Diraq Advances to Final Stage of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative

Image credit: Diraq

Funding of up to US$300 million will support independent verification and validation of Diraq's path to utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing under DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative.  

Diraq today announced it has been selected by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to advance to Stage C of the agency’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), the final stage of the world’s most rigorous program evaluating whether any quantum computing approaches can achieve utility-scale operation by 2033. 

Utility scale is the point at which a quantum computer can solve problems which deliver more value than the machine costs to build and run. In Stage C, Diraq will work with DARPA’s independent verification and validation team to assess the design and performance of its silicon-based systems and the critical capabilities required to deliver a utility-scale quantum computer. 

"Advancing to Stage C of the QBI program represents a crucial independent validation that our path to utility-scale quantum computing holds up under rigorous technical scrutiny,” said Andrew Dzurak, Diraq Founder and CEO. “Diraq’s silicon spin qubits are built using the same manufacturing processes and infrastructure that already produce the world's conventional computer chips, which is a different starting point than approaches that require entirely new fabrication techniques to reach scale. That gives Diraq a decisive advantage: we are scaling on a manufacturing base that already exists, while others are still working out how to build one.” 

Diraq’s advancement follows the successful completion of Stage B. During Stage B, Diraq developed and detailed its research and development plan for reaching utility scale, including the technical risks, mitigation strategies, and risk-reduction prototypes required to progress its silicon quantum computing architecture.