Rigetti Computing to go public
rigetti.com
rigetti.com
> 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).
Why are we OK with smart people ripping anyone off? Just because investors have excess wealth it’s OK to steal from them?
Capitalism has a place for borderline, gray, unethical-but-legal 'frauds'
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
I don't believe anyone unaware of the risk is systematically or substantially investing in SPACs.
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
Rigetti investors are trying to dump this mess onto retail. Be cautious.
> karma: 2
[adds pinch of salt]
It is a cliche amongst recruiters around the dreaded Glassdoor questions during hiring process.
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.
Congrats to the team!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yaY4Fw-ovM
[3] https://aws.amazon.com/braket/hardware-providers/rigetti/
I never trust the SPAC route - less rigorous detail and typically overhyped prospects. Would like to be corrected though.
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.
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?
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).
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.
A very risky investment into the unknown without knowing this.
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.
QuantumAI on the other hand will revolutionize the world as we know it.
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.
Electricity, the printing press, ...
https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/quantum-comput...
It's ultimately a gamble for something that's some unknown distance beyond the horizon but would, if fully realized, actually change the world.
That is with a technology that currently is not working, and is not expected to work in useful scale for decades.
Is that realistic at all? From what I've read on the subject, everyone seems to have trouble scaling up.
Unfortunate state of affairs