[HN Gopher] Rigetti Computing to go public
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Rigetti Computing to go public
Author : marc__1
Score : 90 points
Date : 2021-10-06 12:38 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rigetti.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rigetti.com)
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| Interesting random fact: The Uber whistleblower who wrote about
| the sexual harassment at the company is married to the CEO of
| Rigetti. Tech is a small world.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| So it is true, women do go for chads.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| Related:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/hyisg7/wh...
| 10x_contrarian wrote:
| Anyone considering investing in Regetti should take a look at the
| company's negative reviews on glassdoor. They paint a picture of
| a highly disfunctional organization struggling with behind-the-
| curve tech driven on hubris and the ego of its founder. Some
| people note the irony of him being married to the famous Uber
| whistleblower while creating a corporate culture that's comprable
| to early Uber in many ways.
|
| Rigetti investors are trying to dump this mess onto retail. Be
| cautious.
| sbilstein wrote:
| Yea I've heard horror stories from friends. CEO writing
| "athletic, no kids, submissive like a ** woman" in his internal
| job description for an executive assistant.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| To be fair, Glassdoor always has negative comments for most
| companies due to the reporting bias (only disappointed
| employees take the effort to voice their concerns).
|
| It is a cliche amongst recruiters around the dreaded Glassdoor
| questions during hiring process.
| exikyut wrote:
| > _created: 21 minutes ago_
|
| > _karma: 2_
|
| _[adds pinch of salt]_
| abrichr wrote:
| I wonder how this squares up with
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/quantum-computing-hype-bad-sc... :
|
| > Crazy headlines abound: "quantum computing will change life as
| we know it," "quantum computing will solve global warming,"
| "Quantum computing will revolutionize science and industry," etc
| etc. These statements are not based on any research or reality at
| all, they are not even wishful thinking. The number of known
| quantum algorithms, which promise advantage over classical
| computation, is just a few (and none of them will "solve global
| warming" for sure). More importantly, exactly zero such
| algorithms have been demonstrated in practice so far and the gap
| between what's needed to realize them and the currently available
| hardware is huge, and it's not just a question of numbers. There
| are qualitative challenges with scaling up, which will likely
| take decades to resolve (if ever).
| chii wrote:
| investing in bleeding edge companies will always be risky. Why
| not let investors take the risk, and may be these engineering
| challenges will get solved due to monetary motivations!
| streetcat1 wrote:
| Because the problem is not the money. Although I think that
| SPAC represent some sort of arbitrage (otherwise there were
| not so much of them in the last year). I.e. it does not
| really matter what the SPAC invest in, as long as it is a
| good story.
| cat199 wrote:
| > The number of known quantum algorithms, which promise
| advantage over classical computation, is just a few
|
| Not at all well versed in the topic, but to me, we are at ENIAC
| stage of quantum - those few algorithms where quantum has an
| advantage provide a huge advantage worth a high price tag to
| those who need them - so this shouldn't be a real worry for
| some level of viability, technical concerns aside (which are
| not insignificant, as you point out) - but also as you
| highlight, 'some level of viability' is not the same as
| 'instant changes everywhere', so perceptions of hype-vs-reality
| in the general population is a different question
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Quantum computing may not be all it's cracked up to be , but i
| 'm ok with some smart people becoming newly minted millionaires
| by investors with excess wealth.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| > Quantum computing may not be all it's cracked up to be ,
| but i 'm ok with some smart people becoming newly minted
| millionaires _by investors with excess wealth_.
|
| Unfortunately, SPACs are mostly a way for those with "excess
| wealth" (the investor class) to leech off of mom and pops
| (retail investors).
|
| The sponsors basically get interest free loans to seek out
| acquisitions of companies that in most cases wouldn't be
| public markets material and when they consummate a merger,
| they can walk away with millions upon millions of dollars in
| fees even if the SPAC performs horribly. When a SPAC performs
| well, their profits are almost always massively
| disproportionate to the money they invested and risk they
| took.
