Rigetti Brand Guidelines: Berkeley 2013, Fab-1 Chips & a 2022 Nasdaq Listing

From IBM research to Y Combinator.

Rigetti Computing was founded in 2013 by Chad Rigetti, a physicist who had worked on quantum computing at IBM and studied under Michel Devoret, English Wikipedia says. It is based in Berkeley, California, and builds quantum computers from superconducting circuits — tiny electrical loops that behave as qubits when cooled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Wikipedia credits its founder with more than 140 publications on quantum mechanics and quantum computing.

The company began as a start-up in the classic Silicon Valley mould. In 2014, Wikipedia says, it was funded by the incubator Y Combinator as one of its “spaceshot” companies and took part in the Alchemist Accelerator programme. By February 2016 it had made its first quantum processor, a three-qubit chip of aluminium circuits on a silicon wafer. That year it raised a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz and, in November, a Series B round led by Vy Capital, with Y Combinator taking part in both.

Progress was measured in qubits and software releases. By spring 2017 Rigetti was testing eight-qubit machines, and in June 2017 it released Forest 1.0, a cloud platform for writing and running quantum programs, Wikipedia says. Forest is built on Quil, short for Quantum Instruction Language, the company’s own instruction set for hybrid quantum and classical computing; programs are written with open-source Python tools such as pyQuil. As of June 2017, Wikipedia says, Forest let programmers write algorithms for a simulated chip of 36 qubits, ahead of real hardware of that size. That pairing of chips and a home-made programming language set the pattern the company still follows.

Chips, fridges and a fab of its own.

Rigetti calls itself an integrated systems company: it says it builds quantum computers and the superconducting processors inside them, and offers them through its Quantum Cloud Services platform. English Wikipedia uses the phrase “full-stack” for the same idea — the company designs and fabricates the chips, connects them to control electronics and writes the software that programmers use.

Where the chips are made is documented on both sides. Wikipedia says Rigetti runs a rapid-prototyping fabrication lab called Fab-1 in Fremont, California, near its Berkeley headquarters, where it also keeps development systems and cooling equipment. The company describes Fab-1 as a captive quantum integrated circuit foundry that combines silicon semiconductor and MEMS processing with its own methods, including superconducting through-silicon vias and flip-chip bonding. Its home page walks visitors through a dilution refrigerator, the cryostat that cools the processor, pointing out the gold-plated copper plates that separate its temperature stages; at the lowest plate, the company says, the processor sits at about one-hundredth of a kelvin, inside nested casings that act as thermal and radiation shields.

The product names come in families. Rigetti lists trademarks including Aspen, Ankaa, Cepheus and Novera. In July 2023, Wikipedia says, it launched a single-chip 84-qubit processor. Novera is a nine-qubit processor that the company says is ready to ship to customers. Its newer systems are built from chiplets: on 7 April 2026 Quantum Computing Report reported the general availability of Cepheus-1-108Q, made of twelve interconnected nine-qubit chiplets and offered through Rigetti’s own cloud service and Amazon Braket, and the trade site Evertiq reported the launch on 24 April 2026, quoting the company’s description of it as its highest qubit-count system to date. It followed a 36-qubit predecessor, Cepheus-1-36Q. Quantum Computing Report added that it was the first gate-based device with more than 100 qubits to be hosted on Amazon Braket.

How the sector presents itself.

Quantum computing companies sell machines that few customers will ever see, so their pictures carry much of the explaining. The most familiar image is the dilution refrigerator: a tiered, gold-coloured structure of plates and cables that looks a little like a chandelier when its outer casings are removed. Rigetti’s website, for one, walks visitors through such a refrigerator, naming the gold-plated copper plates that separate its temperature stages.

Each hardware approach has its own pictures. Companies that trap ions or neutral atoms tend to show vacuum chambers, laser tables and optical benches, often lit so that the beams and windows glow; makers of superconducting and silicon devices show chip close-ups and wafers, frequently under blue or violet light. Photonic companies show the optical chips and fibres that carry their qubits. Alongside the hardware come people: physicists and engineers at racks of control electronics, oscilloscopes and laptops.

Because qubits themselves cannot be photographed in any ordinary sense, the sector also leans on abstraction. Renderings of glowing spheres, lattices, interference patterns and waves stand in for superposition and entanglement, and dark backgrounds with points of coloured light are common across websites, investor presentations and conference stands.

Those conferences are part of the visual record too. IEEE Quantum Week, whose 2026 edition its organisers set in Toronto, gathers researchers and engineers around technical papers and workshops, while Q2B, which lists 2026 meetings in Tokyo, Copenhagen and Chicago, presents itself as a place to connect quantum technology with business. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — who founded it, who owns it and where its machines are built — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A SPAC, a new chief executive and Nasdaq.

Rigetti went public through a special-purpose acquisition company. In October 2021 it announced a merger with Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II, as TechCrunch reported and the company’s own news page relays. English Wikipedia says the deal closed on 2 March 2022, when Rigetti began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker RGTI. When the merger was announced, Wikipedia says, Rigetti set out plans to scale its processors from 80 qubits to 1,000 by 2024 and to 4,000 by 2026; the systems it had released by April 2026 were built from chiplets of nine qubits each, the largest with 108.

Leadership changed the same year. In December 2022 Subodh Kulkarni became president and chief executive, Wikipedia says, and he is quoted as chief executive in the 2026 Cepheus announcements. The company remains independent and listed, with offices in Berkeley and Fremont named on its website. In May 2026, Wikipedia says, Rigetti was named for planned funding under the US CHIPS and Science Act, aimed at work on readout electronics and next-generation cryostat designs.

For a design guide, Rigetti shows how a hardware company can make the machine itself — the refrigerator, the chip and the fab — the centre of its story. Compare IBM, which also builds superconducting quantum processors, and D-Wave, another listed quantum computer maker. For this guide we use gold, ink and a deep blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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