Rigetti Computing has spent more than a decade doing something almost no one else in quantum computing does: designing its chips, building them in its own factory, and delivering the whole machine top to bottom. That vertical integration, paired with a clever bet on modular design, makes it a distinctive force in the field.
Founded in 2013 by physicist Chad Rigetti, who came out of IBM's quantum program, and based in Berkeley, California, Rigetti is a full-stack superconducting quantum computing company. It trades publicly on the Nasdaq, and since late 2022 it has been led by chief executive Subodh Kulkarni, a semiconductor-industry veteran brought in to drive the company toward commercialization. Rigetti's defining characteristic is that it owns and controls the entire stack, from the physics of the qubits to the software customers use.
In a field where many companies specialize in one layer, Rigetti's insistence on building everything itself, including operating its own chip fabrication facility, gives it a degree of control few competitors can match, and it underpins the company's bet on how to solve quantum computing's hardest scaling problem.
Rigetti designs its own superconducting quantum chips, fabricates them in its own facility, builds the control electronics that operate them, and provides the software and cloud access that let customers run programs. This end-to-end ownership is unusual and valuable. Because every layer is designed together, Rigetti can optimize the whole system rather than stitching together components from different suppliers, and it can iterate quickly when it spots a way to improve.
Operating its own fab is especially significant. Most companies depend on outside foundries, but Rigetti's in-house fabrication lets it experiment with new chip designs rapidly, controlling its own destiny on the manufacturing side. For a technology where the details of how a chip is made profoundly affect its quality, that hands-on control is a genuine advantage.
Superconducting qubits, the technology Rigetti uses, are among the most industrially mature approaches in quantum computing, offering fast gate speeds and benefiting from fabrication techniques adapted from the semiconductor world. That maturity is part of why superconducting machines from companies like IBM and Google have set so many records, and Rigetti competes in that same arena as a focused, vertically integrated challenger.
The full-stack model also lets Rigetti serve customers in flexible ways, from cloud access to selling hardware outright, because it controls every piece of what it offers. That breadth of delivery options is something a single-layer specialist cannot easily provide.
It is a demanding way to build a company, requiring expertise across physics, engineering, manufacturing, and software all at once. But it gives Rigetti a coherence and a control that shape its entire strategy, most notably its approach to scaling.
The central obstacle for superconducting quantum computers is yield: as chips grow larger, the chance that every qubit on a single monolithic die works perfectly falls, making big, high-quality chips extremely hard to manufacture. Rigetti's answer is a modular chiplet architecture, tiling together several smaller, high-yield chips to build a larger processor, rather than fabricating one enormous die.
This is a genuinely clever strategy borrowed from the broader semiconductor industry, where chiplets have become a standard way to keep improving processors as monolithic designs hit their limits. By making smaller chiplets that are individually easier to manufacture well, and then connecting them, Rigetti aims to sidestep the yield problem and scale more reliably than a monolithic approach would allow.
If it works at scale, the chiplet approach could be a major advantage, turning the daunting challenge of building one large perfect chip into the more tractable problem of building several small good ones and linking them. It directly addresses one of the deepest bottlenecks in superconducting quantum computing, and Rigetti has organized its roadmap around proving it out.
The bet reflects Rigetti's engineering-led, manufacturing-aware mindset, a natural fit for a company that runs its own fab and is led by a semiconductor veteran. It is the kind of pragmatic, yield-focused thinking that the field will need to reach large, reliable machines.
Rigetti's current flagship system, Ankaa-3, carries 84 qubits and, importantly, reached a significant quality milestone with a median two-qubit gate fidelity around 99.5 percent. That focus on fidelity, the accuracy of operations, rather than chasing raw qubit counts, reflects an understanding of what actually makes a quantum computer useful. High-quality operations are what allow longer, more complex calculations to run without errors overwhelming them.
Hitting that fidelity mark was a meaningful achievement, because it demonstrated that Rigetti's chips can compete on the quality metric that matters most, not just on size. A machine with excellent fidelity and a modest qubit count can outperform a larger, noisier one, and Rigetti has prioritized getting the quality right as it scales.
This emphasis on accuracy positions the company well for the era of error correction, where the quality of the underlying physical qubits directly determines how efficiently reliable logical qubits can be built. Better physical fidelity means less overhead, and Rigetti has been pushing that number steadily upward.
The progress on Ankaa-3 gave the company concrete evidence that its full-stack, in-house approach can produce competitive hardware, validating years of foundational work.
