What Happened
Rigetti Computing and Purdue University published research, showing how a quantum processor can speed up the software companies already use to solve optimization problems. Unlike other promises in the optimization spaces, the quantum part doesn’t solve the problem. But it does feed useful information into classical solvers, which already exist in the enterprise ecosystem, that are doing the actual work.This might prove to be a stronger bet.
Rigetti ran a quantum algorithm called QAOA (Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm) to detect patterns in the optimization problem. It passed that information to Gurobi, a widely used solver that handles many enterprise-scale optimization problems today. What’s interesting is that when quantum-powered trials were run with Gurobi, results came in under a second, compared to hours using the classical method alone.
One caveat: most of the speed gain came from simple quantum circuits that were tested. Therefore, this is not product-ready yet, but still promising nonetheless.
Why This Matters
This is not a one-time lab announcement. Rigetti has worked on this idea, called ‘quantum-preconditioning’ across multiple papers. The earlier version appeared in Physical Review Applied, a peer-reviewed journal. The research ran on actual Rigetti quantum hardware: their 84-qubit Ankaa-3 processor.
The real-world test involved a South Carolina power-grid dataset with 410+ variables. Quantum-preconditioning helped a classical solver hit 99.95% accuracy, using roughly 1/4 of the normal iterations. That’s a concrete example using actual hardware and real operational data.
Compare this to D-Wave’s approach, which pushes customers to replace their existing classical solvers entirely with D-Wave’s proprietary hybrid system. That means abandoning existing tools, retraining teams, and betting that D-Wave’s hardware will outperform what companies already rely on.
Rigetti’s strategy is different: keep the software stack you already have, and let the quantum processor augment it. That’s a lower friction path to adoption, since classical optimization software is already embedded across finance, logistics, energy, and manufacturing.
The Limitations on this Research
This research headline came from synthetic graph problems with only 40 variables. This makes it a proof-of-concept and useful research, but a world away from proving the same performance on a paying customer’s production workload.
More importantly: the newest results did not run on quantum hardware at all (previous research had run on Rigetti’s QPU). According to the paper’s methodology, the researchers calculated the needed correlations analytically for the simplest circuit depth, then used classical computer simulation for deeper circuits. They identified running this on actual quantum hardware as future work. The paper states plainly: “In the present study, the correlations are computed classically.”
No commercial customer is attached to this result. The research carries no contract, revenue figure, or named customer using the technique in production.
How Rigetti’s Hardware Compares
Coherence’s Technology Scorecard measures every major quantum computing provider across four dimensions: Qubit Count, Gate Fidelity, Circuit Depth, and Company Roadmap. This determines whether each company’s current path actually leads to fault-tolerant hardware, and whether peer-reviewed science backs their claims… not just the company’s marketing announcements.
Rigetti’s current model, Cepheus-1-108Q, rates as Lagging overall on our scorecard.
- On Gate Fidelity, Rigetti is Lagging. Its 2-qubit gate fidelity is only 99.1%, which is below the industry average.
- On Physical Qubit Count, Rigetti is Competitive, matching most providers.
- On Circuit Depth, Rigetti is Competitive. The processor performs well relative to peers on this metric.
The key questions ahead: Will Rigetti achieve its promised targets in gate fidelity and qubit count by late 2026? And will quantum-preconditioning research eventually reach a paying customer and generate revenue? Those answers will determine whether the company’s strategy moves from research to business traction.
For an in-depth analysis on how we ranked Rigetti with other Quantum Computing providers, read our Hardware Maturity Industry Report, available for free in our Members only section.