One of the most prominent startups in the quantum computing market, Rigetti Computing Inc., today announced plans to go public through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company.

The transaction values Rigetti at about $1.5 billion and the company expects to receive $458 million in cash, including $100 million from a private investment in public equity deal subscribed to by a group of investors including T. Rowe Price, Bessemer Venture Partners, Franklin Templeton and In-Q-Tel. New investors include Keysight Technologies, Ampere Computing and Palantir Technologies.

Rigetti said that after its merger with Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II Ltd. concludes, it will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “RGTI.”

The proposed listing is yet another sign that quantum computers may finally be able to live up to their potential. Once considered little more than a science experiment, these computers use quantum mechanics to accelerate the speed at which they perform calculations. They can potentially handle tasks that are far more demanding than even today’s fastest supercomputers can perform.

Even as debate persists around when quantum computers will finally become powerful enough to solve real-world problems, big tech firms including Google LLC’s parent Alphabet Inc., IBM Corp. and Honeywell International Inc. have all invested massive amounts of cash into the technology.

Rigetti is one of several startups competing in the space against those much larger firms. Founded in 2013 by Chad Rigetti (pictured), a physicist who previously worked at IBM, it has seen some delays on its path to commercialization.

Rigetti said in 2018 that his firm would be able to build a computer packed with 128 quantum bits, or qubits, later that year. Such a machine, at the time, would have been far more powerful than anything built so far and a big sign that the technology was ready to scale up.

That promise failed to materialize, and just three months ago Rigetti set itself a more modest goal of building an 80-qubit machine by the end of this year. What’s interesting this time though is Rigetti has created a new architecture based on a modular design that links a number of smaller quantum chips. According to the company, it’s a simpler way of getting large numbers of qubits to work together.

In an updated roadmap published today, Rigetti said the new design gives it a significant edge over its competitors. It believes it will be able to build a 1,000-qubit system by 2024, followed by one that’s powered by 4,000 qubits in 2026. Ten years from now, its founder said, the company will be able to create a machine that’s more powerful than all of today’s cloud computing systems combined.

“In the next decade one Rigetti quantum computer could be more powerful than today’s entire global cloud,” Chad Rigetti said in a statement. “Rigetti is the leading innovator in this space. Our team has solved the most pressing scientific problems associated with bringing quantum computing to market by creating a scalable computer and high-performance integration with existing computing systems. We plan to use this capital to accelerate our product development and accelerate our goal to bring this transformational computing capability to every major industry.”

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said the area of quantum computing has matured rapidly from a research-based, cottage-style industry to platforms that can show real value in enterprise automation.

“Now, the major players need capital to expand those efforts, and it’s particularly encouraging to see some of the smaller startups like Rigetti going public the fast way via the SPAC route,” Mueller said. “There will be a lot of eyeballs watching to see if this capitalization can make Rigetti an even more important quantum platform player.”

Rigetti is the second prominent quantum computing startup to go public via a SPAC merger. Just last week, IonQ Inc. began trading on the New York Stock Exchange after raising around $650 million via a similar process. However, investors have so far shown minimal enthusiasm for the company. Its stock closed on Wednesday at just $7.20 per share, well below the initial $10 price at the time of its debut.

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