One of Rigetti's most distinctive offerings is Novera, a commercial quantum processor that organizations can purchase and operate on their own premises. This is rare in a field where most companies offer access only through the cloud. With Novera, a research lab, university, or company can own a real quantum computer, install it in their own facility, and experiment hands-on.
Having a tangible product to sell is a meaningful commercial advantage. It opens a revenue stream and a customer relationship that pure cloud providers lack, and it serves a genuine need among institutions that want direct, private access to quantum hardware for research and development. For organizations building quantum expertise, owning the machine is qualitatively different from renting time on a distant one.
Novera also showcases Rigetti's full-stack strength, because delivering a complete, installable quantum computer requires mastery of every layer, from the chip to the control systems to the software. Few companies can hand a customer a working quantum computer in a box, and Rigetti's ability to do so reflects the depth of its integration.
It is a practical, grounded way to generate value and build relationships today, even as the larger goal of fault-tolerant machines remains years away, and it gives Rigetti a foothold in the market that complements its cloud and research work.
Rigetti has laid out a clear path forward built around its chiplet strategy. After its current systems, it has targeted a 108-qubit machine in the near term, followed by a substantially larger system in the few-hundred-qubit range, using the modular tiling approach to grow capacity while maintaining quality. The roadmap pairs rising qubit counts with continued improvement in fidelity, keeping both dimensions in view.
This measured, quality-first scaling is consistent with Rigetti's engineering culture. Rather than racing to announce the largest possible number, the company is focused on growing in a way that preserves the accuracy its machines will need to be useful, which is the right priority for reaching the error-correction era.
Proving that chiplets can be tiled into larger processors without sacrificing quality would be a significant validation of the company's central bet, and the coming systems are designed to demonstrate exactly that. Each step is a test of whether the modular approach delivers on its promise of scalable, reliable manufacturing.
If it does, Rigetti would have a credible, differentiated path to growing its machines, anchored in manufacturing wisdom borrowed from the semiconductor industry that birthed modern computing.
Rigetti's status as a publicly traded company gives it transparency and access to capital markets, and it has used that access to strengthen its position considerably. As of late 2025 it held cash and investments on the order of half a billion dollars, a notably strong balance sheet for a company of its size and a crucial cushion for the long, expensive journey ahead.
That financial strength matters because quantum computing is capital-intensive and the path to commercial maturity is long. A healthy balance sheet lets Rigetti keep investing in its fab, its chiplet research, and its product development without the constant pressure of raising the next round, giving it room to pursue its strategy with patience.
The company has also earned government validation, including a significant award tied to advancing domestic superconducting quantum capability, recognition that reflects both the strategic importance of the technology and confidence in Rigetti's approach. Such backing brings resources and credibility, signaling that serious, discerning institutions view the company's work as worth supporting.
Together, the public listing, the strong cash position, and the government support give Rigetti the means and the standing to compete with much larger players, despite its smaller scale, and to pursue its distinctive strategy over the long term.
Rigetti is a reminder that there is more than one way to compete in quantum computing. As a smaller, focused, fully integrated company, it cannot match the sheer scale of the largest players, but it brings genuine differentiation: its own fab, a clever chiplet architecture aimed squarely at the field's hardest manufacturing problem, a rare buyable product, and a disciplined focus on quality over headline numbers.
For business leaders and observers, Rigetti illustrates how vertical integration and smart engineering can let a determined challenger stay in a race dominated by giants. Its chiplet bet, if it pays off, could prove influential well beyond the company itself, and its willingness to sell real hardware today keeps it grounded in commercial reality. In a field of grand promises, Rigetti is quietly building, chip by chip, toward a scalable future on its own terms.
For all its independence, Rigetti does not work alone. It has cultivated partnerships with research institutions, government agencies, and commercial customers who use its machines to explore real applications, from optimization to simulation. These relationships are how the practical uses of quantum computing get discovered, through hands-on work on actual problems, and they keep Rigetti connected to the needs of the people who will eventually depend on the technology.
As one of the few publicly traded pure-play quantum companies, Rigetti also serves as a visible barometer for the field. Investors and observers watch it as a gauge of how superconducting quantum computing is progressing outside the big technology giants, which gives the company a profile larger than its size alone would suggest and helps it attract talent, capital, and attention.
That visibility, combined with its distinctive strategy, makes Rigetti an important data point in any honest assessment of the field. It demonstrates that a focused challenger, armed with vertical integration and a smart manufacturing bet, can hold a meaningful position even in a race dominated by the largest names in technology.
Jason Kumpf follows the quantum industry for what it means to business. He is Head of US Revenue at Razorpay, a board advisor, angel investor, and speaker. More about Jason.