Rigetti Computing, Inc. (Rigetti) builds and operates quantum computers.
The company has developed the world’s first multi-chip quantum processor for scalable quantum computing systems.
The company is a vertically integrated entity. It owns and operates Fab-1, a wafer fabrication facility dedicated to prototyping and producing its quantum processors. Through Fab-1, the company owns the means of production for its breakthrough multi-chip quantum processor technology. It leverages its chips thro...
Rigetti Computing, Inc. (Rigetti) builds and operates quantum computers.
The company has developed the world’s first multi-chip quantum processor for scalable quantum computing systems.
The company is a vertically integrated entity. It owns and operates Fab-1, a wafer fabrication facility dedicated to prototyping and producing its quantum processors. Through Fab-1, the company owns the means of production for its breakthrough multi-chip quantum processor technology. It leverages its chips through a full-stack product development approach, from quantum chip design and manufacturing through cloud delivery.
The company has been deploying its quantum computers to end users over the cloud since 2017. It offers its full-stack quantum computing platform as a cloud service to a wide range of end users, directly through its Rigetti QCS platform, and also through cloud service providers.
The company began selling quantum computers to end users in 2023. In December 2023, it launched the Novera QPU, its first commercially available QPU, which includes a 9-qubit chip that features tunable couplers for fast 2-qubit operations, and a 5-qubit chip for testing single-qubit operations. The Novera QPU is based on the company’s fourth generation Ankaa-class architecture.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, the company announced the public launch of its 84-qubit Ankaa-3 system, its newest flagship quantum computer featuring an extensive hardware redesign. It also achieved key two-qubit gate fidelity milestones with Ankaa-3: successfully halving error rates in 2024 to achieve a 99.0% median two-qubit iSWAP gate fidelity, as well as demonstrating a 99.5% median two-qubit fidelity with fSim gates based on its internal testing.
Ankaa-3 is available to the company’s partners via the Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services platform (QCS) and is expected to be available on Amazon Braket and Microsoft Azure in the first quarter of 2025. Ankaa-3 is intended to enable users to operate the company’s universal iSWAP gates for a wide range of algorithmic research, with a median gate time of 72 nanoseconds. The more specialized fSim gates provide a median gate time of 56 nanoseconds, and are useful for specific algorithms, such as random circuit sampling.
The Ankaa-3 system features scalable chip architecture with 3D signal delivery while incorporating major enhancements to key technologies. Leveraging the company’s full-stack platform and in-house quantum foundry capabilities, Ankaa-3 demonstrates its ability to deliver increasingly higher performance quantum computers. The company has developed strong customer relationships and collaborative partnerships for the purpose of accelerating the development of key technologies for high-value use cases, to potentially unlock strategic market opportunities.
The company’s partners and customers include commercial enterprises, such as Amazon Web Services (‘AWS’), Standard Chartered Bank, and Moody’s, along with U.S. government organizations, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (‘DARPA’), Department of Energy (‘DOE’), and Air Force Research Laboratory (‘AFRL’), as well as international government entities. In February 2024, Rigetti UK Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the company, announced that it was awarded a Small Business Research Initiative grant funded by Innovate UK to develop and deliver a 24-qubit quantum computer to the National Quantum Computing Centre.
The company is enabled by a deep technical team that includes global experts in quantum chip design and manufacturing, quantum computing systems architecture, quantum software, and quantum algorithms and applications.
Powered by the production of the company’s scalable multi-chip quantum processors in Fab-1 and its full-stack product development approach, it is working to develop quantum computing systems that demonstrate clear performance advantages over classical computing alternatives for multiple high-impact application areas.
Quanta Collaboration Agreement
In February 2025, the company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Rigetti & Co, LLC (‘Rigetti Sub’), entered into a Collaboration Agreement (the ‘Collaboration Agreement’) with Quanta Computer Inc., a Taiwan corporation (‘Quanta’), whereby the parties may enter into written statements of work from time to time, pursuant to which Quanta will develop Covered Components listed in such statement of work that meet the specifications and requirements provided by Rigetti Sub.