|
| Fortunately in this case, even if quantum computing might not
| be all it's cracked up to be, Rigetti is a "full-stack"
| quantum computing company, so it's an amazing opportunity. /s
| boringg wrote:
| Unfortunately i don't think you understand how a SPAC works.
| Retail gets burned, original investors make money through
| liquidity and so do the executives and whoever brought the
| SPAC to the market as long as the company doesn't crash and
| burn before 6 month lock-up.
|
| What you are unintentionally saying is that you don't care if
| a bunch of smart people just made money off mom and pop
| (retail) investors if it turns out to be over hyped and
| doesn't derive value.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| > just made money off mom and
|
| You make it sound so bad but maybe it really IS bad. Maybe
| it's better that these smart people make some money, while
| moving the field of quantum optics somewhat further, than
| if some advertisers do.
| boringg wrote:
| Only reason I say it is bad is because the insider really
| know if this is going to perform well or not - SPACs have
| not traditionally done well and have left mom and pop //
| retail investors as the bag holders in many cases. I mean
| you could say what the pied piper of SPACS (Chamath
| Palihapitiya) said which is "do your own due diligence"
| but he was highly conflicted when he said that (hyping
| SPAC deals that have since shed significant value while
| make money on the initial transactions).
|
| To be fair we still have to see how the SPACs from the
| last year perform over the next 5 years. My guess is that
| they went to the public markets when it was rich and
| retail investment was high though the future is
| unwritten.
|
| I just wanted to correct your assertion that it was the
| wealthy that are paying for this, when in fact it is
| likely just retail investors who will hold the end result
| (whether good or bad).
| varelse wrote:
| Caveat Emptor. Probably better odds than PowerBall at
| least. But yes, avoid, avoid, avoid IMO. You can't stop
| people from trying to get rich quick.
| philshem wrote:
| For those interested, longform article about SPACs:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/07/the-pied-
| piper...
| elefanten wrote:
| "Mom and pop" retail investors aren't making substantial
| investments in SPACs without ample warning. Mom and pop are
| mostly in ETFs.
|
| I don't believe anyone unaware of the risk is
| systematically or substantially investing in SPACs.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| Hmmm isn't that fraud? If not legal fraud it sounds ethically
| very dubious. Edit: I'm specifically referring to the GP
| comment and not the overall discussion.
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| it s a form of redistribution
| rubyfan wrote:
| 100%.
|
| Why are we OK with smart people ripping anyone off? Just
| because investors have excess wealth it's OK to steal from
| them?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| without trying to be extra provocative, but we are A-OK
| with rich people ripping people off by exploiting their
| weaknesses, addictions or lack of oversight, so the
| reverse is not much different.
|
| Capitalism has a place for borderline, gray, unethical-
| but-legal 'frauds'
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| This is clearly a strawman, so good job not being "extra
| provocative". Please drop the Robin Hood complex and try
| to have an intellectually honest conversation.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I think thee assumption is that the investors have likely
| _stolen_ from people, through perfectly legal yet
| ethically dubious means many consider theft but isn 't
| defined in law as theft (deceit, disproportionate reward
| of effort, etc.). Often the type of theft uses
| indirection or is difficult to quantify.
|
| You tend not to get investment level rich/wealthy without
| playing in the ethical grey areas, skirting laws, and/or
| taking calculated risks of breaking laws to capture more
| than you actually _directly_ produce.
