat «up to» as a ceiling, not an envelope. IonQ states its own DARPA Stage C potential program value as «up to $300 million» (IonQ IR, Nov 5) — larger than the ≈$200M verification tranche of the entire package, which is how ceilings across six companies can sum to several times the money behind them. Rosetta measured that gap in the Pentagon-package verdict.
5. Separate backlog from revenue — and read the backlog definition. Funded versus unfunded is disclosed; you have to look.

The same discipline applies to dates: a figure recirculating without a new instrument behind it is the pattern Rosetta documented in how old claims recirculate as new, and the record M&A price-by-press case is worked in the Intel–Classiq piece.

What we don't know

• The sample is the Rosetta Radar's log for the window, not a census of every quantum funding announcement; the 47% describes this sample, and a different logging rule would move it.
• The euro and sterling rows were classified but not aggregated — no exchange-rate conversion was applied, so the 47% is a USD-only figure.
• DARPA QBI Stage C: the ≈$200M is reported as «approximately» in coverage; no per-company obligation breakdown has been published that we could find.
• Intel–Classiq's actual price will remain unknown until a filing prints it; the re-verdict committed in our November 2 piece stands, and this measurement will be re-run when the deal closes, a filed price appears, or the OSC loan executes or lapses — whichever comes first.
• The $1.15B Elisity figure is the closing value stated in the 8-K; what sellers ultimately realize will depend on the share price.
• Terms of the private instruments — tranches or milestones in Quint's round, disbursement schedules for the EIC and EPSRC awards — are not public.

Rosetta Quantum publishes verdicts with raw, reproducible data. This is educational content, not a product claim and not investment advice.