Rigetti Computing, Inc. (NASDAQ:RGTI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quinn Bolton: Got it. And my last question is, you mentioned a 9-qubit QPU and a square lattice, I guess, sort of begs the natural question, if you’re doing a nine square lattice, is there a road map in this QP business to do a 16 square lattice or 25-qubit or 36-qubit, kind of, etc., etc., to give QPUs with greater capability to this customer base so that they can do more complex, you know, gate circuits?

Dr. Subodh Kulkarni: Excellent question. And we debated internally a lot as to the right way to go forward with our road map. As we have already described, our Ankaa-1 is not a square lattice. It’s not a square structure, if you will. It’s 84-qubit. But when we say a square lattice, it is the actual structure of the qubit. So Ankaa-1 is still a square lattice, just in a 12 by 7 layout, if you will. So when we say square, it is the exact location of the 9-qubits and how the squares style up with each other. Certainly, if we can look at nine going to 60 and going to 81, and that’s an approach we debate internally should we be looking at that versus 84. But at this time, we want to stay with the 84-qubit 12 by 7 in a square pattern with tunable coupler.

And by the way, that is the more important part is a tunable coupler, more than the square lattice. It certainly leads to much higher performance than the fixed couplers that some others are doing in the super conducting qubit camp. And we actually published a blog today getting into the details of why we believe tunable couplers are significantly better than fixed couplers that other companies are trying to do. So I certainly encourage you to take a look at that blog that is on our website right now. So anyway, so our roadmap is get 84-qubit to 98% fidelity, median-2 qubit fidelity by the end of this year, get it to 99% sometime next year, and then scale up are going from 84 to 168 and 336 and so on. But certainly if we can look at square lattice and just go 9, 16, 81, and so on, we are open to that if that makes sense.

Quinn Bolton: Got it. Thank you.

Dr. Subodh Kulkarni: Thanks, Quinn.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from [indiscernible] with TD Cowen. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi, thanks for taking my questions. This is Steven calling on behalf of Chris. Actually, some follow ups as well on the QPU sales.3 I guess in terms of the associate hardware that you’re referring to in terms of the overall QPU sale, I assume some of the computing control hardware that’s associated with couplers, that’s part of the package. And so is there any follow on service or maintenance contract revenues that might be associated with the QPU sale and the official ones? And similarly for the ADIA Labs, Abu Dhabi partnership, any comments on sort of the revenue profile over a long-term period and also the profile for that?

Dr. Subodh Kulkarni: So thanks, Steven, for your questions, good questions. So regarding the QPU sale itself, this is a large national lab that we deal with. So it’s certainly they wanted to get a QPU on-premise. That’s what this sale was about. Leads to exciting opportunities, as I mentioned with Quinn in the previous answer with other research organizations, national labs, academic institutes, and other organizations. Long term, certainly we think service is a big contributor to the revenue stream. When you start selling QPUs, because these are going to be complex systems, they will need service support. So definitely expect a service stream to go with the QPU sale long term. I think it’s too early to talk about short term, because we are dealing with large national labs who have hundreds of researchers on-premise on their location.