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PsiQuantum: the photonic company going straight for a million-qubit machine

Private photonic quantum computer maker PsiQuantum was valued at $7 billion in its September 2025 Series E. Australia pledged A$940 million in April 2024.

Main takeaways

  • PsiQuantum builds quantum computers that use single photons as qubits, on chips made at GlobalFoundries in New York.
  • Its Series E round of September 2025 raised $1 billion at a $7 billion valuation. It is private and publishes no revenue.
  • Governments back it: A$940 million pledged in Australia in 2024, and a $125 million DARPA agreement in July 2026.
  • Main risk: the schedule. The Australian site it planned to have operational by the end of 2027 only broke ground in June 2026.
  • Next dates: optical-switch products “in the coming months” (said October 28, 2026), and a cryogenic plant due in Australia in the second half of 2027.

PsiQuantum’s first full-size machines are still under construction. It broke ground on one site in Chicago on September 30, 2025, and on the other at Moreton Bay Central in Queensland, Australia, on June 18, 2026. The first system it announced, in April 2024, is “in the regime of 1 million physical qubits”. A qubit is the basic unit a quantum computer computes with, and physical qubits are the raw ones, before error correction.

Key numbers

Metric Value As of
Last valuation $7 billion, stated by the company Series E, September 10, 2025
Last funding round $1 billion, Series E September 10, 2025
Australian government package A$940 million (US$620 million), in equity, grants and loans April 29, 2024
DARPA agreement $125 million July 22, 2026
Spending with U.S. suppliers About $200 million Full year 2025
Planned first system About 1 million physical qubits, a target Stated April 29, 2024
Founded 2016
Headquarters Palo Alto, California

What the company does

PsiQuantum designs photonic chips, has them made at GlobalFoundries’ Fab 8 in Malta, New York, and assembles them into systems at its own sites in California. Its company page describes what exists today: “tens of thousands of wafers of quantum chips”, cryogenic cabinets “supporting hundreds of chips”, and test systems.

What is promised is a “utility-scale” machine: one large enough for commercially useful work, with its errors corrected as it runs. The company says it “was founded on the premise that commercially valuable quantum computing requires error correction”.

  • Two machine sites: Moreton Bay Central, and Chicago, where it is the anchor tenant of the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park.
  • Government work. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is testing its design, and the Air Force Research Laboratory gave it a $10.8 million contract in April 2025 to deliver chips.
  • Software and partnerships. Its Construct software for designing algorithms launched in September 2025. It announced work with Airbus in January 2026 and with Lockheed Martin in November 2025. Neither release states a payment.
  • A second market. On October 28, 2026 it unveiled an optical switch for AI data centers, built on the same chip platform. It is sharing samples with prospective customers and said commercial products would be “announced in the coming months”.

The technology in plain words

PsiQuantum’s qubits (our explainer covers the basics) are single photons, particles of light, at the wavelength used in telecom fiber, the company says.

The company claims three strengths. The chips come out of an existing high-volume factory. Modules can be linked “using standard optical fiber”. And its systems “can operate at temperatures more than 100 times higher than those required for superconducting qubits”, the company’s technology page says. A May 2025 release puts that at 4 Kelvin, about four degrees above absolute zero.

The known weakness is that photons get lost on the way, and the steps that create and link them work only part of the time. The company’s page calls its photon sources and gate operations “nondeterministic” and says the answer is “fast, low-loss optical switching”. The U.S. Commerce Department lists “photonic loss” among the unresolved engineering problems its quantum awards target.

The main published evidence is a paper in Nature, a peer-reviewed journal, published on February 26, 2025. It reports what the company calls “PsiQuantum’s latest measurements” of fidelity, a measure of how often an operation gives the right result. The results are for the building blocks of a machine, not for a complete computer.

What was measured Result In plain words
State preparation and measurement fidelity 99.98% ± 0.01% How reliably one photonic qubit is set and read
Interference between photons from separate sources 99.50% ± 0.25% How alike two photons from different sources are
Two-qubit fusion fidelity 99.22% ± 0.12% How well the operation that links two qubits works
Chip-to-chip interconnect fidelity 99.72% ± 0.04% How well a qubit survives the trip between two chips

The paper says these figures are “conditional on photon detection and not accounting for loss”.

Three listed names help place it.

  • Xanadu (XNDU) also builds with photonics and says its design can scale “to one million qubits through optical networking”. Two things tell them apart. DARPA’s list, current as of October 8, 2026, places PsiQuantum in Stage C, its final stage, and Xanadu in Stage B. And Xanadu is listed, so there is a number to compare: PsiQuantum’s $7 billion valuation of September 2025 against Xanadu’s market value, about $846 million at the November 10, 2026 close (price from Yahoo Finance). One is a valuation set in a private funding round, the other a market price.
  • Google, part of Alphabet (GOOGL), says its hardware “focuses on superconducting qubits”, which “require specialized cryogenic environments”. PsiQuantum’s claim of a warmer operating temperature is made against machines of that kind.
  • IonQ (IONQ) uses ionized ytterbium atoms as qubits. The difference is the qubit itself: atoms for IonQ, photons on factory-made chips linked by standard optical fiber for PsiQuantum.

