Rigetti Computing, the Berkeley-based quantum computing company that builds its chips at a Fremont foundry, signed a definitive agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce for $100 million to accelerate research and development of superconducting quantum computers. In exchange, the federal government will hold a minority, non-controlling equity stake in the company, a condition tied to the funding.
The award, announced Tuesday, is part of a broader $300 million federal package that also sent $100 million each to D-Wave Quantum and Quantinuum, according to Morningstar. To satisfy the equity requirement, Rigetti agreed to issue 7,739,938 shares of common stock to the federal government in a private placement at an implied price of $12.92 per share, according to terms reported by Stock Titan. The equity stake is intended to enhance the return for the U.S. taxpayer, per Rigetti's own disclosures announced through Business Insider.
Money Comes in Stages, Tied to Milestones
The $100 million is structured over five years under an Other Transaction Agreement, with an initial disbursement of $43.9 million followed by two milestone-contingent tranches of $29.9 million and $26.2 million, the same Stock Titan filing shows. That structure means full funding depends on Rigetti hitting specific technical targets set by the CHIPS Research and Development Office under the CHIPS Act, rather than arriving all at once.
Rigetti CEO Subodh Kulkarni said the company was proud to be selected by the U.S. government to accelerate research and development and progress toward commercially viable quantum computing capabilities. He added that shortening the time to build quantum systems and reducing their cost could broaden adoption and strengthen the domestic quantum computing ecosystem, and that solving scaling challenges could put large-scale quantum computers into the hands of U.S. researchers faster.
Three Projects Aimed at Scaling Bottlenecks
The funding will support three research and development projects meant to address technical bottlenecks in scaling superconducting quantum computing, per the company's announcement. Those include expanding cryogenic capacity by orders of magnitude through a new cryostat architecture, developing fabrication capabilities for high-connectivity chip architectures, and compressing readout electronics into an integrated, miniaturized package. Together, the three projects are meant to accelerate Rigetti's roadmap toward utility-scale quantum computing.
Rigetti designs and manufactures its chips in-house at Fab-1, which the company describes as the industry's first dedicated and integrated quantum device manufacturing facility. The chip foundry sits in Fremont, having opened in 2018, according to Quantum Zeitgeist, while the company's headquarters and operations are based in Berkeley. Rigetti's quantum computers are built on superconducting qubits, a modality the company describes as widely regarded as a leader in the field because of its maturity, scalability, and fast gate speeds; the company says its system gate speeds run about 10,000 times faster than trapped-ion systems and roughly 100 times faster than neutral-atom systems, achieving gate speeds of 50 to 70 nanoseconds.
Wall Street Reacts, Rivals Cash In Too
Shares of Rigetti, which trade on Nasdaq under the ticker RGTI, climbed between 6% and 7.4% in morning trading Tuesday to around $16.13 to $16.33 following the announcement, with peer recipients D-Wave and Quantinuum also posting premarket gains, according to 24/7 Wall St. In the same funding tranche, rival recipient Quantinuum partnered with chipmaker GlobalFoundries to fabricate 300mm ion-trap wafers, while D-Wave directed its award toward 100,000-qubit annealing and 10,000-qubit gate systems, per Quartz.
The three-company, $300 million tranche is itself a slice of a much larger $2 billion CHIPS Act initiative proposed in May 2026 to fund nine quantum developers and foundries, including $375 million for GlobalFoundries and $1 billion for an IBM wafer foundry, according to MeriTalk. The scale of that federal commitment underscores how governments worldwide, per Rigetti's own statements, are investing in quantum computing because of its national security and economic implications.
A Small Company Taking On a Big Bet
The scale of the award stands out against Rigetti's current business: the company reported annual revenue of approximately $10.8 million in FY2024 alongside net operating losses, according to a profile from Umbrex. That gap between commercial revenue and R&D ambition helps explain why a milestone-based federal award of this size is transformative for the company's liquidity, even as full funding remains contingent on meeting agency benchmarks over five years.
Rigetti sells on-premises systems ranging from 9-qubit to 108-qubit configurations and operates quantum computers over the cloud through Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services, which the company says enables global enterprise, government, and research clients to pursue their own R&D. Its Cepheus systems, which range from 36-qubit to 108-qubit models, use proprietary chiplet-based technology; the largest configuration, Cepheus-1-108Q, is built from twelve 9-qubit chiplets tiled together. The company says it deployed the industry's largest multi-chip quantum computer earlier in 2026, building on what it describes as the industry's first multi-chip quantum processor for scalable systems.
Founder's Departure Still Shadows the Company
Rigetti was founded in 2013 by former IBM physicist Chad Rigetti, who served as CEO until stepping down in December 2022, after which current CEO Subodh Kulkarni took over, according to Wikipedia. Chad Rigetti has since launched a new venture, Sygaldry Technologies, which raised $139 million in combined seed and Series A funding in early 2026 to build quantum-accelerated servers for AI data centers — a deal Hoodline previously covered. The emergence of a well-funded rival led by the company's own founder adds another layer of competitive pressure as Rigetti works to convert federal backing into commercial traction.
Rigetti has cautioned in securities filings, including its quarterly report for the period ended June 30, 2026, and its 2025 annual report, that actual results may differ materially from current expectations and that it cannot provide assurance it will achieve its stated goals. Whether the new federal money translates into faster, cheaper, more widely adopted quantum systems, as Kulkarni has suggested it could, will depend on Rigetti clearing the very scaling bottlenecks the funding is meant to address.
