Occam Foundry, a commercialization campus for quantum technology planned for 16.5 acres in southeastern Travis County, has secured a letter of support from Austin Mayor Kirk Watson and a signed memorandum of understanding with The University of Texas at Austin, acting through the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

The developer, Texas Quantum Partners — working with Samara Real Property — announced both agreements on September 29. Mayor Watson's letter, dated September 10, backs the company's plan to open the campus to Austin-area public school teachers and students through classroom visits, teacher training and a pipeline into the trades and technical roles the facility will need. The mayor ties the project to the Texas Quantum Initiative, which the Texas Legislature created in 2025 under HB 4751.

"Austin wants this project and Texas needs it," said Watson. "Other states built their clusters around a federal lab. Texas can build one around the industries it already owns, and give the Texas Quantum Initiative a place to deliver on its purpose." His office and the City's economic development staff are working with Occam Foundry on site readiness and permitting. Site preparation is already under way at the future campus location.

The memorandum with UT Austin is an education and workforce deal rather than a research contract. Under its terms, the university, through TACC, supports development of the campus in Austin, while Occam Foundry supports TACC's quantum education and workforce programs. The two organizations plan to explore joint programming, including K-12 quantum education and professional development for teachers. They also intend to pursue joint applications for federal, state and philanthropic funding and to make introductions on each other's behalf — with TACC's introductions extending to other UT Austin units such as the Texas Quantum Initiative and the Cockrell School of Engineering.

"We are excited to partner with Occam Foundry," said Dan Stanzione, Associate Vice President for Research at UT Austin and Executive Director of TACC. "At TACC, our longstanding commitment is to prepare not only the workforce for advanced computing today, but the advanced computing of the future, where Quantum technologies will play a much larger role. This is a fantastic opportunity to work together to do just that."

The timeline driving the project is short. In June, two federal executive orders set a 2028 target for a scientific-scale quantum computer and 2030 and 2031 deadlines for migrating federal systems to post-quantum cryptography. Texas currently hosts none of the research centers created under the National Quantum Initiative Act, while Illinois, Maryland and Colorado are converting theirs into companies and trained workers. The company points out that a fifth grader in Austin today graduates from high school in 2034 — exactly when the quantum systems, sensors and secure networks now being built will reach the workforce that runs them.

"There is no time to wait," said Matt Cimaglia, Managing Member of Texas Quantum Partners. "The countries that lead in quantum technology in the 2030s are training their students for it today, and the United States has to do the same. Texas has the industries that will put quantum technology to work. Supporting TACC's education and workforce programs, and opening our campus to Austin-area students and teachers, means the people who run it can grow up here."

Occam Foundry positions itself as one node in a national network of quantum technology hubs, alongside efforts in New York, Maryland, Florida, Tennessee, New Mexico and Arizona. Where Silicon Valley concentrated computing in a single region in the 1970s and 1980s, quantum technology is developing across many regions at once — a distributed pattern the company argues strengthens both the economy and national security by placing computing, sensing and secure networking capability in several states.

The campus design reflects that commercialization mandate. It combines a convening building for classes, lectures and conferences; a fabrication facility for materials, process and prototyping work; a networking and sensing laboratory; and a quantum hub housing a working quantum system alongside high-performance computing and GPU resources.

No opening date, tenant roster or investment figure has been disclosed. With political backing, a university partner and site work under way, the project's next milestones will be permitting progress and the first joint funding applications under the TACC agreement.