Rigetti Computing Q1 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• Rigetti reported Q1 2026 revenue of $4.4 million, up from $1.5 million a year earlier, driven mainly by on-premises Novera QPU deliveries and related government and research contracts. Gross margin held near 31%, while operating losses widened as spending increased on R&D, engineering and fabrication.
• The company launched general availability of its 108-qubit Cepheus-1-108Q system across major cloud platforms and said it is working to improve two-qubit gate fidelity from about 99.1% toward 99.5% later this year. Management described the system as its largest to date and said customer interest is growing, though current usage remains mostly research-oriented.
• Rigetti ended the quarter with about $569 million in cash and investments and no debt, giving it room to fund elevated capital spending on Fab-1 and dilution refrigerators. Management reaffirmed its longer-term goal of reaching quantum advantage in roughly three years, with full fault-tolerant quantum computing seen as a five- to seven-year effort.

Rigetti Computing NASDAQ: RGTI reported higher first-quarter 2026 revenue and highlighted the launch of its 108-qubit Cepheus-1-108Q system as management emphasized customer adoption, ongoing fidelity improvements and a sizable cash position to fund its quantum computing roadmap.

Chief Executive Subodh Kulkarni said the quarter centered on three priorities: making the company’s newest system broadly available, expanding use across government, academic and commercial customers, and continuing work toward what Rigetti defines as quantum advantage. Chief Financial Officer Jeff Bertelsen said revenue rose to $4.4 million from $1.5 million in the first quarter of 2025, driven primarily by on-premises Novera QPU deliveries and related contracts, as well as government and research projects.

Revenue Growth Driven by Novera Deliveries

Bertelsen said gross margin was 31%, compared with approximately 30% a year earlier. He said the quarter’s margin reflected contract mix, including a higher contribution from QPU and system deliveries that include lower-margin third-party refrigeration.

Total operating expenses increased to $27.3 million from $22.1 million in the prior-year period, with spending concentrated in research and development, engineering headcount, fabrication and system integration. Stock-based compensation was $5.9 million, up from $4.2 million a year earlier.

Rigetti posted an operating loss of $26 million, compared with an operating loss of $21.6 million in the first quarter of 2025. On a GAAP basis, net income was $33.1 million, compared with $42.6 million in the prior-year quarter. Bertelsen said GAAP results included $53.7 million in non-cash gains from changes in the fair value of derivative warrant and earn-out liabilities, compared with $62.1 million in the same period last year.

Excluding stock-based compensation and fair value adjustments, non-GAAP net loss was $14.7 million, or $0.04 per diluted share, compared with a non-GAAP net loss of approximately $15.3 million, or $0.05 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2025.

Bertelsen said Rigetti recognized “a little bit less than half” of the $5.7 million in on-premises Novera quantum computing system purchase orders announced late last year during the first quarter and expects the remainder to be recognized in the second quarter. The company also continues to execute on an $8.4 million C-DAC order for an on-premises 108-qubit system in India, with revenue expected in the fourth quarter of 2026 following installation and performance acceptance testing.

Cepheus-1-108Q Becomes Generally Available

Kulkarni said Rigetti’s 108-qubit Cepheus-1-108Q system is now generally available through Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services, Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure Quantum and qBraid. He described it as the company’s highest qubit-count system to date and “the industry’s largest modular quantum computing system,” built from 12 interconnected 9-qubit chiplets.

The system triples the number of qubits and chiplets from Rigetti’s prior 36-qubit Cepheus-1-36Q system. Kulkarni said Cepheus-1-108Q has achieved a median two-qubit gate fidelity of approximately 99.1%, gate speeds of roughly 60 nanoseconds and median single-qubit gate fidelity of 99.9%.

Management said Rigetti aims to improve the 108-qubit system to approximately 99.5% median two-qubit gate fidelity later this year. In response to an analyst question, Kulkarni said the current limiting factor is coherence time, which is in the 25-microsecond to 30-microsecond range. He said Rigetti needs to roughly double, and ideally triple, coherence time to reach the targeted fidelity level.

