Conference Presentation, Keynote
Chad Rigetti at Startup School SV 2016
- Rigetti Quantum Computing joined Y Combinator in summer 2014 with no physical assets and no built qubits; by 2016, the company employed approximately 35 people, including 20+ PhDs, at a facility in Berkeley.
- Rigetti has developed a 5-qubit quantum computer in under two years and is progressing toward a quantum supremacy machine, positioning itself to define the industry for the next 20–40 years.
- Chad Rigetti's background includes 10–12 years in quantum computing, a PhD and postdoc at Yale University (2001–2008), three years at IBM, and the founding of Rigetti in 2013 to develop quantum integrated circuits.
- The company pursues two primary application verticals:
- Quantum chemistry for simulating molecular systems to accelerate drug discovery, material science, and nuclear reactor design.
- Machine learning and artificial intelligence by embedding problems into physical models that are classically intractable but simulatable on quantum hardware.
- Rigetti aims to solve inefficiencies in classical high-performance computing, citing the Tianhe 2 supercomputer (previously the world's most powerful) which cost $400 million, consumed 20 megawatts (enough to power ~20,000 households), and relied on 3.2 million Intel cores.
- The speaker notes that Moore's Law has stalled for eight years regarding lateral transistor scaling, and Amdahl's Law limits the benefits of parallelization in classical architectures.
- President Obama's 2020 target for an exascale computer (30x more powerful than Tianhe 2) would cost ~$1 billion and require a nuclear power plant to operate; Rigetti posits quantum systems as a more energy-efficient and cost-effective path to this performance.
- A single Rigetti chip containing 60–70 qubits is projected to exceed the computational power of the half-football-field-sized Tianhe 2 supercomputer.
- Rigetti operates as a full-stack hard tech company, building a unique supply chain that includes:
- Custom simulation-driven design methods for quantum chips.
- In-house micro-fabrication capability (a custom fab).
- Advanced control electronics required to stabilize the quantum core.
- Cloud-based software, applications, and platform layers.
- The company's strategic roadmap mirrors major tech giants across different layers:
- Hardware: An "Intel-style" business model focusing on quantum integrated circuits.
- Systems: An "IBM-style" business model focused on master system integration.
- Software/Platform: A "Microsoft-style" business model owning the stack.
- Applications: A "Google-style" business model targeting specific use cases like new drug design.
- Rigetti's organizational mission was defined as "building the world's most powerful computer to solve humanity's most pressing problems," a goal reaffirmed by the full team to serve as a rallying cry.
- The speaker defines a "hard tech" company by its necessity to navigate fundamental questions of technical possibility alongside standard market risks, noting that such ventures generate "monumental leverage and defensibility" if successful.
- To manage the tension between product development and organizational capability building, Rigetti prioritizes hiring individuals who "pump entropy out of the vision" by creating order, systems, and clarity.
- The speaker cites the Control Data Corporation 6600 (built by 34 people in Wisconsin) as a historical precedent for small teams out-competing large behemoths in high-performance computing.
- The speaker contrasts classical computers (using ~100 billion photons per bit) with quantum computers (storing/processing information in individual photons), characterizing the latter as a far more efficient technology.
- Rigetti leverages superconducting qubits (artificial atoms built from electrical circuits) to utilize traditional semiconductor manufacturing capabilities for scalability, rather than using naturally occurring atoms or ions.