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Rigetti Computing to go public

98 points by marc__1 5y ago

joshhart 5y ago
I’ve heard of culture problems from a few folks and similar comments are here today. My friend who works in Quantum Computing says the joke is “I regretti joining this company”
sydthrowaway 5y ago
Related: https://old.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/hyisg7/why_does_rigetti_have_such_bad_reviews_from/ https://old.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/hyisg7/wh...
abrichr 5y ago
I wonder how this squares up with https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/quantum-computing-hype-bad-science-victor-galitski-1c https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/quantum-computing-hype-bad-sc... : > Crazy headlines abound: "quantum computing will change life as we know it," "quantum computing will solve global warming," "Quantum computing will revolutionize science and industry," etc etc. These statements are not based on any research or reality at all, they are not even wishful thinking. The number of known quantum algorithms, which promise advantage over classical computation, is just a few (and none of them will "solve global warming" for sure). More importantly, exactly zero such algorithms have been demonstrated in practice so far and the gap between what’s needed to realize them and the currently available hardware is huge, and it's not just a question of numbers. There are qualitative challenges with scaling up, which will likely take decades to resolve (if ever).
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Quantum computing may not be all it's cracked up to be , but i 'm ok with some smart people becoming newly minted millionaires by investors with excess wealth.
  - mmmBacon 5y ago
    Hmmm isn’t that fraud? If not legal fraud it sounds ethically very dubious. Edit: I’m specifically referring to the GP comment and not the overall discussion.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      it s a form of redistribution
    - rubyfan 5y ago
      100%. Why are we OK with smart people ripping anyone off? Just because investors have excess wealth it’s OK to steal from them?
      - cblconfederate 5y ago
        without trying to be extra provocative, but we are A-OK with rich people ripping people off by exploiting their weaknesses, addictions or lack of oversight, so the reverse is not much different. Capitalism has a place for borderline, gray, unethical-but-legal 'frauds'
        cycrutchfield 5y ago
        This is clearly a strawman, so good job not being “extra provocative”. Please drop the Robin Hood complex and try to have an intellectually honest conversation.
      - Frost1x 5y ago
        I think thee assumption is that the investors have likely stolen from people, through perfectly legal yet ethically dubious means many consider theft but isn't defined in law as theft (deceit, disproportionate reward of effort, etc.). Often the type of theft uses indirection or is difficult to quantify. You tend not to get investment level rich/wealthy without playing in the ethical grey areas, skirting laws, and/or taking calculated risks of breaking laws to capture more than you actually directly produce. Not always the case but it tends to be the case from many peoples' world views. As such, it's viewed more as a thief stealing from a thief, where most have little pitty for either thief.
- chii 5y ago
  investing in bleeding edge companies will always be risky. Why not let investors take the risk, and may be these engineering challenges will get solved due to monetary motivations!
  - streetcat1 5y ago
    Because the problem is not the money. Although I think that SPAC represent some sort of arbitrage (otherwise there were not so much of them in the last year). I.e. it does not really matter what the SPAC invest in, as long as it is a good story.
- cat199 5y ago
  > The number of known quantum algorithms, which promise advantage over classical computation, is just a few Not at all well versed in the topic, but to me, we are at ENIAC stage of quantum - those few algorithms where quantum has an advantage provide a huge advantage worth a high price tag to those who need them - so this shouldn't be a real worry for some level of viability, technical concerns aside (which are not insignificant, as you point out) - but also as you highlight, 'some level of viability' is not the same as 'instant changes everywhere', so perceptions of hype-vs-reality in the general population is a different question
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ThePhysicist 5y ago
