• California-based full-stack quantum computing company Rigetti Computing has signed a definitive merger agreement with Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), to go public. 

• After the transaction is completed— potentially in early 2022 —the combined entity will be called Rigetti Computing Inc. with an expected valuation of USD 1.5 billion. The company’s common shares will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol “RGTI”.

• The company expects to raise around USD 458 million in gross proceeds, which includes a private investment in public equity (PIPE) of more than USD 100 million—from investors including T. Rowe Price and Bessemer Venture Partners—and USD 345 million cash held in the trust account of Supernova II, assuming no redemptions. The proceeds will be injected into scaling Rigetti’s 80-qubit quantum processors in 2021 to 1,000-qubit machines by 2024 and 4,000-qubit ones by 2026. 

<ul><li> Analyst QuickTake: The quantum computing industry is largely driven by private companies, and it is gradually picking up pace in going public, especially via a SPAC deal. Rigetti becomes the second pure-play quantum computing company to announce going public this year, after IonQ—a Maryland-based quantum computing company—which went public last week , raising more than USD 650 million. Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum Computing, which are in the midst of a joint venture transaction , are also reportedly in discussions to go public by the end of this year.</ul>