Business Strategy
The company’s strategies are to create high-performance quantum computing systems through full-stack product development; provide broad access to its quantum computers; develop deep partnerships that accelerate the development and commercialization of quantum computing; and advance its technology leadership position.
Key achievements in 2024 include the launch of the 84-qubit Ankaa-3 system to customers via Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services (QCS). Ankaa-3 is the company’s newest flagship quantum computer featuring an extensive hardware redesign, that is intended to enable superior performance. It also achieved key two-qubit gate fidelity milestones with Ankaa-3: successfully halving error rates in 2024 from its error rates in 2023 to achieve a 99.0% median two-qubit iSWAP gate fidelity, as well as demonstrating a 99.5% median two-qubit fidelity with fSim gates based on its internal testing.
Ankaa-3 is available to the company’s partners via the Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services platform (QCS) and is expected to be available on Amazon Braket and Microsoft Azure in the first quarter of 2025. Ankaa-3 is intended to enable users to operate iSWAP gates for a wide range of algorithmic research, with a median gate time of 72 nanoseconds. The more specialized fSim gates provide a median gate time of 56 nanoseconds, and are useful for specific algorithms, such as random circuit sampling.
The Ankaa-3 system continues to feature the company’s scalable chip architecture with 3D signal delivery while incorporating major enhancements to key technologies.
In 2025, the company plans to introduce the next generation of its modular system architecture, while aiming to continue to increase fidelities. By mid-year 2025, it expects to release a 36-qubit system based on four 9-qubit chips tiled together, with a target 2x reduction in error rates from its error rates achieved at the end of 2024. By the end of 2025, it expects to release a system with over 100 qubits, with a targeted 2x reduction in error rates from its error rates achieved at the end of 2024.
The company will continue to pursue sales of Novera, its first commercially available QPU, which features a 9-qubit chip, tunable couplers for fast 2-qubit operations, and a 5-qubit chip for testing single-qubit operations.
Business Model & Services
The company generates the majority of its revenues from technology development contracts with various partners. Its longer-term business model will be more weighted towards QPU sales and recurring revenues generated from quantum computing systems made accessible via the cloud in the form of QCaaS and QCS services.
Rigetti Quantum Processing Units
The company’s QPUs contain fabricated silicon-based chips featuring superconducting qubits. These high-performance chips provide fast gate times, low latency conditional logic, and fast program execution times. The company’s QPUs are designed and fabricated at Fab-1, leveraging novel manufacturing methods to create state-of-the-art superconducting qubits.
Novera, the company’s first commercially available QPU, includes a 9-qubit chip that features tunable couplers for fast 2-qubit operations, and a 5-qubit chip for testing single-qubit operations. The Novera QPU is based on the company’s fourth generation Ankaa-class architecture. It announced its most technically advanced QPU yet, the 84-qubit Ankaa-3, featuring an extensive hardware redesign.
The company intends to design and fabricate more advanced QPUs in the future, with improved fidelities, faster gate speeds, and higher qubit counts.
Quantum Computing as a Service (QCaaS)
The company sells access to its quantum computers through cloud-based services, commonly referred to as QCaaS. This approach enables it to serve a wide range of customers without the complexity and cost associated with shipping, operating, and servicing complex and cryogenic computing equipment on customer premises.
Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services
Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services (QCS) is a proprietary platform to deliver high-performance quantum computing over the cloud. QCS features a hybrid quantum-classical computing environment that incorporates the company’s quantum computers operating in tandem with cloud infrastructure. It provides support for a broad range of programming capabilities, the ability to integrate over public or private clouds, and high-speed connectivity to auxiliary classical computing resources.
The product is designed to meet the needs of a diverse set of customers that all benefit from the high-performance nature of its core computational capabilities. Central to QCS are two very powerful sets of technologies developed by the company, its quantum processing units (‘QPUs’), and its quantum operating system, as described below:
Quantum Operating System Software
QCS’s computing environment is powered by a distributed quantum operating system that natively supports both public and private cloud architectures.