Congrats to the team, well deserved! I met Chad once at a quantum computing conference in Zurich in 2011, when he was still working for IBM as a researcher. I myself finished my PhD in 2012, leaving academia to work in software. In 2013 I contacted Chad and we had a short Skype call where we talked about quantum computing, since we were both interested in doing something in the space. I don't remember why I didn't follow up on the call, I guess I was busy working on my own ideas and forgot about it. In 2014 I then had the chance to join John Martinis' quantum computing team (which was later acquired by Google), which I declined because I had just won a small grant for starting a startup and wanted to pursue that. After that didn't take off I interviewed again with Rigetti in 2017, but ultimately turned down an offer to join because I still wanted to start something of my own (also their offer didn't seem very attractive to me at the time). So I guess in hindsight those were pretty bad decisions. That said I really cheer for the team, they have built an amazing company and achieved things I wouldn't have thought possible, so I really hope they continue on their path to even bigger success. And for me I hope I'll make better decisions in the future.
- rubyfan 5y ago
  You made a set of reasonable decisions that only now seem like you missed out on something. Consider you’d have had to get in early and spend what almost a decade to get to here?
  - ak217 5y ago
    The way I like to put it is: try to make justifiable decisions, but don't ever second-guess yourself. To me that's essential self-respect.
- onphonenow 5y ago
  Offers may have had relatively small equity - think 1%. So at most 10 - 15m. If you have better ideas and ability to build a company and execute not unreasonable to do own thing
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
  Great story. Thanks for sharing and love your positivity.
ricardobeat 5y ago
> full-stack quantum computing Anyone familiar with the term? Haven't heard it before. > leader in scalable quantum processor technology I thought quantum computing was still in the research phase? What's there to scale?
- cameronperot 5y ago
  > Anyone familiar with the term? Haven't heard it before. Full-stack probably means they deal with all areas of QC, from theoretical research to hardware implementation. > I thought quantum computing was still in the research phase? What's there to scale? IMO it is still largely in the research phase, but actual quantum computers do exist. The thing to scale would be the number of physical and logical (error-corrected) qubits. Quantum error correction is difficult though, and will take a lot of work to get scalable QCs with error correction. With some of the current schemes being pursued today, the number of physical qubits per logical qubit is quite high (e.g. 17 physical per one logical in Surface-17).
- krastanov 5y ago
  "Full-stack" is not an official term, but it is a reasonable way to refer to "working on both creating the low level hardware (e.g. transmons), the intermediate layer (error correction that makes the many physical qubits into a few reliable logical qubits), and the higher levels of algorithms for useful applications". There is no "scalable" quantum computer in existence yet. If we can make a million qubits of quality 10x better than the ones we have now, then we will definitely be able to talk about scaling and useful applications. Today we have machines with 10s to 100s of qubits that are extremely exciting technology demonstrators, but too small and too noisy to fulfill any of the promises of quantum computing from the 90s and 00s.
  - 1001101 5y ago
    I would imagine Shor's algorithm adds some friction to scaling, and who can be permitted to use scaled systems in the near term.
    - 5y ago
rvz 5y ago
Congratulations to the team. Sort of a win for quantum computing but where are the revenues and the numbers that justifies this valuation? A very risky investment into the unknown without knowing this.
- username_my1 5y ago
  SPAC is a scam, I really hope that the SEC will make an end for this frenzy soon.
JshWright 5y ago
Anybody else in NY/New England always read "SPAC" as "Saratoga Performing Arts Center" the first time? No? Just me?
phyalow 5y ago
I'll pass on it, I know several researchers that work there, they are all privately convinced nothing meaningful will happen for 10+years.
- mathgenius 5y ago
  That sounds reasonable. On the other hand, if a quantum computer dropped out of the sky tomorrow, virtually no one would know what to do with it. So there is plenty of infrastructure, tooling and know-how that needs to be produced in that 10+ year timeframe. And there will likely be huge demand for all of these things as big co's scramble to get on the bandwagon.
  - phyalow 5y ago
    I agree, although IMO its not clear Rigetti is poised to capture and realise the value of quantum tooling. In anycase its a company worth keeping an eye on, but I suspect they are closer to IBM Watson than Bell Laboratories.
- rambojazz 5y ago
  Can something meaningful come out of it in 10-20 years though? Or is it all vaporware? Could still be a good reason to buy, as long as what they're doing is serious.
the_duke 5y ago
> Rigetti expects to scale its quantum computers from 80 qubits in 2021, to 1,000 qubits in 2024, and to 4,000 qubits in 2026. Is that realistic at all? From what I've read on the subject, everyone seems to have trouble scaling up.
