Quantum computing jolted by DARPA decision on most viable companies

Quantum computing insiders, investors, and skeptics have been waiting on an announcement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that has enormous implications for the future of the industry: the list of companies that have survived Stage A of the agency’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) and are advancing to Stage B. 

The QBI was launched in July 2024 to “rigorously verify and validate whether any quantum computing approach can achieve utility-scale operation” by 2033, according to DARPA. In essence, the QBI seeks to determine if a quantum computer technology is worth pursuing—if its benefits will be greater than the effort and resources it takes to pursue them. 

For a technology that could produce world-changing feats but remains far from maturity—and into which billions of investment dollars have been flowing in recent months—the QBI validation is profound.

The QBI’s first judgments, announced yesterday, reconfigure the competitive landscape, bolstering some powerful incumbents and boosting lesser-known players and outlier approaches. They also delivered a formidable gut punch to a couple of industry pioneers.

“QBI is not a competition to narrow the field to a few ‘winners.’ Rather, the aim is to evaluate each company’s approach on its own merits” DARPA said in a press release. The agency makes clear that multiple participants could “demonstrate a path to an industrially useful quantum computer,” or perhaps none of them. 

The new quantum computing playing field

During Stage A of QBI, companies had six months to provide detailed technical concepts that showed feasibility for creating utility-scale quantum systems. The initial stage included 18 companies—IBM, Quantinuum, Atom Computing, Alice & Bob, IonQ, Rigetti, and Xanadu, among them. 

These companies, which were eligible for up to $1 million in funding, represent a variety of approaches to building a quantum computer, down to their technology for constructing qubits, the fundamental building blocks of a quantum computation.

The 11 companies that were selected to move onto Stage B are pursuing different systems. Two companies, Atom Computing and QuEra Computing, use “neutral atom” qubits. IonQ and Quantinuum both use so-called trapped ions. Several companies use silicon spin qubits. IBM is pursuing superconducting qubits. And Xanadu uses a photonics-based qubit. 

Now, moving into Stage B, they will be asked for a comprehensive research and development plan capable of realizing their quantum computer, with an assessment of the risks associated with the plan, and their mitigation approaches. In Stage C, companies will work with the government to verify and validate that their utility-scale quantum computer concept can be constructed as designed and operated as intended. 

DARPA anticipates that additional teams will advance through stages A, B, and C. And companies have entered the evaluation process on varying timelines—Google Quantum AI, for example, joined late—resulting in staggered advancement across stages. 

Two companies, Microsoft and PsiQuantum, have already advanced to Stage C in a separate but related DARPA initiative called Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC).

“IBM’s progression to Stage B of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is a firm validation of IBM’s approach to delivering a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer,” said IBM’s director of research Jay Gambetta in a company press release. “As the industry advances, we look forward to working with DARPA as they continue an unbiased review of potential viable strategies across the field.” 

“It’s not that we got in that matters as much as making sure we didn’t not get in,” says Christian Weedbrook, CEO and founder of Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies. “A lot of late nights the team was pushing themselves, and I said, we don’t want a black mark across us now for getting the stage B. One of the great things about [the process] is that it really forced us in different teams to work harder together.” 

Earlier this week, Xanadu announced plans to go public via SPAC, which Weedbrook expects to happen in the first or second quarter of 2026. “This would be the only way, currently at least, that investors can invest in a photonics-based approach,” he says.

Soul searching, and new funding

“Even if you are able to do months of diligence, nothing really beats the team of scientists and researchers from across the [Department of Defense] labs, the national labs, and the intelligence and universities ecosystem that DARPA has assembled to do this diligence,” says Prineha Narang, a professor of physical sciences and electrical and computer engineering at UCLA and a partner at deep-tech venture firm DCVC. “This is far more than any VC or anyone on the private capital side could do.”

Narang says that companies that didn’t make it to Stage B should take it “very seriously.” 

“It doesn’t mean that they don’t have an approach that could eventually work, but just that today they couldn’t articulate and present [that plan] to DARPA,” she adds. 

The Stage A contenders that didn’t make the cut include Alice & Bob, which uses innovative “cat qubits,” Atlantic Quantum, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oxford Ionics, and Rigetti Computing, which was founded in 2013 and is the first full-stack, universal pure-play quantum computing company.

On the other hand, Narang notes that a few companies that made it to Stage B have term sheets that call out the QBI outcome as a condition for the next round of funding. “Several investments and deals are now in flight,” she says. “[They are] happening, and happening faster than the usual pace of these.”

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