New York City Invests Nearly $30 Million in NYU Quantum Lab and Takes a 15% Share of Proceeds

New York City will invest nearly $30 million with New York University to build a quantum fabrication facility, known as QFab, at 770 Broadway in Manhattan, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on 14 October. In return, the city will receive 15 percent of the proceeds that NYU's central administration earns from intellectual property created at the facility using tools the city helped fund.

According to the mayor's office, that share covers equity, royalties, milestone payments and patent licences. The city will also hold three seats on the facility's board. Mamdani said the principle is that when the public invests in new technology, the public should benefit from its success.

QFab will cover 23,000 square feet and include clean rooms, cryogenics equipment and a deep-UV lithography machine that NYU researchers said can print about 300 million transistors on an eight-inch wafer, each about a thousand times thinner than a human hair. The aim is to give researchers, students, start-ups and established companies access to equipment that is too expensive and complex for most small firms to buy themselves, and to bridge the gap between academic labs and commercial chip foundries.

Students at the City University of New York will train in the facility alongside NYU students, and NYU will give CUNY and New York City public school students access to labs, training, certificate programmes and summer workshops. NYU President Linda Mills said the ribbon-cutting is expected in early 2030.

The mayor said quantum technology is projected to become as much as a 2.7 trillion dollar industry over the next ten years, and argued that the investment will help make sure New Yorkers share in it. The city's own announcement described the partnership as the first of its kind.

This report was expanded on 1 November 2026 using the New York City Mayor's Office announcement and its transcript of the event.