What Happened?
On , Rigetti Computing announced its financial results for the Q1 2025 quarter ending March 31, 2025. See its press release for the full details.
It wasn’t pretty, but maybe it doesn’t need to be with a lot of cash in the bank … yet.
The Numbers
If you look at the Net Income and Diluted Earnings Per Share, you might get excited, but there should be an asterisk on those, just as there was for the Net Loss and Diluted Loss Per Share in the last quarter.
There’s no escaping that revenue continues to drop, down 35.3% from last quarter and 51.8% year over year. We can attribute some of the sequential quarter loss to the Q1 blues since companies often deplete a big part of their sales pipelines at the end of the previous fiscal year. Having an even bigger loss compared to Q1 2024 is problematic. That’s not annual growth; it’s contraction.
Rigetti Computing GAAP Quarterly Financial Results
| Q1 2025 | Q4 2024 | Q/Q | Q1 2024 | Y/Y | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue ($M) | 1.472 | 2.274 | ↓ 35.3 % | 3.052 | ↓ 51.8 % |
| Operating Expenses ($M) | 22.074 | 19.497 | ↑ 13.2 % | 18.085 | ↑ 22.1 % |
| Research & Development ($M) | 15.455 | 13.657 | ↑ 13.2 % | 11.471 | ↑ 34.7 % |
| Net Income (Loss) ($M) | 42.619 | (152.961) | ↓ 127.9 % | (20.773) | ↓ 305.2 % |
| Diluted Earnings (Loss) Per Share ($) | 0.13 | (0.68) | ↓ 119.1 % | (0.14) | ↓ 192.9 % |
The Charts
With only a slight uplift in Q2 2024, Rigetti’s revenue has dropped quarter over quarter since Q4 2023. I don’t think much analysis is needed here, nor a description of the potential consequences if the trend is not reversed. Sell more devices and systems.
Operating Expenses and R&D expenditures continue to rise. I don’t think the company has a choice on the latter. It talks about its 9-qubit Novera™ QPU processor, but all the major quantum computing players have bigger chips or quantum processing units. Rigetti itself has the 84-qubit Ankaa-3 system, but they highlighted in the earnings statement that they are replacing the 24-qubit chip at the UK National Quantum Computing Center with a still-small 36-qubit model. They have reasons based on the UK testbed conditions, but 36 qubits is not upping the ante very much.
In addition to Rigetti, there are 28 superconducting modality vendors, with either analog or digital modality (Rigetti is digital). Competition is fierce and getting more so.
In our Q4 2024 and FY 2024 report on Rigetti, we highlighted the large negative effect that derivative warrant liabilities had on the quarter’s Net Loss. At that point, we could have said, “Don’t worry; it’s just accounting.” We would then have to say about this quarter’s profit, “Don’t get excited about it; it’s just accounting.”
Unlike D-Wave Quantum and IonQ in their Q1 2024 reports, Rigetti’s total assets fell compared to Q4 2024. Over the last six months, the stock price increases bolstered all their assets via at-the-market sales.
D-Wave’s total assets were reported at $325.6M, IonQ’s at $850.074M, and Rigetti’s at $269.138M. At its burn rate, it still has many quarters of cash available, even if revenue does not improve. It continues to get projects from the UK government, including three Quantum Mission Pilot Awards and it will lead a £3.5 million consortium. Of that, how much does Rigetti get and how much does it have to spend?
Additional Thoughts
We believe the point where quantum computing will begin to become practical and useful (versus a creative way of saying “currently useless”) is around 100,000 physical qubits. Rigetti has 9 and 84. While it is undoubtedly true that the processing quality of chips of roughly the same size can vary significantly, note that among the big superconducting modality quantum computing manufacturers:
- IBM had a 5-qubit chip in 2016.
- Rigetti had its 8-qubit Agave chip in 2017.
- In 2013, IBM demonstrated its research prototype Condor 1,1121 chip. Its Heron processor has 156 qubits.
- Google’s Sycamore “quantum supremacy” chip had 54 qubits in 2019.
