The US government awards $500M under the CHIPS Act to SandboxAQ to use AI to develop new chemicals and materials for domestic semiconductor manufacturing (Stephen Nellis/Reuters)

<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-awards-500-million-nvidia-backed-sandboxaq-finding-new-chipmaking-materials-2026-06-17/"><img align="RIGHT" border="0" hspace="4" src="http://www.techmeme.com/260617/i17.jpg" vspace="4" /></a> <p><a href="https://www.techmeme.com/260617/p17#a260617p17" title="Techmeme permalink"><img height="12" src="http://www.techmeme.com/img/pml.png" style="border: none; padding: 0; margin: 0;" width="11" /></a> Stephen Nellis / <a href="http://www.reuters.com/">Reuters</a>:<br /> <span style="font-size: 1.3em;"><b><a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-awards-500-million-nvidia-backed-sandboxaq-finding-new-chipmaking-materials-2026-06-17/">The US government awards $500M under the CHIPS Act to SandboxAQ to use AI to develop new chemicals and materials for domestic semiconductor manufacturing</a></b></span>&nbsp; &mdash;&nbsp; The U.S. government awarded $500 million on Wednesday to startup SandboxAQ to develop new chemicals and materials &hellip; </p>