Rigetti Computing

Last updated
Rigetti Computing, Inc.
Company type Public
Nasdaq:  RGTI
Industry Quantum computing
Founded2013;11 years ago (2013)
FounderChad Rigetti
Headquarters Berkeley, California, United States
Key people
Subodh Kulkarni (CEO)
ProductsQuantum integrated circuits
Forest quantum computing software
RevenueDecrease2.svg US$12 million (2023)
Number of employees
134 (2024)
Website rigetti.com
Footnotes /references
[1]

Rigetti Computing, Inc. is a Berkeley, California-based developer of quantum integrated circuits used for quantum computers. Rigetti also develops a cloud platform called Forest that enables programmers to write quantum algorithms. [2]

Contents

History

Rigetti Computing was founded in 2013 by Chad Rigetti, a physicist with a background in quantum computers from IBM, and studied under Michel Devoret. [2] [3] The company emerged from startup incubator Y Combinator in 2014 as a so-called "spaceshot" company. [4] [5] Later that year, Rigetti also participated in The Alchemist Accelerator, a venture capital programme. [5]

By February 2016, Rigetti created its first quantum processor , a three-qubit chip made using aluminum circuits on a silicon wafer. [6] That same year, Rigetti raised Series A funding of US$24 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz. In November, the company secured Series B funding of $40 million in a round led by investment firm Vy Capital, along with additional funding from Andreessen Horowitz and other investors. Y Combinator also participated in both rounds. [5]

By Spring of 2017, Rigetti had advanced to testing eight-qubit quantum computers. [3] In June, the company announced the release of Forest 1.0, a quantum computing platform designed to enable developers to create quantum algorithms. [2] This was a major milestone.

In October 2021, Rigetti announced plans to go public via a SPAC merger, with estimated valuation of around US$1.5 billion. [7] [8] This deal was expected to raise an additional US$458 million, bringing the total funding to US$658 million. [7] The fund will be used to accelerate the company's growth, including scaling its quantum processors from 80 qubits to 1,000 qubits by 2024, and to 4,000 by 2026. [9] The SPAC deal closed on 2 March 2022, and Rigetti began trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGTI. [10]

In December 2022, Subodh Kulkarni became president and CEO of the company. [11]

In July 2023 Rigetti launched a single-chip 84 qubit quantum processor that can scale to even larger systems. [12]

Products and technology

Rigetti Computing is a full-stack quantum computing company, a term that indicates that the company designs and fabricates quantum chips, integrates them with a controlling architecture, and develops software for programmers to use to build algorithms for the chips. [13]

Forest cloud computing platform

The company hosts a cloud computing platform called Forest, which gives developers access to quantum processors so they can write quantum algorithms for testing purposes. The computing platform is based on a custom instruction language the company developed called Quil, which stands for Quantum Instruction Language. Quil facilitates hybrid quantum/classical computing, and programs can be built and executed using open source Python tools. [13] [14] As of June 2017, the platform allows coders to write quantum algorithms for a simulation of a quantum chip with 36 qubits. [2]

Fab-1

The company operates a rapid prototyping fabrication ("fab") lab called Fab-1, designed to quickly create integrated circuits. Lab engineers design and generate experimental designs for 3D-integrated quantum circuits for qubit-based quantum hardware. [13]

Recognition

The company was recognized in 2016 by X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis as being one of the three leaders in the quantum computing space, along with IBM and Google. [15] MIT Technology Review named the company one of the 50 smartest companies of 2017. [16]

See also

Locations

Rigetti Computing is headquartered in Berkeley, California, where it hosts developmental systems and cooling equipment. [15] The company also operates its Fab-1 manufacturing facility in nearby Fremont. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quantum computing</span> Computer hardware technology that uses quantum mechanics

A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of both particles and waves, and quantum computing leverages this behavior using specialized hardware. Classical physics cannot explain the operation of these quantum devices, and a scalable quantum computer could perform some calculations exponentially faster than any modern "classical" computer. Theoretically a large-scale quantum computer could break some widely used encryption schemes and aid physicists in performing physical simulations; however, the current state of the art is largely experimental and impractical, with several obstacles to useful applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of quantum computing and communication</span>

This is a timeline of quantum computing.