- The current Google Willow chip has 105 qubits.
- The IQM Radiance system has 20, 50, or 150 qubits.
In our opinion, Rigetti must immediately focus on much larger networked chips, comfortably break the 100-qubit barrier, and show at least 500-qubits in networked chips within 18 months. They are behind in the superconducting scaling race but have plans—enough plans, more working big chips.
Conclusion
Phrasing this for the company:
Make more money. Sell more products. Perhaps the 9-qubit chip helps with cash flow, but become a contender in the qubit scaling race. Sure, you are working on Quantum Error Correction, and so are all your top competitors. Scale while correcting while networking.
Also See
Company Profile
Company
Contact Email: press@rigetti.com
Contact Phone: +15102105550
Year Founded
2013
Date Went Public
March 2, 2022
Headquarters
775 Heinz Avenue, Berkeley, California 94710, USA
Company Description
Generated by Perplexity on May 7, 2025
Rigetti Computing is a full-stack quantum computing company that designs and fabricates quantum processors and integrates them with control systems and software. Their quantum technology is based on superconducting qubits, which are lithographically defined chip-based circuits enabling universal, gate-model quantum computing. Rigetti develops proprietary quantum chips, including the Ankaa series, which feature tunable couplers and fast gate operations to optimize performance and scalability. The company also offers a cloud platform called Forest, allowing developers to write and test quantum algorithms using their hardware. Rigetti operates a rapid prototyping fabrication lab to advance integrated quantum circuit designs and improve system performance.
Senior Leadership
- Subodh Kulkarni, Chief Executive Officer
- David Rivas, Chief Technical Officer
- Jeffrey Bertelsen, Chief Financial Officer
- Andrew Bestwick, Senior Vice President, Quantum Systems
- Jackie Kaweck, Senior Vice President, Human Resources
Selected Recent News and Announcements
- May 6, 2025 – QphoX, Rigetti and the NQCC announce collaboration on multi-channel optical readout of quantum processors
- April 25, 2025 – Rigetti Computing closes investment by Quanta Computer
- April 25, 2025 – Rigetti granted Air Force Office of Scientific Research award to further develop breakthrough chip fabrication technology
- April 25, 2025 – Rigetti wins Innovate UK’s Quantum Missions pilot competition to advance quantum error correction capabilities on superconducting quantum computers
- April 25, 2025 – Rigetti computing selected to participate in DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative
- February 27, 2025 – Rigetti Computing Announces Strategic Collaboration Agreement with Quanta Computer to Accelerate Development and Commercialization of Superconducting Quantum Computing
- February 11, 2025 – Research from QphoX, Rigetti, and Qblox Demonstrating Optical Readout Technique for Superconducting Qubits Published in Nature Physics
- December 23, 2024 – Rigetti Computing launches 84-qubit Ankaa™-3 system; Achieves 99.5% median two-qubit gate fidelity milestone
- December 10, 2024 – Quantum Machines and Rigetti Announce Successful AI-Powered Calibration of a Quantum Computer
- November 25, 2024 – Rigetti Announces Successful Completion of $100 Million At-the-Market Equity Offering
- October 31, 2024 – Rigetti and Riverlane Progress Towards Fault Tolerant Quantum Computing with Real-Time and Low Latency Error Correction on Rigetti QPU
Related Content and Analysis
- May 6, 2025 – Sutor Group Earnings Brief: Rigetti Computing Announces Financial Results for Q4 2024 and FY 2024
- March 17, 2025 – TreQ Unveils Compass SG25B: The Open-Architecture Quantum Innovation Station
- March 6, 2025 – Sutor Group Earnings Brief: Rigetti Computing Announces Financial Results for Q4 2024 and FY 2024
- November 21, 2024 – The Futurum Group – Quantum in Context: D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti 3Q2024 Financial Results
- August 13, 2024 – The Futurum Group – Rigetti Computing Reports Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results
- May 22, 2024 – The Futurum Group – Quantum in Context: Rigetti Computing’s Q1 2024 Earnings and 9 Qubits
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