|
| Not always the case but it tends to be the case from many
| peoples' world views. As such, it's viewed more as a
| thief stealing from a thief, where most have little pitty
| for either thief.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Congrats to the team, well deserved! I met Chad once at a quantum
| computing conference in Zurich in 2011, when he was still working
| for IBM as a researcher. I myself finished my PhD in 2012,
| leaving academia to work in software. In 2013 I contacted Chad
| and we had a short Skype call where we talked about quantum
| computing, since we were both interested in doing something in
| the space. I don't remember why I didn't follow up on the call, I
| guess I was busy working on my own ideas and forgot about it. In
| 2014 I then had the chance to join John Martinis' quantum
| computing team (which was later acquired by Google), which I
| declined because I had just won a small grant for starting a
| startup and wanted to pursue that. After that didn't take off I
| interviewed again with Rigetti in 2017, but ultimately turned
| down an offer to join because I still wanted to start something
| of my own (also their offer didn't seem very attractive to me at
| the time). So I guess in hindsight those were pretty bad
| decisions. That said I really cheer for the team, they have built
| an amazing company and achieved things I wouldn't have thought
| possible, so I really hope they continue on their path to even
| bigger success. And for me I hope I'll make better decisions in
| the future.
| rubyfan wrote:
| You made a set of reasonable decisions that only now seem like
| you missed out on something. Consider you'd have had to get in
| early and spend what almost a decade to get to here?
| ak217 wrote:
| The way I like to put it is: try to make justifiable
| decisions, but don't ever second-guess yourself. To me that's
| essential self-respect.
| onphonenow wrote:
| Offers may have had relatively small equity - think 1%. So at
| most 10 - 15m. If you have better ideas and ability to build a
| company and execute not unreasonable to do own thing
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Great story. Thanks for sharing and love your positivity.
| boringg wrote:
| Is quantum computing the new AI in terms of overhype and under
| deliver? Honestly curious, not trolling.
| Frost1x wrote:
| What technology isn't overhyped and under delivered? It's
| pretty difficult to get anyone remotely interested in
| technology unless they think it's going to be revolutionary
| and/or make them rich.
|
| I used to push back against the ridiculous overselling but I
| instead decided to join the club. If you tackle impossible
| problems and fail, people understand unlike when you tackle
| incredibly difficult problems people think are simple and you
| fail. In addition, you sound like a visionary and have a great
| story: people eat this up. Rarely ever is anyone concerned with
| practicality until it comes to actually paying for vision.
| Suddenly when people start paying for the vision, they find
| themselves wondering why they didn't ask all the practicality
| questions. You handwave the infeasibility away as pioneering
| discovery, then rinse and repeat until someone becomes grounded
| in the reality of what's possible with technology.
|
| After that you move on to the next person with visions of
| granduer. Either the pool of naive clients will eventually grow
| intelligent of the charade in the tech industry and suddenly
| become interested in pursuing difficult yet realistic goals or
| wel'll just continue this dance where the investors and clients
| shared memory never reaches this stage and continue to pedal
| over-fanciful promises.
|
| People don't like to hear about the problems of reality, they
| only want to hear about the potential promise of technology
| and/or how rich it might make them. Quantum computing is an
| interesting field and by no means am I saying it isn't a
| worthwhile grounded pursuit, I'm merely stating that the
| ridiculous oversell is the norm in all tech and yes, quantum
| computing is running neck and neck in the hype cycle with AI.
| Don't fight the hype cycles, identify and ride them otherwise
| you might drown from the wave of industry momentum.
| [deleted]
| thwoei2u4234 wrote:
| That's so passe.
|
| QuantumAI on the other hand will revolutionize the world as we
| know it.
| boringg wrote:
| Glad we cleared that up!
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| I think it's on a whole new level. My money's on us developing
| superhuman general AI before an effective implementation of
| Shor's algorithm.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Almost 3 years old at this point, but still highly relevant:
|
| https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/quantum-comput...
| roughly wrote:
| Aside from the obvious problems with SPACs, I wonder if they wind
| up having more of a chilling effect on the overall tech spaces
| than not.
|
| A lot of nascent technologies run in cycles - quantum, ai,
| synbio, vr all have had hype cycles in which a lot of money
| floods the field and a lot of progress can be made, even if the
| underlying technology isn't ready for the mass market yet. At
| some point it becomes clear there's no market yet, and the
| investors flee, and we have to wait for another cycle.