Superconducting quantum computing is a branch of solid state physics and quantum computing that implements superconducting electronic circuits using superconducting qubits as artificial atoms, or quantum dots. For superconducting qubits, the two logic states are the ground state and the excited state, denoted respectively. Research in superconducting quantum computing is conducted by companies such as Google, IBM, IMEC, BBN Technologies, Rigetti, and Intel. Many recently developed QPUs use superconducting architecture.

Quantum programming is the process of designing or assembling sequences of instructions, called quantum circuits, using gates, switches, and operators to manipulate a quantum system for a desired outcome or results of a given experiment. Quantum circuit algorithms can be implemented on integrated circuits, conducted with instrumentation, or written in a programming language for use with a quantum computer or a quantum processor.

D-Wave Two is the second commercially available quantum computer, and the successor to the first commercially available quantum computer, D-Wave One. Both computers were developed by Canadian company D-Wave Systems. The computers are not general purpose, but rather are designed for quantum annealing. Specifically, the computers are designed to use quantum annealing to solve a single type of problem known as quadratic unconstrained binary optimization. As of 2015, it was still debated whether large-scale entanglement takes place in D-Wave Two, and whether current or future generations of D-Wave computers will have any advantage over classical computers.

QxBranch, Inc. (QxBranch) is a data analysis and quantum computing software company, based in Washington, D.C. The company provides data analytics services and research and development for quantum computing technology. On July 11, 2019, QxBranch announced that it had been acquired by Rigetti Computing, a developer of quantum integrated circuits used for quantum computers.

IBM Quantum Platform is an online platform allowing public and premium access to cloud-based quantum computing services provided by IBM. This includes access to a set of IBM's prototype quantum processors, a set of tutorials on quantum computation, and access to an interactive textbook. As of February 2021, there are over 20 devices on the service, six of which are freely available for the public. This service can be used to run algorithms and experiments, and explore tutorials and simulations around what might be possible with quantum computing.

Cloud-based quantum computing is the invocation of quantum emulators, simulators or processors through the cloud. Increasingly, cloud services are being looked on as the method for providing access to quantum processing. Quantum computers achieve their massive computing power by initiating quantum physics into processing power and when users are allowed access to these quantum-powered computers through the internet it is known as quantum computing within the cloud.

In quantum computing, quantum supremacy or quantum advantage is the goal of demonstrating that a programmable quantum computer can solve a problem that no classical computer can solve in any feasible amount of time, irrespective of the usefulness of the problem. The term was coined by John Preskill in 2012, but the concept dates to Yuri Manin's 1980 and Richard Feynman's 1981 proposals of quantum computing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry M. Chow</span> American physicist

Jerry M. Chow is a physicist who conducts research in quantum information processing. He has worked as the manager of the Experimental Quantum Computing group at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York since 2014 and is the primary investigator of the IBM team for the IARPA Multi-Qubit Coherent Operations and Logical Qubits programs. After graduating magna cum laude with a B.A. in physics and M.S. in applied mathematics from Harvard University, he went on to earn his Ph.D. in 2010 under Robert J. Schoelkopf at Yale University. While at Yale, he participated in experiments in which superconducting qubits were coupled via a cavity bus for the first time and two-qubit algorithms were executed on a superconducting quantum processor.

Quil is a quantum instruction set architecture that first introduced a shared quantum/classical memory model. It was introduced by Robert Smith, Michael Curtis, and William Zeng in A Practical Quantum Instruction Set Architecture. Many quantum algorithms require a shared memory architecture. Quil is being developed for the superconducting quantum processors developed by Rigetti Computing through the Forest quantum programming API. A Python library called pyQuil was introduced to develop Quil programs with higher level constructs. A Quil backend is also supported by other quantum programming environments.

