Quantum News Nexus

Less than two weeks after Rigetti Computing recently said availability of its 108-qubit quantum computing system would be slightly delayed, the company announced that its India P L subsidiary has received an $8.4 million purchase order for the same system from India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

News of the order for the Cepheus-1-108Q will no doubt cool off any of the heat that Rigetti might have been catching over the delay–not that there appeared to be much of that. 

The order from C-DAC is not a huge surprise, given that Rigetti and C-DAC announced the signing of an agreement last September under which they pledged to “collaborate on the design and development of hybrid quantum computing systems and related technologies and bring them to market.” However, this seems like a pretty quick follow-up to that announcement.

C-DAC was described by Rigetti as India’s premier R&D organization of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and is pretty much exactly the type of research institute/university kind of customer Rigetti has been getting much of its business from. This week’s announcement said the system will be installed on-premises at C-DAC’s Bengaluru center and is scheduled to be deployed in the second half of 2026.

Rigetti CEO Subodh Kulkarni said in a statement, “We are honored that C-DAC has recognized the value of Rigetti’s quantum computing technology and expertise by selecting our system for the first quantum computer to be installed and integrated into their supercomputing data center and systems. Our open and modular architecture enables the hands-on R&D and innovation C-DAC requires to bring hybrid classical-quantum supercomputing to their community of scientific and industrial partners. This highlights the growing demand for on-premises quantum computers as national governments prioritize quantum computing, and Rigetti’s leadership in delivering state-of-the-art quantum computing systems for the world’s leading researchers.”

About that comment regarding growing demand for on-premises systems, the much of the market opportunity continues to revolve around offering cloud-based access to quantum computers, though we have seen evidence from IonQ, D-Wave, QuEra, IBM, Rigetti, and others that on-site deployments are increasing, particularly as governments are following on the Sovereign AI trend by looking to establish sovereign quantum computing systems as well.

Image: Rigetti’s 36-qubit system deployed at the UK National Quantum Computing Center (Source: Rigetti Computing)

Quantum News Nexus is a site from freelance writer and editor Dan O’Shea that covers quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum networking, quantum-safe security, and more. You can find him on X @QuantumNewsGuy and doshea14@gmail.com.