The operating system software includes a rich set of quantum application and software development tools designed to unlock the capabilities of the quantum computing ecosystem by: enabling customers to access the company’s QPUs through a broad range of quantum application software, development frameworks, and algorithm libraries; providing software and algorithm developers with the performance and fine-grained control required to expedite a new era of computational breakthroughs; and facilitating the implementation of high-performance public and private clouds with ultra-low latency connectivity between classical hardware and the company’s QPUs.
Direct QCaaS Distribution
The company provides access on a commercial basis to its quantum computers over QCS, directly engaging with enterprises and government organizations making significant investments in quantum computing research, development, and readiness.
As of December 31, 2024, these direct customer relationships have been with customers using QCS for general quantum computing research, algorithm development, algorithm benchmarking, and software development activities. They represent a cross-section of industries, government agencies, and partners in the quantum computing ecosystem.
Indirect QCaaS Distribution
There are a large and growing number of providers of classical computing services over the cloud. This creates an opportunity for the company to efficiently reach a broad set of end users, indirectly, by partnering with cloud computing service providers, who in turn sell access to the company’s quantum computer systems to their own customers.
The indirect distribution model is enabled by the same QCS platform used in the direct distribution model, allowing the company to address the needs of customers in different market segments. In this instance, it can capitalize on its full-stack product development capabilities to meet the unique requirements of cloud service providers. For example, one cloud provider or HPC operator might need deep and high-performance integration with a specific machine learning service they provide, while another might desire a fast and easy way for small customers to be introduced to quantum computing.
The company has signed a distribution agreement with Amazon’s Braket service and Microsoft’s Azure Quantum Service, providing access to its quantum computing systems to AWS and Azure customers.
Key Technology Development Partnerships
The company enters into multi-year development partnerships with organizations that have specialized technical expertise and a strong interest in advancing their understanding and application of quantum computing technology. These partnerships can provide it with deep insight into the unique requirements of market leaders in key industries; advance the company’s engineering and product development capabilities; and lead to the creation of new hardware and software products.
Examples of the company’s development partnerships include contracts with:
Fermilab and the U.S. DOE’s Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center (‘SQMS’), to advance the development of scalable and high-performance quantum processors;
AFRL to harness the company’s fabrication capabilities for quantum networking hardware research and development;
DARPA and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (‘NASA’) to create quantum computing systems, software, and algorithms for optimization applications; and
Innovate UK, as part of the British government’s effort to accelerate commercialization of quantum computing in the United Kingdom, and to pursue practical applications in machine learning, molecular simulation, and financial optimization.
The company expects to add new development partnerships as the capabilities of its quantum computer systems grow, and the market’s readiness and interest in quantum computing continues to mature.
Rigetti Foundry Services
Rigetti Foundry Services leverages the company’s U.S.-based in-house wafer fabrication facility (‘Fab-1’) to deliver superconducting quantum chips to advance and accelerate quantum information science and technology research and development efforts. Customers include researchers spanning academia, defense laboratories, and national laboratories.
Professional Services
In certain engagements, the company provides professional services that enhance and advance its customers’ ability to consume its core products and services. Its engineers can augment a client’s internal capabilities with expertise in algorithm development, benchmarking, quantum application programming, and software development. These fee-based services can enhance the company’s customers' readiness for quantum, accelerate its customers' timelines for meaningful discoveries, and increase its depth of knowledge about key application domains and customer requirements for quantum computing in different industries.
Key Applications
Quantum computing is expected to drive value across many different applications and industries.
Optimization
The computational properties of a quantum computer inherently support the problem-solving requirements of extremely complex optimization calculations, because quantum computers possess the ability to simultaneously evaluate very large numbers of variables, and each additional qubit in a quantum computer exponentially scales the company’s information processing capacity.
Many of the world’s largest and most valuable industries could potentially benefit from enhanced optimization enabled by quantum computing. In financial services, optimization could be applied to portfolio management, algorithmic trading, and risk assessment. In telecommunications, optimization could be applied to call routing and network capacity planning. In manufacturing, optimization could help with workforce, warehouses, and supply chain planning. In transport, there are logistics applications, such as fleet routing, driver scheduling, and package loading and delivery, that could benefit from further optimization.