- krastanov 5y ago
  Having a device with 1000 transmons does not seem too crazy to me. But I would be deeply impressed if the quality of these 1000 transmons is not lower than the quality of the current 80. And keep in mind that either way these will be "physical" qubits, not error protected logical qubits. It takes hundreds or thousands of noisy physical qubits to make reliable logical qubits (with error correcting codes).
- wadeparzival 5y ago
  IBM has a similar timeline in its roadmap, going from 65 qubits in 2020 to 1,121 qubits in 2023. From their blog [1], it seems like scaling beyond 1,000 will be the real challenge. [1] https://research.ibm.com/blog/ibm-quantum-roadmap https://research.ibm.com/blog/ibm-quantum-roadmap
boringg 5y ago
Is quantum computing the new AI in terms of overhype and under deliver? Honestly curious, not trolling.
- thwoei2u4234 5y ago
  That's so passe. QuantumAI on the other hand will revolutionize the world as we know it.
  - boringg 5y ago
    Glad we cleared that up!
  - rambojazz 5y ago
    QuantumAIchain
- Frost1x 5y ago
  What technology isn't overhyped and under delivered? It's pretty difficult to get anyone remotely interested in technology unless they think it's going to be revolutionary and/or make them rich. I used to push back against the ridiculous overselling but I instead decided to join the club. If you tackle impossible problems and fail, people understand unlike when you tackle incredibly difficult problems people think are simple and you fail. In addition, you sound like a visionary and have a great story: people eat this up. Rarely ever is anyone concerned with practicality until it comes to actually paying for vision. Suddenly when people start paying for the vision, they find themselves wondering why they didn't ask all the practicality questions. You handwave the infeasibility away as pioneering discovery, then rinse and repeat until someone becomes grounded in the reality of what's possible with technology. After that you move on to the next person with visions of granduer. Either the pool of naive clients will eventually grow intelligent of the charade in the tech industry and suddenly become interested in pursuing difficult yet realistic goals or wel'll just continue this dance where the investors and clients shared memory never reaches this stage and continue to pedal over-fanciful promises. People don't like to hear about the problems of reality, they only want to hear about the potential promise of technology and/or how rich it might make them. Quantum computing is an interesting field and by no means am I saying it isn't a worthwhile grounded pursuit, I'm merely stating that the ridiculous oversell is the norm in all tech and yes, quantum computing is running neck and neck in the hype cycle with AI. Don't fight the hype cycles, identify and ride them otherwise you might drown from the wave of industry momentum.
mark_l_watson 5y ago
Since this is HN, I want to point out that they use Common Lisp and are a productive contributor to the CL community with open source. Congratulations!
- mikewave 5y ago
  They're not the only QC company using Common Lisp ;-)
  - dunefox 5y ago
    Does CL lend itself uniquely to QC?
    - mikewave 5y ago
      I think that a lot of physicists who are now in their 40s+ learned and used Lisp in university, and have simply found ways to keep using it since then. For new hires, the fact is, a quantum computing codebase is daunting to learn regardless of the language. Therefore, apprenticing someone on a new language at the same time as everything else they are learning is not really the same relative burden that it would be if, say, the application was a plain boring database CRUD app in an unfamiliar language. We definitely make excellent use of macros and DSLs and the REPL in many ways. I wish I could talk about it more, but alas.
boringg 5y ago
Has anyone done any real due diligence on the company within the community? Do they have a really exciting path forward and serious traction at this point to warrant their price in the market? I never trust the SPAC route - less rigorous detail and typically overhyped prospects. Would like to be corrected though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
frakkingcylons 5y ago
Interesting random fact: The Uber whistleblower who wrote about the sexual harassment at the company is married to the CEO of Rigetti. Tech is a small world.
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  So it is true, women do go for chads.
f00zz 5y ago
Too bad Planetary Resources went belly up before the SPAC craze, I'd have invested on that one...
whatever1 5y ago
That is crazy high valuation for something that will not be useful for at least 20 more years.
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  You may be right, but then what should they be valued at? It's ultimately a gamble for something that's some unknown distance beyond the horizon but would, if fully realized, actually change the world.
