Chad Rigetti

Rigetti earned a Ph.D. in applied physics at Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry, where he worked on superconducting circuits in Michel Devoret’s group, and then spent about three years at IBMIBMIBM (International Business Machines Corporation) is an American information technology company, renamed in 1924 from the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).Open the full entry’s quantum computing labs. By the time he applied to Y Combinator he had authored more than 30 scientific papers and built multiple world-record-breaking quantum memory devices.⁠[1][2]

In 2013 Rigetti founded Rigetti Computing, based in Berkeley, California, to build a full quantum computing stack based on superconducting qubits, competing with GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry, IBM and Intel; the company joined Y Combinator’s Summer 2014 batch (S14).⁠[1][2]

On May 13, 2017, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z) published the podcast episode “a16z Podcast: Quantum Computing, Now and Next” on its website, featuring Rigetti, founder and CEO of Rigetti Computing, in conversation with a16z’s Chris DixonChris DixonChris Dixon is a programmer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist, and the founder and managing partner of a16z crypto. He co-founded SiteAdvisor and Hunch, helped create Founder Collective, and later joined Andreessen Horowitz, investing in technology companies such as Coinbase. He is also the author of Read Write Own and has long written about blockchains, network ownership, the open internet, and the combination of AI and crypto.Open the full entry. The episode discussed whether Moore’s Law has reached diminishing returns, progress driven by specialized hardware such as GPUs, FPGAs and neuromorphic chips, why classical machines are constrained to binary logic while nature follows quantum mechanics, hard problems such as computational chemistry and large-scale optimization, what quantum computing actually involves and where it stands, the need for hybrid classical-quantum approaches, the companies, countries and people in the field, how a startup can compete, and the application “flywheel.” Summarizing the limits of classical machines, the show notes say: “So our smart machines are really quite dumb.” The episode was uploaded to the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel on January 1, 2019.⁠[3][4]

Rigetti Computing released its Forest 1.0 platform and an 8-qubit processor in June 2017 and a 19-qubit processor in December 2017, announced Quantum Cloud Services and Forest 2.0 in September 2018, and planned a 128-qubit processor for August 2019. As of November 2018 it had raised almost $120 million in venture capital.⁠[1]

In a 2018 interview he said, “Superconducting is best suited for building scalable quantum processing hardware, in my judgment,” and “Quantum advantage will be quantum computing's Wright Brothers–Kitty Hawk moment.”⁠[1]

In March 2022 Rigetti Computing went public; it trades on NasdaqNasdaqNasdaq is an exchange operator and financial technology company headquartered in New York. It runs The Nasdaq Stock Market and other markets and provides capital markets technology, regulatory technology, and data and index services. Founded in 1971, it combined with OMX AB in 2008, and in March 2026 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved its rules for trading tokenized securities.Open the full entry under the ticker RGTI.⁠[2][5]

On November 3, 2022, the company announced that Rigetti would step down as president and CEO, remaining until a successor took over and then focusing on the company’s products and technology. He said, “I'm incredibly proud of the accomplishments of our team over the past 9+ years.” The company later said he intended to resign as president, CEO and director, with an anticipated effective date of December 15, 2022.⁠[6][5]

In 2024 Rigetti co-founded Sygaldry Technologies with Idalia Friedson to make quantum-accelerated AI servers, with employees based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.⁠[7]

Rigetti Computing: Official website: https://www.rigetti.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]