These types of problems can quickly overwhelm classical computers due to the large numbers of variables that need to be evaluated, which exponentially scales the computational power required with each additional possibility to be considered. For example, in a vehicle routing problem involving round trips to just 10 destinations, there can be more than 300,000 permutations to be considered; with 15 destinations, the number of possible routes exceeds 87 billion. If one factors in other real-world considerations, such as delivery cost, fleet size, driver availability, or service level agreements, one can see the intractable nature of these kinds of problems in full display.
One of the most active fields of quantum algorithm research is the area of constrained combinatorial optimization. These mathematical equations can arrive at approximate results with a close-to-optimal solution across many possible outcomes—a result that would create high value in many different industries, particularly when the exact solution is unknowable utilizing a classical computer.
In September 2023, the company was awarded a DARPA project as part of the Imagining Practical Applications for a Quantum Tomorrow (IMPAQT) program to advance the state-of-the-art in quantum algorithms for solving combinatorial optimization problems. The company’s project, ‘Scheduling Problems with Efficient Encoding of Qubits’ (SPEEQ), seeks to develop a novel and efficient encoding of optimization problems onto qubits, with the goal of enabling larger problems to be mapped to currently available NISQ-era quantum computers. The project will specifically address scheduling problems, which are among the best-known and most pervasive types of combinatorial optimization problems across numerous industries, as well as some of the most challenging to solve.
In November 2023, the company was awarded Phase 2 of the DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Program to develop benchmarks for quantum application performance on large-scale quantum computers. The goal of the DARPA Benchmarking Program was to create key quantum computing metrics for fault-tolerant quantum computing, make those metrics testable, and estimate the required quantum and classical resources needed to reach critical performance thresholds.
The company was awarded Phase 1 in March 2022. The key output of Phase 1 of this program was the development of a resource estimation framework to provide insight into the requirements of a superconducting quantum computing system necessary for solving large-scale, complex problems.
Phase 2 is expected to entail refining and optimizing the company’s estimates for selected utility-scale problems, delivering new upper bounds on these requirements. Another anticipated benefit of this resource estimation framework is to enable a cost-benefit analysis into whether the resources needed to run a quantum application will be met by the value of solving the particular problem. A challenge in developing quantum algorithms is understanding how a problem will scale, and at what point a dataset is large or complex enough to benefit from the unique properties of quantum computing. Estimating the amount of time, the number of qubits, and the energy required could accelerate the work towards designing an optimized algorithm. Phase 2 is expected to be heavily focused on researching fault-tolerant quantum applications. Of particular interest are dynamical chemistry simulations and modeling the dynamics of quantum systems.
Machine Learning
The company already sees emerging machine learning algorithms that take advantage of the unique capabilities of quantum computing to tackle the complex linear algebra problems at the heart of many machine learning tasks. In fact, recent research has emerged demonstrating that quantum algorithms could work better than classical ones for critical machine learning classification problems. As algorithmic research continues to progress, some of these quantum algorithms are improving to the point where their benefits may be realized on smaller-scale quantum computers.
The following are examples of the company’s work related to machine learning:
In November 2023, the company was awarded an Innovate UK grant as part of the Feasibility Studies in Quantum Computing Applications competition. Joining it in this work are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Imperial College London, and Standard Chartered. The consortium aims to use quantum computing to improve current classical machine learning techniques used by financial institutions to analyze complex data streams. Financial institutions need to continuously interpret complex data streams to extract information necessary for providing accurate credit risk evaluation, managing market-making services, and predicting emissions in the context of green finance, among other things. Classical machine learning techniques used to assist and provide insights to these services have limitations, as these data streams are, in general, complex. Combining quantum computing with classical machine learning methodology could offer more powerful resources for processing these data streams, given the potential for quantum computers to process some types of information more efficiently than with classical resources alone.
In October 2023, the company was awarded a separate Innovate UK grant as part of the Feasibility Studies in Quantum Computing Applications competition. Joining it in this work are HSBC, the Quantum Software Lab (QSL) based at the University of Edinburgh, and the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC). Together, the consortium aims to enhance existing anti-money laundering techniques by using quantum machine learning techniques, with the goal of improving the performance of current state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms. Money laundering poses a significant threat to financial institutions and society. Machine learning technology has the power to detect and prevent financial crime by flagging suspicious transactions and adapting to ever-changing criminal behavior. Quantum computing has the potential to enhance existing classical computing workflows, and in turn, could offer improved machine learning methods. In this work, the consortium will aim to extend current anomaly detection quantum machine learning models to detect anomalous behavior indicating money laundering.