  - whatever1 5y ago
    The valuation implies that there is 1.5% probability of this company becoming BP with a market cap of 100B and bringing 10B in profits per year. That is with a technology that currently is not working, and is not expected to work in useful scale for decades.
    - solveit 5y ago
      Or a 0.15% probability of becoming 10x bigger. For things like this, essentially all the expected value is in the very long tail. I won't be buying shares any time soon, but more power to those who do.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Everytime I hear this company name I am reminded of something else... Olivetti, the Italian typewriter and computer maker from forever ago ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_S.p.A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_S.p.A.
- cadr 5y ago
  That is exactly what I thought. Didn't even know they were still around.
roughly 5y ago
Aside from the obvious problems with SPACs, I wonder if they wind up having more of a chilling effect on the overall tech spaces than not. A lot of nascent technologies run in cycles - quantum, ai, synbio, vr all have had hype cycles in which a lot of money floods the field and a lot of progress can be made, even if the underlying technology isn't ready for the mass market yet. At some point it becomes clear there's no market yet, and the investors flee, and we have to wait for another cycle. The SPAC seems like an obvious way for one company to make a boatload of cash - Rigetti stands to take in a few hundred million, which is a hell of a fundraising round, and bully for them, but it also means the market's taking a closer look at them an awful lot sooner than they would otherwise, because there's no way they'd be going public via the traditional method at this point. I can't see that being good for fundraising elsewhere in the quantum sector overall right now, and I wonder if it presages an earlier retreat from the sector than would otherwise have happened.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Rigetti is a completely vertically integrated company, from design to manufacturing (Fab-1)[1] to cloud access (Rigetti's own QCS [2] as well as AWS Bracket[3]). They have their own Fab which is extremely advantageous and I cloud be wrong but neither Google, IBM or anyone has that capability in-house. I guess, it is not fair to draw comparisons to other semiconductor companies like Intel or TSMC since the scale is off by a factor of 10,000x, nonetheless, having your own Fab creates opportunities for process engineering that would otherwise be too slow. I think the holy grail of quantum computing is how best to architect, design and manufacture quantum chips with low noise, everything else is sort of secondary. Cloud access is a solved problem. Congrats to the team! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yaY4Fw-ovM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yaY4Fw-ovM [2] https://qcs.rigetti.com/ https://qcs.rigetti.com/ [3] https://aws.amazon.com/braket/hardware-providers/rigetti/ https://aws.amazon.com/braket/hardware-providers/rigetti/
10x_contrarian 5y ago
Anyone considering investing in Regetti should take a look at the company's negative reviews on glassdoor. They paint a picture of a highly disfunctional organization struggling with behind-the-curve tech driven on hubris and the ego of its founder. Some people note the irony of him being married to the famous Uber whistleblower while creating a corporate culture that's comprable to early Uber in many ways. Rigetti investors are trying to dump this mess onto retail. Be cautious.
- exikyut 5y ago
  > created: 21 minutes ago > karma: 2 [adds pinch of salt]
- sbilstein 5y ago
  Yea I’ve heard horror stories from friends. CEO writing “athletic, no kids, submissive like a ** woman” in his internal job description for an executive assistant.
  - anon_rigetti 5y ago
    Can confirm. Also, heard an "admin" who was also CEO's ex-housekeeper got >$1M severance right before the wife went public with the Uber story.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  To be fair, Glassdoor always has negative comments for most companies due to the reporting bias (only disappointed employees take the effort to voice their concerns). It is a cliche amongst recruiters around the dreaded Glassdoor questions during hiring process.
wskinner 5y ago
> [...] a fully committed PIPE in excess of $100 million, direct investment, and $345 million of cash held in the trust account of Supernova II, assuming no redemptions. This is an odd assumption - the median redemption rate is 73%[1]. So the total new cash into the company will likely be less than half of the quoted $458mm. 1: https://hbr.org/2021/07/spacs-what-you-need-to-know https://hbr.org/2021/07/spacs-what-you-need-to-know
abhinav22 5y ago
From all accounts, this seems to be cashing out and getting retail to hold the bag before the hype train ends Unfortunate state of affairs