In quantum computing, a qubit is a unit of information analogous to a bit in classical computing, but it is affected by quantum mechanical properties such as superposition and entanglement which allow qubits to be in some ways more powerful than classical bits for some tasks. Qubits are used in quantum circuits and quantum algorithms composed of quantum logic gates to solve computational problems, where they are used for input/output and intermediate computations.

Quantum volume is a metric that measures the capabilities and error rates of a quantum computer. It expresses the maximum size of square quantum circuits that can be implemented successfully by the computer. The form of the circuits is independent from the quantum computer architecture, but compiler can transform and optimize it to take advantage of the computer's features. Thus, quantum volumes for different architectures can be compared.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qiskit</span> Open-source software development kit

Qiskit is an open-source software development kit (SDK) for working with quantum computers at the level of circuits, pulses, and algorithms. It provides tools for creating and manipulating quantum programs and running them on prototype quantum devices on IBM Quantum Platform or on simulators on a local computer. It follows the circuit model for universal quantum computation, and can be used for any quantum hardware that follows this model.

Cirq is an open-source framework for noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ampere Computing</span> American fabless semiconductor company

Ampere Computing LLC is an American fabless semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California that develops processors for servers operating in large scale environments. It was founded in 2017 by Renée James.

The current state of quantum computing is referred to as the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era, characterized by quantum processors containing up to 1,000 qubits which are not advanced enough yet for fault-tolerance or large enough to achieve quantum advantage. These processors, which are sensitive to their environment (noisy) and prone to quantum decoherence, are not yet capable of continuous quantum error correction. This intermediate-scale is defined by the quantum volume, which is based on the moderate number of qubits and gate fidelity. The term NISQ was coined by John Preskill in 2018.

This glossary of quantum computing is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in quantum computing, its sub-disciplines, and related fields.

References

  1. ↑ "Rigetti Computing Inc. 2023 Annual Report (Form 10-K)". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. March 14, 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "The Quantum Computer Factory That's Taking on Google and IBM". wired.com. 2017-06-20. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  3. 1 2 "A quantum leap of faith" (PDF). uregina.com. 2017-06-20. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  4. ↑ "11 startups to watch from Y Combinator's Demo Day". bizjournals.com. Silicon Valley Business Journal. 2014-08-20. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  5. 1 2 3 "Y Combinator's quantum computing 'spaceshot' scores $64M from A16Z, others". bizjournals.com. Silicon Valley Business Journal. 2017-03-29. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  6. ↑ "The Tiny Startup Racing Google to Build a Quantum Computing Chip". technologyreview.com. 2016-02-08. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  7. 1 2 "Rigetti Announces SPAC Deal with Supernova II". Rigetti. Retrieved 2021-10-11.
  8. ↑ Lee, Jane Lanhee (2021-10-06). "Quantum computer maker Rigetti to go public via $1.5 bln SPAC deal". Reuters. Retrieved 2021-10-11.
  9. ↑ "Quantum-Computing Company Rigetti to Go Public Through SPAC Deal". MarketWatch. Retrieved 2021-10-11.
  10. ↑ "Rigetti Computing Announces Closing of Business Combination with Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II, Ltd.; Begins Trading on Nasdaq Capital Market Today". globenewswire.com (Press release). 2 March 2022.
  11. ↑ "Dr. Subodh Kulkarni | Rigetti Computing". Rigetti. Retrieved 2023-07-11.
  12. ↑ "Rigetti launches 84qubit single chip quantum processor". August 11, 2023.
  13. 1 2 3 "Rigetti Launches Full-Stack Quantum Computing Service and Quantum IC Fab". IEEE . 2017-06-26. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  14. ↑ "Welcome to pyQuil!". readthedocs.io. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  15. 1 2 Md, Peter H. Diamandis (2010-10-16). "Massive Disruption Is Coming With Quantum Computing". Singularity Hub. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  16. ↑ "50 Smartest Companies 2017". technologyreview.com. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
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