|
| The SPAC seems like an obvious way for one company to make a
| boatload of cash - Rigetti stands to take in a few hundred
| million, which is a hell of a fundraising round, and bully for
| them, but it also means the market's taking a closer look at them
| an awful lot sooner than they would otherwise, because there's no
| way they'd be going public via the traditional method at this
| point. I can't see that being good for fundraising elsewhere in
| the quantum sector overall right now, and I wonder if it presages
| an earlier retreat from the sector than would otherwise have
| happened.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| > full-stack quantum computing
|
| Anyone familiar with the term? Haven't heard it before.
|
| > leader in scalable quantum processor technology
|
| I thought quantum computing was still in the research phase?
| What's there to scale?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| they are going with the flow. I bet QuantumOps generalists will
| be a thing too.
| cameronperot wrote:
| > Anyone familiar with the term? Haven't heard it before.
|
| Full-stack probably means they deal with all areas of QC, from
| theoretical research to hardware implementation.
|
| > I thought quantum computing was still in the research phase?
| What's there to scale?
|
| IMO it is still largely in the research phase, but actual
| quantum computers do exist. The thing to scale would be the
| number of physical and logical (error-corrected) qubits.
| Quantum error correction is difficult though, and will take a
| lot of work to get scalable QCs with error correction. With
| some of the current schemes being pursued today, the number of
| physical qubits per logical qubit is quite high (e.g. 17
| physical per one logical in Surface-17).
| krastanov wrote:
| "Full-stack" is not an official term, but it is a reasonable
| way to refer to "working on both creating the low level
| hardware (e.g. transmons), the intermediate layer (error
| correction that makes the many physical qubits into a few
| reliable logical qubits), and the higher levels of algorithms
| for useful applications".
|
| There is no "scalable" quantum computer in existence yet. If we
| can make a million qubits of quality 10x better than the ones
| we have now, then we will definitely be able to talk about
| scaling and useful applications. Today we have machines with
| 10s to 100s of qubits that are extremely exciting technology
| demonstrators, but too small and too noisy to fulfill any of
| the promises of quantum computing from the 90s and 00s.
| 1001101 wrote:
| I would imagine Shor's algorithm adds some friction to
| scaling, and who can be permitted to use scaled systems in
| the near term.
| rvz wrote:
| Congratulations to the team. Sort of a win for quantum computing
| but where are the revenues and the numbers that justifies this
| valuation?
|
| A very risky investment into the unknown without knowing this.
| username_my1 wrote:
| SPAC is a scam, I really hope that the SEC will make an end for
| this frenzy soon.
| f00zz wrote:
| Too bad Planetary Resources went belly up before the SPAC craze,
| I'd have invested on that one...
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Since this is HN, I want to point out that they use Common Lisp
| and are a productive contributor to the CL community with open
| source. Congratulations!
| mikewave wrote:
| They're not the only QC company using Common Lisp ;-)
| dunefox wrote:
| Does CL lend itself uniquely to QC?
| mikewave wrote:
| I think that a lot of physicists who are now in their 40s+
| learned and used Lisp in university, and have simply found
| ways to keep using it since then.
|
| For new hires, the fact is, a quantum computing codebase is
| daunting to learn regardless of the language. Therefore,
| apprenticing someone on a new language at the same time as
| everything else they are learning is not really the same
| relative burden that it would be if, say, the application
| was a plain boring database CRUD app in an unfamiliar
| language.
|
| We definitely make excellent use of macros and DSLs and the
| REPL in many ways. I wish I could talk about it more, but
| alas.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Everytime I hear this company name I am reminded of something
| else... Olivetti, the Italian typewriter and computer maker from
| forever ago -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_S.p.A.
| cadr wrote:
| That is exactly what I thought. Didn't even know they were
| still around.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Rigetti is a completely vertically integrated company, from
| design to manufacturing (Fab-1)[1] to cloud access (Rigetti's own
| QCS [2] as well as AWS Bracket[3]). They have their own Fab which
| is extremely advantageous and I cloud be wrong but neither
| Google, IBM or anyone has that capability in-house. I guess, it
| is not fair to draw comparisons to other semiconductor companies
| like Intel or TSMC since the scale is off by a factor of 10,000x,
| nonetheless, having your own Fab creates opportunities for
| process engineering that would otherwise be too slow. I think the
| holy grail of quantum computing is how best to architect, design
| and manufacture quantum chips with low noise, everything else is
| sort of secondary. Cloud access is a solved problem.
|
| Congrats to the team!