98 points by marc__1 5y ago

I’ve heard of culture problems from a few folks and similar comments are here today. My friend who works in Quantum Computing says the joke is “I regretti joining this company”

sydthrowaway 5y ago

Related: https://old.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/hyisg7/why_does_rigetti_have_such_bad_reviews_from/ https://old.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/hyisg7/wh...

abrichr 5y ago

I wonder how this squares up with https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/quantum-computing-hype-bad-science-victor-galitski-1c https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/quantum-computing-hype-bad-sc... : > Crazy headlines abound: "quantum computing will change life as we know it," "quantum computing will solve global warming," "Quantum computing will revolutionize science and industry," etc etc. These statements are not based on any research or reality at all, they are not even wishful thinking. The number of known quantum algorithms, which promise advantage over classical computation, is just a few (and none of them will "solve global warming" for sure). More importantly, exactly zero such algorithms have been demonstrated in practice so far and the gap between what’s needed to realize them and the currently available hardware is huge, and it's not just a question of numbers. There are qualitative challenges with scaling up, which will likely take decades to resolve (if ever).

cblconfederate 5y ago
Quantum computing may not be all it's cracked up to be , but i 'm ok with some smart people becoming newly minted millionaires by investors with excess wealth.
- mmmBacon 5y ago
  Hmmm isn’t that fraud? If not legal fraud it sounds ethically very dubious. Edit: I’m specifically referring to the GP comment and not the overall discussion.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    it s a form of redistribution
  - rubyfan 5y ago
    100%. Why are we OK with smart people ripping anyone off? Just because investors have excess wealth it’s OK to steal from them?
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      without trying to be extra provocative, but we are A-OK with rich people ripping people off by exploiting their weaknesses, addictions or lack of oversight, so the reverse is not much different. Capitalism has a place for borderline, gray, unethical-but-legal 'frauds'
      - cycrutchfield 5y ago
        This is clearly a strawman, so good job not being “extra provocative”. Please drop the Robin Hood complex and try to have an intellectually honest conversation.
    - Frost1x 5y ago
      I think thee assumption is that the investors have likely stolen from people, through perfectly legal yet ethically dubious means many consider theft but isn't defined in law as theft (deceit, disproportionate reward of effort, etc.). Often the type of theft uses indirection or is difficult to quantify. You tend not to get investment level rich/wealthy without playing in the ethical grey areas, skirting laws, and/or taking calculated risks of breaking laws to capture more than you actually directly produce. Not always the case but it tends to be the case from many peoples' world views. As such, it's viewed more as a thief stealing from a thief, where most have little pitty for either thief.
chii 5y ago
investing in bleeding edge companies will always be risky. Why not let investors take the risk, and may be these engineering challenges will get solved due to monetary motivations!
- streetcat1 5y ago
  Because the problem is not the money. Although I think that SPAC represent some sort of arbitrage (otherwise there were not so much of them in the last year). I.e. it does not really matter what the SPAC invest in, as long as it is a good story.
cat199 5y ago
> The number of known quantum algorithms, which promise advantage over classical computation, is just a few Not at all well versed in the topic, but to me, we are at ENIAC stage of quantum - those few algorithms where quantum has an advantage provide a huge advantage worth a high price tag to those who need them - so this shouldn't be a real worry for some level of viability, technical concerns aside (which are not insignificant, as you point out) - but also as you highlight, 'some level of viability' is not the same as 'instant changes everywhere', so perceptions of hype-vs-reality in the general population is a different question
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ThePhysicist 5y ago

Congrats to the team, well deserved! I met Chad once at a quantum computing conference in Zurich in 2011, when he was still working for IBM as a researcher. I myself finished my PhD in 2012, leaving academia to work in software. In 2013 I contacted Chad and we had a short Skype call where we talked about quantum computing, since we were both interested in doing something in the space. I don't remember why I didn't follow up on the call, I guess I was busy working on my own ideas and forgot about it. In 2014 I then had the chance to join John Martinis' quantum computing team (which was later acquired by Google), which I declined because I had just won a small grant for starting a startup and wanted to pursue that. After that didn't take off I interviewed again with Rigetti in 2017, but ultimately turned down an offer to join because I still wanted to start something of my own (also their offer didn't seem very attractive to me at the time). So I guess in hindsight those were pretty bad decisions. That said I really cheer for the team, they have built an amazing company and achieved things I wouldn't have thought possible, so I really hope they continue on their path to even bigger success. And for me I hope I'll make better decisions in the future.