Kulkarni also discussed the company’s adiabatic CZ gate work. Rigetti has achieved 99.8% median two-qubit gate fidelity with 40-nanosecond gate speeds on a 9-qubit system and demonstrated two-qubit gate fidelities as high as 99.9% at 28-nanosecond gate speeds on a prototype system. He said those results are being used to inform future larger-scale systems, although scaling performance from prototype devices to systems above 100 qubits remains complex.

Roadmap Targets Quantum Advantage in About Three Years

Rigetti reiterated its goal of reaching quantum advantage in roughly three years. Kulkarni described the target system as approximately 1,000 qubits, 99.9% two-qubit gate fidelity, gate speeds of less than 50 nanoseconds and some form of error mitigation or control.

He said the quantum advantage system is expected to use error mitigation and “some form of error correction,” but not necessarily full quantum error correction. Kulkarni said full fault-tolerant quantum computing involving quantum low-density parity-check code error correction and potentially hundreds of thousands of qubits is more likely on a five- to seven-year timeline.

During the question-and-answer session, Kulkarni said Rigetti is evaluating NVIDIA’s recently announced open-source model for calibration, bring-up and error correction support, while also continuing work with partners such as Riverlane. He said these efforts could be complementary rather than replacements for one another.

Kulkarni also said Rigetti continues to participate in DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative. He said the company received feedback late last year and is working on areas including error correction and scaling, with future phases tied to milestones.

Cash Position Supports Investment Plans

Rigetti ended the quarter with approximately $569 million in cash equivalents and available-for-sale investments, compared with $209.1 million as of March 31, 2025, and approximately $589.8 million at year-end 2025. Bertelsen said the company continues to operate with no debt.

Capital expenditures in the quarter were primarily tied to investments in Fab-1 and additional dilution refrigerator capacity to support higher qubit-count systems over the next several years. Bertelsen said 2026 capital expenditures are expected to remain elevated relative to prior years, largely because of refrigeration and infrastructure needs rather than major changes to the company’s fab footprint.

Kulkarni also discussed Rigetti’s previously announced intention to invest up to $100 million in the United Kingdom over the next several years. He said the investment could include additional headcount, more quantum computers in the U.K. and expanded facilities. Rigetti currently has a system at the U.K.’s National Quantum Computing Centre and a small office in London.

Asked about the company’s partnership with Quanta, Kulkarni said Quanta’s most notable contribution so far has been the design of a new control system that Rigetti has started including in recent offerings. He said Rigetti expects Quanta to continue improving control systems and contribute to other parts of the hardware stack over the next year or two.

Customer Interest Remains Early but Growing

Kulkarni said cloud usage of Cepheus-1-108Q is still too new to quantify because the system was deployed about a month ago, but he said interest is high and usage has been “quite high” in the early period. He said most current use remains research-oriented, with workloads lasting seconds to minutes, rather than commercial data center operations.

Rigetti also pointed to continued demand for on-premises Novera QPUs from universities, national labs and quantum computing centers. Kulkarni cited an order from the University of Saskatchewan and said the company is seeing increased interest from industries including materials, logistics and financial services, though commercial revenue remains early.

“We are not managing the business around short-term revenue optimization,” Bertelsen said. “We are managing it around credible long-term progress toward quantum advantage in commercially relevant systems.”

About Rigetti Computing NASDAQ: RGTI

Rigetti Computing is a pioneering quantum computing company that designs and manufactures superconducting quantum processors alongside a complementary software stack. Founded in 2013 by CEO Chad Rigetti, the company has developed end-to-end quantum systems—from cryogenic hardware to control electronics—to advance the performance and scalability of quantum machines.

At the core of Rigetti's offering is its Quantum Cloud Services (QCS) platform, which enables developers and enterprises to access quantum processing units (QPUs) and hybrid quantum-classical workflows via the cloud.

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