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yaY4Fw-ovM
|
| [2] https://qcs.rigetti.com/
|
| [3] https://aws.amazon.com/braket/hardware-providers/rigetti/
| joshhart wrote:
| I've heard of culture problems from a few folks and similar
| comments are here today. My friend who works in Quantum Computing
| says the joke is "I regretti joining this company"
| boringg wrote:
| Has anyone done any real due diligence on the company within the
| community? Do they have a really exciting path forward and
| serious traction at this point to warrant their price in the
| market?
|
| I never trust the SPAC route - less rigorous detail and typically
| overhyped prospects. Would like to be corrected though.
| [deleted]
| wskinner wrote:
| > [...] a fully committed PIPE in excess of $100 million, direct
| investment, and $345 million of cash held in the trust account of
| Supernova II, assuming no redemptions.
|
| This is an odd assumption - the median redemption rate is 73%[1].
| So the total new cash into the company will likely be less than
| half of the quoted $458mm.
|
| 1: https://hbr.org/2021/07/spacs-what-you-need-to-know
| JshWright wrote:
| Anybody else in NY/New England always read "SPAC" as "Saratoga
| Performing Arts Center" the first time? No? Just me?
| phyalow wrote:
| I'll pass on it, I know several researchers that work there, they
| are all privately convinced nothing meaningful will happen for
| 10+years.
| mathgenius wrote:
| That sounds reasonable. On the other hand, if a quantum
| computer dropped out of the sky tomorrow, virtually no one
| would know what to do with it. So there is plenty of
| infrastructure, tooling and know-how that needs to be produced
| in that 10+ year timeframe. And there will likely be huge
| demand for all of these things as big co's scramble to get on
| the bandwagon.
| whatever1 wrote:
| That is crazy high valuation for something that will not be
| useful for at least 20 more years.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| You may be right, but then what _should_ they be valued at?
|
| It's ultimately a gamble for something that's some unknown
| distance beyond the horizon but would, if fully realized,
| actually change the world.
| whatever1 wrote:
| The valuation implies that there is 1.5% probability of this
| company becoming BP with a market cap of 100B and bringing
| 10B in profits per year.
|
| That is with a technology that currently is not working, and
| is not expected to work in useful scale for decades.
| solveit wrote:
| Or a 0.15% probability of becoming 10x bigger. For things
| like this, essentially all the expected value is in the
| very long tail. I won't be buying shares any time soon, but
| more power to those who do.
| the_duke wrote:
| > Rigetti expects to scale its quantum computers from 80 qubits
| in 2021, to 1,000 qubits in 2024, and to 4,000 qubits in 2026.
|
| Is that realistic at all? From what I've read on the subject,
| everyone seems to have trouble scaling up.
| krastanov wrote:
| Having a device with 1000 transmons does not seem too crazy to
| me. But I would be deeply impressed if the quality of these
| 1000 transmons is not lower than the quality of the current 80.
| And keep in mind that either way these will be "physical"
| qubits, not error protected logical qubits. It takes hundreds
| or thousands of noisy physical qubits to make reliable logical
| qubits (with error correcting codes).
| wadeparzival wrote:
| IBM has a similar timeline in its roadmap, going from 65 qubits
| in 2020 to 1,121 qubits in 2023. From their blog [1], it seems
| like scaling beyond 1,000 will be the real challenge.
|
| [1] https://research.ibm.com/blog/ibm-quantum-roadmap
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