rubyfan 5y ago
You made a set of reasonable decisions that only now seem like you missed out on something. Consider you’d have had to get in early and spend what almost a decade to get to here?
- ak217 5y ago
  The way I like to put it is: try to make justifiable decisions, but don't ever second-guess yourself. To me that's essential self-respect.
onphonenow 5y ago
Offers may have had relatively small equity - think 1%. So at most 10 - 15m. If you have better ideas and ability to build a company and execute not unreasonable to do own thing
WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
Great story. Thanks for sharing and love your positivity.

ricardobeat 5y ago

> full-stack quantum computing Anyone familiar with the term? Haven't heard it before. > leader in scalable quantum processor technology I thought quantum computing was still in the research phase? What's there to scale?

cameronperot 5y ago
> Anyone familiar with the term? Haven't heard it before. Full-stack probably means they deal with all areas of QC, from theoretical research to hardware implementation. > I thought quantum computing was still in the research phase? What's there to scale? IMO it is still largely in the research phase, but actual quantum computers do exist. The thing to scale would be the number of physical and logical (error-corrected) qubits. Quantum error correction is difficult though, and will take a lot of work to get scalable QCs with error correction. With some of the current schemes being pursued today, the number of physical qubits per logical qubit is quite high (e.g. 17 physical per one logical in Surface-17).
krastanov 5y ago
"Full-stack" is not an official term, but it is a reasonable way to refer to "working on both creating the low level hardware (e.g. transmons), the intermediate layer (error correction that makes the many physical qubits into a few reliable logical qubits), and the higher levels of algorithms for useful applications". There is no "scalable" quantum computer in existence yet. If we can make a million qubits of quality 10x better than the ones we have now, then we will definitely be able to talk about scaling and useful applications. Today we have machines with 10s to 100s of qubits that are extremely exciting technology demonstrators, but too small and too noisy to fulfill any of the promises of quantum computing from the 90s and 00s.
- 1001101 5y ago
  I would imagine Shor's algorithm adds some friction to scaling, and who can be permitted to use scaled systems in the near term.
  - 5y ago

rvz 5y ago

Congratulations to the team. Sort of a win for quantum computing but where are the revenues and the numbers that justifies this valuation? A very risky investment into the unknown without knowing this.

username_my1 5y ago
SPAC is a scam, I really hope that the SEC will make an end for this frenzy soon.

JshWright 5y ago

Anybody else in NY/New England always read "SPAC" as "Saratoga Performing Arts Center" the first time? No? Just me?

phyalow 5y ago

I'll pass on it, I know several researchers that work there, they are all privately convinced nothing meaningful will happen for 10+years.

mathgenius 5y ago
That sounds reasonable. On the other hand, if a quantum computer dropped out of the sky tomorrow, virtually no one would know what to do with it. So there is plenty of infrastructure, tooling and know-how that needs to be produced in that 10+ year timeframe. And there will likely be huge demand for all of these things as big co's scramble to get on the bandwagon.
- phyalow 5y ago
  I agree, although IMO its not clear Rigetti is poised to capture and realise the value of quantum tooling. In anycase its a company worth keeping an eye on, but I suspect they are closer to IBM Watson than Bell Laboratories.
rambojazz 5y ago
Can something meaningful come out of it in 10-20 years though? Or is it all vaporware? Could still be a good reason to buy, as long as what they're doing is serious.

the_duke 5y ago

> Rigetti expects to scale its quantum computers from 80 qubits in 2021, to 1,000 qubits in 2024, and to 4,000 qubits in 2026. Is that realistic at all? From what I've read on the subject, everyone seems to have trouble scaling up.

