Rigetti Computing, one of the oldest and once most promising companies in the quantum computing sector, last week received a delisting notice from Nasdaq, triggered by the inability of the company’s stock (RGTI) to maintain a closing value above $1 for the previous 30 days.
The notice arrived a few weeks after Rigetti’s new president and CEO, Subodh Kulkarni, had sought to reassure investors and company watchers during an appearance at the Needham & Co. Growth Conference. In fact, Kulkarni provided as cogent and clear an explanation of the potential advantage of quantum computing as anyone is likely to hear, and described it as key to delivering on the full promise of burgeoning technologies like AI, machine learning, and autonomous driving.
“Think of a human brain and how it works,” he said. “You got millions of neurons all interacting with each other at the same time, right? …In the conventional computer world, you're doing everything sequentially. You do one interaction, then the next interaction and then the third interaction, and so on. And it's impossible in that world to simulate something where a million things are all interacting at the same time with each other. With quantum we get qubits in superimposed states, and we entangle them with each other exactly like the way your human brain entangles all of its neurons with each other, and that gives you a completely different dimension that you do not get with conventional computing systems. That is where the real essence of quantum computing lies. You can take on problems that are impossible to tackle in the conventional computing world.”
Kulkarni suggested that the companies looking to do more with AI technology and push it into new frontiers are running up against limitations that conventional computers cannot overcome, but that quantum computers could unlock in the years to come. He insisted that Rigetti is on track to deliver on that promise with a roadmap for quantum computing systems that will achieve hundreds and then thousands of qubits in the years to come, but the delisting notice is a harsh reminder that the company has other obstacles to overcome first.
Rigetti Computing went public last March via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger, but soon after parted ways with its chief operating officer amid reports that its windfall from the SPAC deal was not as great as it had hoped. Rigetti has struggled over the last year to hit its revenue marks and acknowledged that macro-economic hurdles, combined with lower-than-expected proceeds from its SPAC merger, could affect its timeline for delivery on its technology roadmap. By the end of 2022, Rigetti founder and then-president and CEO Chad Rigetti was removed from a leadership position, and within days decided to leave the company altogether.
In December, the company hired Kulkarni, a semiconductor industry veteran who had worked his way up through firms like 3M and Imation, and eventually became president and CEO of CyberOptics, a company providing inspection and sensing solutions for electronics assembly and semiconductor process improvement. Kulkarni also has advised other companies in the semiconductor industry, and said he wants to bring more of that industry’s focus on quality into the quantum space, which he suggested has been too focused on achieving more and more qubits in next-generation systems, and not as focused as it should be on improving the coherence, or error rates, of existing systems.
“Instead of just pushing qubits I’m going to push fidelity as a higher priority,” he told the Needham conference crowd. “I wouldn't say it's a wholesale change but… coming in with my semiconductor background and looking at something like a 96% or 97% fidelity rate and I'm kind of alarmed that the error rates are so high, I mean, any conventional computer system with 4% error rates would be a disaster. Nothing would work right.”
While Rigetti currently has a 80-qubit quantum computing system available for use via the AWS and Microsoft Azure cloud-based services, Kulkarni said Rigetti soon plans to announce an 84-qubit system that he said will achieve 98% fidelity, and that the company will continue to focus on “systematic improvements in fidelity to go from 98% to 99%, and then hopefully 99.5% or so early next year.”