Rigetti Computing has announced its Q4 2024 financial results. A summary of key financial metrics comparing Q4 2024 with Q3 2024 and the year-ago quarter of Q4 2023 is shown in the table below.
From a financial standpoint, Rigetti reported $2.3 million in revenue for Q4 2024, reflecting a 4.2% decline from Q3 2024 and a 32.4% drop compared to Q4 2023. The company’s operating expenses rose to $19.5 million, a 4.8% increase from Q3 2024 but a slight 1.0% decrease from Q4 2023. Operating loss stood at $18.5 million, up 6.9% from Q3 2024 and 7.6% from Q4 2023. Notably, the company reported a net loss of $153.0 million, largely impacted by $135.1 million in non-cash charges related to changes in the fair value of earn-out and derivative warrant liabilities. As of the end of 2024, Rigetti’s cash, cash equivalents, and available-for-sale securities totaled $217.2 million, more than doubling from the previous quarter.
The overall top‐line trend is mildly disappointing, highlighting the challenge of turning quantum research into steady commercial revenues. Rigetti has begun earning revenue from quantum‐as‐a‐service deals, government contracts, and research partnerships, that business line remains relatively small. Rigetti remains in a heavy investment phase — like many quantum‐computing peers — where revenues are modest, and operating losses are inevitable given the high R&D burden. The steep net loss increase reflects accounting complexities more than a fundamental operational shift.
Operating expenses were relatively stable, suggesting R&D spending and SG&A remain near last year’s level and indicating that Rigetti is operating efficiently.
The new, significant liquidity gives the company runway to continue R&D and systems development but also underscores that equity dilution or debt issuance was used to shore up resources. Rigetti will be able to fund continued R&D in superconducting quantum processors without an immediate need to return to the capital markets but might be constraint in its strategic options.
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On the technical side, Rigetti launched its 84-qubit Ankaa-3 system in December 2024, featuring an extensive hardware redesign and achieving key performance milestones. The system demonstrated a 99.0% median iSWAP gate fidelity and a 99.5% median fidelity with fSim gates. The company remains on track to scale to 100+ qubits by the end of 2025 while aiming for a twofold reduction in error rates.
Like Rigetti’s prior chips, Ankaa‐3 uses transmon qubits fabricated on a superconducting circuit. In principle, this approach enables faster gate operations (nanosecond‐scale) compared to many other systems (microseconds or slower) and offers a path to manufacturing at scale via standard semiconductor fab processes. The “84‐qubit” count places it in the “mid‐scale” range for superconducting QPUs—below IBM’s 127‐qubit Eagle or 433‐qubit Osprey, but still beyond many academic or smaller‐scale systems. It remains to be seen how Rigetti leverages qubit count versus improving overall fidelity; more qubits do not necessarily mean more computational power if gate error rates and coherence times are suboptimal. Rigetti has signaled a focus on improved coherence times, reduced crosstalk, and higher‐fidelity gates in Ankaa‐3. One known challenge with superconducting architectures is isolating each qubit while maintaining the ability to do multi‐qubit gates. If Rigetti succeeded in engineering better isolation or an improved readout mechanism, Ankaa‐3 could yield higher quantum volume (or other benchmarks) than previous Rigetti systems of similar or even lower qubit counts.
Also, Rigetti has discussed “modular” approaches in the past, which could allow them to tile multiple 84‐qubit chips for future scaling. The success of that design will hinge on robust interconnects and minimal overhead in cross‐chip communications.
Superconducting qubits are notoriously sensitive to environmental factors — temperature drift, slight frequency variations, electromagnetic interference, etc. Rigetti has described using advanced ML techniques to zero in on optimal qubit frequencies, pulse shapes, and readout settings faster than manual or purely grid‐search methods. The system performs repeated calibration “sweeps,” measures outcomes in real time, and adjusts control pulses accordingly. This closed‐loop approach is key because the calibration environment is constantly shifting. Over time, the AI engine “learns” the underlying error landscape, enabling quicker recalibrations even as conditions change. If their ML approach significantly shortens calibration times and keeps qubits running closer to optimal parameters, it should translate directly into higher‐fidelity operations and more stable performance on larger‐scale devices.
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Rigetti also entered into a strategic collaboration with Quanta Computer, a global leader in computer server manufacturing. Both companies committed to investing over $100 million each over the next five years to accelerate the development and commercialization of superconducting quantum computing. Additionally, Quanta plans to invest $35 million in Rigetti, pending regulatory clearance.
Further expanding its market reach, Rigetti sold a Novera QPU to Montana State University, marking its first sale of a quantum processing unit to an academic institution. The QPU will support quantum education and research initiatives at MSU’s Quantum Core Research Center (QCORE). In parallel, Rigetti participated in an AI-powered calibration challenge, demonstrating automated QPU calibration in collaboration with Quantum Elements and Qruise.
This is an important entry into a new market segment for Rigetti; on a background trend of on-premise deployments gaining speed in quantum, this is an opportunity to bolster revenue adoption in the near to medium term.
A press release from Rigetti announcing its Q4 2024 financial results can be found here, and a recording of its Q4 2024 management conference call can be accessed here.
March 6, 2025
