DARPA backs PsiQuantum's photonic quantum computer with a $125M award

Summary

The U.S. defense research agency DARPA granted the startup PsiQuantum a $125 million award through its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, a program meant to test whether a light-based machine can scale up to genuinely useful computing.

The company's approach builds fault-tolerant systems that encode quantum information in single photons, with those particles of light serving as the qubits that carry and process the information.

A practical advantage of the photonic design is that its chips can be manufactured in conventional semiconductor foundries and need far less extreme cooling than competing superconducting hardware demands.

It is one of just two firms, the other being Microsoft, to advance into the initiative's final stage, a phase in which the agency's own scientists are embedded directly within the company.