Chad Rigetti has devoted his career to quantum computing—a phrase you’ve perhaps most recently encountered in Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Superhero movies aside, quantum computing is somewhere between reality and moonshot. In the most rudimentary terms (all I feel remotely qualified to give you), a quantum computer uses counterintuitive rules of physics to compute some information exponentially faster than “classical” computers. It’s real—though it’s so far failed to scale or find widespread commercial use—and it holds an air of science fiction, even in how an expert like Rigetti thinks about it.
Take his new company’s name. It’s drawn from Patrick Rothfuss’s sci-fi novel The Name of the Wind.
“In the book, ‘sygaldry’ is a discipline that involves inscribing runes or letters on different objects to govern heat or light flow,” Rigetti told Fortune. “It’s also an engineering discipline with some degree of precision to it. If you do it wrong, you can blow things up.”
Sygaldry is the company Rigetti cofounded in 2024 after leaving Rigetti Computing, the developer of quantum computer circuits that he founded in 2013 and went public via SPAC in 2022. Sygaldry’s been quiet for years, but recently spoke to Fortune, exclusively revealing for the first time that it raised funding. Sygaldry has raised a total of $139 million, including a $105 million Series A led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures that closed in March. The company’s $34 million seed round was led by Initialized Capital and closed back in August.
At Sygaldry, Rigetti and cofounders Idalia Friedson and Michael Keiser are looking at one of AI’s central questions: How are we going to power all these data centers? Rigetti believes that quantum can offer answers, as Sygaldry designs servers for AI data centers that include both quantum hardware and classical chips.
The idea is this: work with multiple quantum hardware types that help run AI workloads faster than Nvidia’s GPUs can. Rigetti’s goal: “To have machines in commercial production that are providing speed up for these AI workloads around the end of the decade.”
“Quantum is going to be a fundamentally more efficient way of translating power into intelligence,” said Rigetti.
This is key to the investing thesis, Carmichael Roberts, Breakthrough Energy Ventures managing partner, told Fortune via email, that “the energy intensity of large language models continues to grow at a rate that is unsustainable” and that there’s a path to breaking this paradigm Sygaldry can capitalize on. It won’t happen all at once, Daniel Dart, Rock Yard Ventures founder and Sygaldry investor, said. “AI added new capabilities, and quantum will remove limits,” Dart said. “Think of the move from the horse and carriage to the automobile and the airplane.”
Commercialization by 2030 seems reasonable enough, but consider: People have long been talking about quantum computing the way they talk about nuclear fusion. It’s a future that’s always 50 years away, the old joke goes. Rigetti, however, does believe we’re nearing a turning point. “I think the future is coming very quickly, especially now,” he said.
Rigetti seems to think about the future a lot, and where a sci-fi-ed version of our future might meet a real one.
“The future we want to build is the Star Trek version of the future,” he said. “That’s where, despite eons of progress, humans remain masters of their technology, and not vice versa. We need to develop AI in an intentional, strategic, conscious way so it ultimately augments the best things that make us human.”
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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VENTURE CAPITAL
- Neomorph, a San Diego, Calif.-based developer of protein degradation drugs designed to treat serious diseases, raised $100 million in Series B funding. Deerfield Management led the round and was joined by Regeneron Ventures, Longwood Fund, Alexandria Venture Investments, and others.
- pH7, a Vancouver, Canada-based critical metals extraction company, raised $32 million in funding from Asahi Kasei and the Circular Innovation Fund.
- Critical Loop, a Long Beach, Calif.-based industrial power solutions company, raised $26 million in Series A funding. Conifer Infrastructure Partners and Hanover led the round and were joined by Better Ventures, Climate Capital, Adapt Nation Capital, and Cyrus Ventures.
- Citra Space Corporation, a Colorado Springs, Colo.-based developer of space object identification capabilities, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Washington Harbour Partners led the round and was joined by Industrious Ventures, Reliable Properties, and existing investors.
- Helical, a Gare, Luxembourg-based AI lab for biology, raised $10 million in seed funding. redalpine led the round and was joined by Gradient, BoxGroup, Frst, and angel investors.
- Prefix, a New York City-based AI-powered facility management platform for multi-site restaurant and retail operators, raised $7.5 million in seed funding. Collide Capital and Slow Ventures led the round and were joined by Connexa Capital, Elevated Huts, and existing investors I2BF and Bienville Capital.
- Debbie, a New York City-based developer of rewards for users to save money or build wealth, raised $5.3 million in seed funding. Trustage Ventures and Reseda Group led the round and were joined by One Way Ventures, Zeal Capital Partners, and others.
- Replenit, a Warsaw, Poland-based AI decision engine for retail, raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding. Movens Capital and Vastpoint led the round and were joined by Logo Ventures, DigitalOcean Ventures, and others.
- Orbital, a Los Angeles, Calif.-based developer of GPU data centers in low Earth orbit, raised $1 million in funding. a16z speedrun led the round.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- AppDirect, backed by CDPQ, acquired PartnerStack, a Toronto, Canada-based partner relationship management platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Q4, backed by Sumeru Equity Partners, acquired Virtua Research, a Boston, Mass.-based financial intelligence platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.
EXITS
- Eurazeo agreed to acquire a majority stake in Netco Group, a Bordeaux, France-based conveyor systems maintenance company, from Ardian. Financial terms were not disclosed.
IPOS
- Kailera Therapeutics, a Waltham, Mass.-based developer of GLP-1s for obesity, plans to raise up to $532.8 million in an offering of 33.3 million shares priced between $14 and $16 on the Nasdaq. Bain Capital Life Sciences, BCPE Perseus Investor, Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, RTW Investments, CPP Investment Board Private Holdings, and Atlas Venture Fund back the company.
- Yesway, a Fort Worth, Texas-based convenience store chain, plans to raise up to $322 million in an offering of 14 million shares priced between $20 and $23 on the Nasdaq. The company posted $2.7 billion in revenue for the year ended Dec. 31. Brookwood Financial Partners backs the company.
- National Healthcare Properties, a New York City-based real estate investment trust, plans to raise up to $616 million in an offering of 38.5 million shares priced between $13 and $16 on the Nasdaq. The company posted $342 million in revenue for the year ended Dec. 31.
- Alamar Biosciences, a Fremont, Calif.-based protein detection and analysis company, plans to raise up to $159.8 million in an offering of 9.4 million shares priced between $15 and $17 on the Nasdaq. The company posted $74 million in revenue for the year ended Dec. 31. Qiming Venture Partners, Illumina Innovation Fund, Sherpa Healthcare Partners, and Sands Capital Life Sciences back the company.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
- 26North Partners, a New York City-based private equity firm, raised approximately $5.9 billion for its first fund focused on the industrial, technology, media, telecommunications, and services sectors.
- Dominus Capital, a New York City-based private equity firm, raised $640 million for its fourth fund focused on companies in the business services and diversified industrial sectors.
PEOPLE
- Maple Park Capital, a Dallas, Texas and New York City-based private equity firm, hired Grant Mueller as a vice president. Previously, he was with Franchise Equity Partners.
