PsiQuantum is racing a room-sized machine of 100 stainless-steel cabinets, each holding hundreds of photonic chips cooled to just above absolute zero, into what would be the first commercially useful quantum computer. In a July 14 MIT Technology Review feature, co-founder Terry Rudolph and chief science officer Pete Shadbolt walked through how the company hopes to beat Google, IBM and Microsoft to a million-qubit machine using single photons routed through beam splitters and detectors.
A Different Bet On Qubits
Where Google and IBM chase superconducting qubits and Intel wagers on electrons, PsiQuantum is doubling down on photons. Photons hold quantum states well but do not interact easily, so the company relies on a 2001 breakthrough by Terry Rudolph and colleagues showing you can fake interactions by feeding photons through networks of beam splitters and detectors. Barium titanate, which PsiQuantum manufactures in-house in San Jose using pressure-cooker crystal growers, routes those photons with almost no electrical noise.
Chicago And Moreton Bay Break Ground
The company raised roughly $1 billion in 2025 and broke ground on the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park outside Chicago, plus a second site in Moreton Bay, Australia. Wafers cut in Malta, New York by GlobalFoundries — with both companies drawing CHIPS Act funding — ship to Milpitas, California for testing. Three cabinets holding 250 chips each are already interconnected at Milpitas; the Australian site targets a 100-cabinet build once its dedicated liquid-helium cooling plant arrives late in 2027.
Customers Are Coding On A Machine That Doesn't Exist Yet
PsiQuantum has partnered with Lockheed Martin on materials design, Mercedes on battery chemistry and Airbus on fluid-dynamics simulation for aircraft wings. It offers a software package called Construct so developers can prototype algorithms today, likened by VP Philipp Ernst to writing PlayStation 6 games before the console ships. DARPA has moved PsiQuantum into Stage 3 of its quantum benchmarking program, and Micah Stoutimore, who runs the Pentagon initiative, said in a recent statement it "now seems likely" someone builds a utility-scale quantum computer by 2033. Related coverage on The Robotics Media: QuiX Quantum Unveils Carina Photonic Architecture and Pasqal Leads €50M Q-PLANET Push.
Reporting based on coverage from MIT Technology Review, arXiv and PsiQuantum press materials.