krastanov 5y ago
Having a device with 1000 transmons does not seem too crazy to me. But I would be deeply impressed if the quality of these 1000 transmons is not lower than the quality of the current 80. And keep in mind that either way these will be "physical" qubits, not error protected logical qubits. It takes hundreds or thousands of noisy physical qubits to make reliable logical qubits (with error correcting codes).
wadeparzival 5y ago
IBM has a similar timeline in its roadmap, going from 65 qubits in 2020 to 1,121 qubits in 2023. From their blog [1], it seems like scaling beyond 1,000 will be the real challenge. [1] https://research.ibm.com/blog/ibm-quantum-roadmap https://research.ibm.com/blog/ibm-quantum-roadmap

boringg 5y ago

Is quantum computing the new AI in terms of overhype and under deliver? Honestly curious, not trolling.

thwoei2u4234 5y ago
That's so passe. QuantumAI on the other hand will revolutionize the world as we know it.
- boringg 5y ago
  Glad we cleared that up!
- rambojazz 5y ago
  QuantumAIchain
Frost1x 5y ago
What technology isn't overhyped and under delivered? It's pretty difficult to get anyone remotely interested in technology unless they think it's going to be revolutionary and/or make them rich. I used to push back against the ridiculous overselling but I instead decided to join the club. If you tackle impossible problems and fail, people understand unlike when you tackle incredibly difficult problems people think are simple and you fail. In addition, you sound like a visionary and have a great story: people eat this up. Rarely ever is anyone concerned with practicality until it comes to actually paying for vision. Suddenly when people start paying for the vision, they find themselves wondering why they didn't ask all the practicality questions. You handwave the infeasibility away as pioneering discovery, then rinse and repeat until someone becomes grounded in the reality of what's possible with technology. After that you move on to the next person with visions of granduer. Either the pool of naive clients will eventually grow intelligent of the charade in the tech industry and suddenly become interested in pursuing difficult yet realistic goals or wel'll just continue this dance where the investors and clients shared memory never reaches this stage and continue to pedal over-fanciful promises. People don't like to hear about the problems of reality, they only want to hear about the potential promise of technology and/or how rich it might make them. Quantum computing is an interesting field and by no means am I saying it isn't a worthwhile grounded pursuit, I'm merely stating that the ridiculous oversell is the norm in all tech and yes, quantum computing is running neck and neck in the hype cycle with AI. Don't fight the hype cycles, identify and ride them otherwise you might drown from the wave of industry momentum.

mark_l_watson 5y ago

Since this is HN, I want to point out that they use Common Lisp and are a productive contributor to the CL community with open source. Congratulations!

mikewave 5y ago
They're not the only QC company using Common Lisp ;-)
- dunefox 5y ago
  Does CL lend itself uniquely to QC?
  - mikewave 5y ago
    I think that a lot of physicists who are now in their 40s+ learned and used Lisp in university, and have simply found ways to keep using it since then. For new hires, the fact is, a quantum computing codebase is daunting to learn regardless of the language. Therefore, apprenticing someone on a new language at the same time as everything else they are learning is not really the same relative burden that it would be if, say, the application was a plain boring database CRUD app in an unfamiliar language. We definitely make excellent use of macros and DSLs and the REPL in many ways. I wish I could talk about it more, but alas.

boringg 5y ago

Has anyone done any real due diligence on the company within the community? Do they have a really exciting path forward and serious traction at this point to warrant their price in the market? I never trust the SPAC route - less rigorous detail and typically overhyped prospects. Would like to be corrected though.

deleted 5y ago
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frakkingcylons 5y ago

Interesting random fact: The Uber whistleblower who wrote about the sexual harassment at the company is married to the CEO of Rigetti. Tech is a small world.

strikelaserclaw 5y ago
So it is true, women do go for chads.

f00zz 5y ago

Too bad Planetary Resources went belly up before the SPAC craze, I'd have invested on that one...

whatever1 5y ago

That is crazy high valuation for something that will not be useful for at least 20 more years.