The dated targets PsiQuantum has given:

Date Target Status
2025 Break ground on both sites “this year”, said February 26, 2025 Chicago: September 30, 2025. Australia: June 18, 2026, at a different site
End of 2027 Australian site operational, said April 29, 2024 Open. The June 2026 groundbreaking release gives no operating date
Second half of 2027 Cryogenic plant delivered to the Moreton Bay site Target

The business

PsiQuantum publishes no financial statements: revenue, losses and cash are not disclosed, so there is no series to chart.

It said it spent about $200 million with U.S. suppliers in 2025. Its agreement with Illinois sets “a minimum company investment of $1.09 billion” and at least 154 full-time jobs, the state said in July 2024.

In 2026 the U.S. government added three commitments. PsiQuantum said on July 22, 2026 that it had signed “a new $125 million expanded agreement” with DARPA, after a $31.8 million agreement in September 2025. The Commerce award and the loan commitment, both in the funding table below, followed in September and October. The loan “remains strictly conditional and is not guaranteed”, the company said.

In Australia, the federal and Queensland governments said in April 2024 they would each provide “approximately $470 million in equity and loans”, in Australian dollars.

Funding and ownership

Date Round or offering Amount Lead or terms
July 27, 2021 Series D $450 million Led by funds managed by BlackRock. Total raised to that date: $665 million. Imperial College London reported a $3.15 billion valuation
April 29, 2024 Australian and Queensland governments A$940 million (US$620 million) Equity, grants and loans
July 2024 State of Illinois incentive package $200 million Includes capital grants, workforce assistance and a low-interest loan
September 10, 2025 Series E $1 billion Led by funds managed by affiliates of BlackRock, with Temasek and Baillie Gifford. Valuation: $7 billion
September 8, 2026 U.S. Commerce Department award Up to $100 million CHIPS and Science Act research funding
October 8, 2026 Office of Strategic Capital loan Up to $150 million Conditional commitment. No loan is signed

New investors in the Series E included Ribbit Capital, the Qatar Investment Authority and NVentures, Nvidia’s venture capital arm.

Stakes are not public. The board includes directors from Founders Fund, Redpoint Ventures, Atomico and Playground Global. Governments are becoming owners too: the Australian package includes equity, and the Commerce Department said on May 21, 2026 that it “will receive a minority, non-controlling equity stake in each company” it funds. Neither release gives the size of the stake.

People

PsiQuantum was founded in 2016. The company names four co-founders: Jeremy O’Brien, Terry Rudolph, Pete Shadbolt and Mark Thompson. Imperial College London described the founders in July 2021 as “a team of academics from Imperial and the University of Bristol”.

On February 10, 2026 the company named Victor Peng interim chief executive and said O’Brien, chief executive until then, would become executive chairman. Peng is a former president of AMD and chief executive of Xilinx. He was named chief executive on July 15, 2026. The company’s site lists Susan Kim as chief financial officer, Shadbolt as chief scientific officer and Rudolph as chief architect.

Two directors joined in 2026: Lip-Bu Tan, chief executive of Intel, on April 30, and Niklas Zennström, founder of Atomico, on August 11.

Risks

  • The machine is not built. The published results cover components. DARPA’s program is still verifying that the design can be built and operated as intended.
  • The schedule has moved. The Australian site was to be operational by the end of 2027. In May 2026 the company moved the project to Moreton Bay Central, and construction began in June 2026.
  • Government money can be reviewed. Information Age, the Australian Computer Society’s publication, reported in January 2025 that Queensland’s new government was reviewing its side of the investment. A Queensland minister attended the June 2026 groundbreaking, the company said.
  • Capital needs, with no public accounts. The Illinois agreement sets a minimum company investment of $1.09 billion, and an outside investor cannot see the company’s cash.
  • New leadership. The co-founder who ran the company became executive chairman in February 2026. His successor was interim until July 2026.

What to watch

  • Whether the conditional loan commitment of October 8, 2026 becomes a signed loan. No date is given.
  • The optical-switch products promised on October 28, 2026 for “the coming months”.
  • The second half of 2027, when the cryogenic plant is due at Moreton Bay, and any new operating date for that site.
  • DARPA’s verdict. Its program asks whether an industrially useful quantum computer can be built by 2033. Its page lists six companies in the final stage as of October 8, 2026, PsiQuantum among them.
  • A new funding round. The $7 billion valuation dates from September 2025.

Our read: PsiQuantum’s bet is that photons, which are easy to lose, are worth the trouble because the chips come from an existing factory and the modules connect by ordinary fiber. It has aimed at a large, error-corrected machine from the start, so there is little to judge it by until a site runs. Until then the evidence is component results and government reviews such as DARPA’s.

Last checked 2026-11-11

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