Intellectual Property
As of December 31, 2024, the company had 104 patents issued and 133 patents pending that are designed to protect the company’s full-stack technology across hardware, software, and services. These patents cover a broad range of key technology areas of the business, including quantum computing systems, software and access; quantum processor hardware; algorithms and applications for problem solving; and chip design & fabrication.
The company pursues international registration of its domain names and trademarks. It is the registered holder of a variety of domain name registrations, including ‘rigetti.com.’ The company’s trademark registrations include ‘Rigetti’ in the U.S., the U.K., and the EU.
Sales & Marketing
During this period of eQA, the company’s go-to-market strategy is focused on being a leader in the key market segments driving the early application of quantum computing. The company’s sales and marketing efforts are focused on technology development and distribution partnerships with the leading organizations in these markets. In the U.S. government, for example, the Departments of Defense and Energy have each been making significant investments in quantum computing, and the company has technology development partnerships with leading agencies and national laboratories.
The company is pursuing similar arrangements with customers in other important vertical market segments, like finance, where it is developing specific expertise in several application areas and collaborating with Moody’s, HSBC, and Standard Chartered Bank. The company also has distribution relationships with customers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Strangeworks.
In connection with the company’s reorganization announced in February 2023, it reduced its investment and expenses in sales and marketing to focus its resources on technology development. As it works to develop new generations of its hardware with the goal of continuing to scale and achieve nQA and then BQA, the company anticipates increasing its investment and expenses in both sales and marketing in the future to expand the number of enterprise companies buying the company’s QPUs and directly licensing the company’s QCS platform.
Customers & Key Partners
The realization of quantum computing’s promise requires strong relationships across an ecosystem of innovative and quantum-committed organizations. The company has been developing commercial relationships and collaborative partnerships with organizations that possess a keen understanding of specific industry problems and deep technical expertise in key scientific and engineering disciplines.
As of December 31, 2024, the company has focused on developing a range of client relationships and research partnerships with:
Enterprise-sized organizations working on quantum-assisted breakthroughs in application areas, such as drug discovery, network optimization, financial modeling, weather forecasting, and fusion energy, like NASA, Moody’s, Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC, AFRL, the U.S. DOE, and certain military branches within the U.S. Department of Defense;
Materials science researchers and quantum algorithm developers at renowned laboratories, such as Fermilab, NASA Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and ORNL;
Quantum-focused software and algorithm companies, including Phasecraft, Riverlane, and Q-CTRL;
Cloud service providers, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure; and
The company also enters into multi-year technology development partnerships with organizations that possess specialized technical expertise and strong interests in advancing the development of quantum computing (as referenced in Business - Key Technology Development Partnerships). These organizations include DARPA, SQMS, and Innovate UK.
Regulatory
The majority of the company’s current programs are subject to Title 2 of the Code of Federal Regulations, covering Grants and Agreements. The company also performs programs authorized under Other Transaction Authority and the Federal Acquisition Regulation. Several of the company’s agreements are also subject to agency-level acquisition regulation supplements, including the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement and the Department of Energy Acquisition Regulation.
The company’s products and technologies are subject to U.S. export control and import laws and regulations, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations, the U.S. Customs regulations, and various economic and trade sanctions regulations administered by the U.S.
The company is also subject to numerous U.S. state, federal, and foreign laws, regulations, and rules related to privacy, data use, and security. In addition, the company is subject to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended, the U.S. domestic bribery statute, the U.S. Travel Act, and other anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws in countries in which it conducts activities, as well as numerous federal, state, and local environmental laws and regulations governing, among other things, solid and hazardous waste storage, treatment and disposal, and remediation of releases of hazardous materials.
Competition
The company’s competitors include large, well-established tech companies that generally compete across its products, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM.
History
Rigetti Computing, Inc. was founded in 2013.