crispyambulance 5y ago
You may be right, but then what should they be valued at? It's ultimately a gamble for something that's some unknown distance beyond the horizon but would, if fully realized, actually change the world.
- whatever1 5y ago
  The valuation implies that there is 1.5% probability of this company becoming BP with a market cap of 100B and bringing 10B in profits per year. That is with a technology that currently is not working, and is not expected to work in useful scale for decades.
  - solveit 5y ago
    Or a 0.15% probability of becoming 10x bigger. For things like this, essentially all the expected value is in the very long tail. I won't be buying shares any time soon, but more power to those who do.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

Everytime I hear this company name I am reminded of something else... Olivetti, the Italian typewriter and computer maker from forever ago ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_S.p.A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_S.p.A.

cadr 5y ago
That is exactly what I thought. Didn't even know they were still around.

roughly 5y ago

Aside from the obvious problems with SPACs, I wonder if they wind up having more of a chilling effect on the overall tech spaces than not. A lot of nascent technologies run in cycles - quantum, ai, synbio, vr all have had hype cycles in which a lot of money floods the field and a lot of progress can be made, even if the underlying technology isn't ready for the mass market yet. At some point it becomes clear there's no market yet, and the investors flee, and we have to wait for another cycle. The SPAC seems like an obvious way for one company to make a boatload of cash - Rigetti stands to take in a few hundred million, which is a hell of a fundraising round, and bully for them, but it also means the market's taking a closer look at them an awful lot sooner than they would otherwise, because there's no way they'd be going public via the traditional method at this point. I can't see that being good for fundraising elsewhere in the quantum sector overall right now, and I wonder if it presages an earlier retreat from the sector than would otherwise have happened.

systemvoltage 5y ago

Rigetti is a completely vertically integrated company, from design to manufacturing (Fab-1)[1] to cloud access (Rigetti's own QCS [2] as well as AWS Bracket[3]). They have their own Fab which is extremely advantageous and I cloud be wrong but neither Google, IBM or anyone has that capability in-house. I guess, it is not fair to draw comparisons to other semiconductor companies like Intel or TSMC since the scale is off by a factor of 10,000x, nonetheless, having your own Fab creates opportunities for process engineering that would otherwise be too slow. I think the holy grail of quantum computing is how best to architect, design and manufacture quantum chips with low noise, everything else is sort of secondary. Cloud access is a solved problem. Congrats to the team! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yaY4Fw-ovM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yaY4Fw-ovM [2] https://qcs.rigetti.com/ https://qcs.rigetti.com/ [3] https://aws.amazon.com/braket/hardware-providers/rigetti/ https://aws.amazon.com/braket/hardware-providers/rigetti/

10x_contrarian 5y ago

Anyone considering investing in Regetti should take a look at the company's negative reviews on glassdoor. They paint a picture of a highly disfunctional organization struggling with behind-the-curve tech driven on hubris and the ego of its founder. Some people note the irony of him being married to the famous Uber whistleblower while creating a corporate culture that's comprable to early Uber in many ways. Rigetti investors are trying to dump this mess onto retail. Be cautious.

exikyut 5y ago
> created: 21 minutes ago > karma: 2 [adds pinch of salt]
sbilstein 5y ago
Yea I’ve heard horror stories from friends. CEO writing “athletic, no kids, submissive like a ** woman” in his internal job description for an executive assistant.
- anon_rigetti 5y ago
  Can confirm. Also, heard an "admin" who was also CEO's ex-housekeeper got >$1M severance right before the wife went public with the Uber story.
systemvoltage 5y ago
To be fair, Glassdoor always has negative comments for most companies due to the reporting bias (only disappointed employees take the effort to voice their concerns). It is a cliche amongst recruiters around the dreaded Glassdoor questions during hiring process.

wskinner 5y ago

> [...] a fully committed PIPE in excess of $100 million, direct investment, and $345 million of cash held in the trust account of Supernova II, assuming no redemptions. This is an odd assumption - the median redemption rate is 73%[1]. So the total new cash into the company will likely be less than half of the quoted $458mm. 1: https://hbr.org/2021/07/spacs-what-you-need-to-know https://hbr.org/2021/07/spacs-what-you-need-to-know

abhinav22 5y ago

From all accounts, this seems to be cashing out and getting retail to hold the bag before the hype train ends Unfortunate state of affairs