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Rigetti Computing (NASDAQ:RGTI) surged during Wednesday trading after achieving a new milestone, which places its quantum computing systems closer to achieving profitability.
The Berkeley-based quantum computing company announced it has reached a key mid-year milestone, achieving 99.5% median two-qubit gate fidelity on its modular 36-qubit system.
“Rigetti’s new chiplet design proves it can scale quantum computers while cutting errors in half,” said Seeking Alpha analyst Yiannis Zourmpanos. “This milestone means its technology is moving closer to real-world, paying customers. If progress continues, Rigetti could finally turn its quantum vision into a viable business.”
Rigetti’s stock rocketed 30% by the closing bell.
The 99.5% median two-qubit gate fidelity means the average chance of error has been reduced to half a percent when the gate is applied to two qubits. A qubit can be compared to a bit in classical computing. However, while bits are either a zero or a one, a qubit can be either, or both, resulting in much faster computations than classical computing.
While many quantum computing companies create qubits by trapping ions or atoms, Rigetti utilizes superconducting qubits. When these materials are driven down to extremely low temperatures, they lose electrical resistance and maintain quantum states for longer periods of time.
“We benefit from the many advantages of superconducting qubits, including gate speeds more than 1,000x faster than other modalities like ion trap and pure atoms, and scalability,” said Rigetti CEO Subodh Kulkarni. “By leveraging well-known techniques from the semiconductor industry, we’ve developed proprietary technology that we believe is critical to enable scaling to higher qubit count systems.”
Kulkarni said he plans to release more details and updates on their advances in quantum computing during its second quarter earnings report. Rigetti is slated to release its second quarter earnings results on August 7. A consensus estimate calls for adjusted earnings per share of minus $0.04 on revenue of $1.87M. Rigetti has reported year-over-year revenue losses for the past four quarters.
The company plans to launch the 36-qubit platform on August 15 and remains on track to release its larger system, also targeting 99.5% fidelity, by the end of 2025.
Other quantum stocks made gains as well. Quantum Computing (NASDAQ:QUBT) climbed 4%, D-Wave Quantum (NYSE:QBTS) increased 4.7% and IonQ (NYSE:IONQ) jumped 5%.