PsiQuantum

Market position

Third-party coverage characterizes PsiQuantum as among the best-funded quantum computing companies, with reported total funding of roughly $2 billion or more and a $7 billion post-money valuation after its September 2025 Series E. It is one of two approaches selected by DARPA for discrete utility-scale quantum computing evaluation and claims the announcement of the world's first utility-scale quantum computing sites.

PsiQuantum's stated differentiator is manufacturability: using standard silicon photonics foundry processes and existing cryogenic infrastructure to scale toward million-qubit, fault-tolerant machines, rather than bespoke laboratory hardware. Its fusion-based architecture and the Omega chipset are presented as the technical basis for this approach.

Technology

The company builds photonic qubits on silicon photonics, fabricating chips using high-volume semiconductor manufacturing at GlobalFoundries' facilities in New York. Its Omega chipset integrates the optical components (such as waveguides and modulators) needed for large-scale systems onto standard foundry processes, aiming to reduce size, power consumption and manufacturing complexity. Its fault-tolerance architecture uses Fusion-Based Quantum Computing, based on entangling measurements between photonic qubits, together with quantum error correction encoding logical qubits across many physical qubits. The systems require cryogenic operation, and the company has developed new cryogenic form factors and high-power cryogenic systems, the latter researched at its UK facility. Construct is its software suite for designing fault-tolerant quantum algorithms.

Go-to-market

The company pursues government and public-sector partnerships (DARPA, AFRL, the Australian Commonwealth and Queensland governments, the State of Illinois, the U.S. Department of Commerce) to fund and host deployments, alongside a manufacturing partnership with GlobalFoundries, a broad partnership with NVIDIA spanning quantum computing and silicon photonics for AI supercomputing, research collaboration with the Hartree Centre, and application-focused collaborations with companies including Airbus and Lockheed Martin. Its Construct software platform was released free and open-access to developers in 2026.

Government agencies and national research programs, high-performance computing centers, and large industrial enterprises exploring quantum applications (e.g., Airbus, Lockheed Martin), plus quantum algorithm developers for its Construct software.

Geography

Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with manufacturing at GlobalFoundries in New York (Fab 8), a planned utility-scale site at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park in Chicago, an Australian site at Moreton Bay Central in Queensland (previously described as Brisbane), a UK R&D facility at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory, a listed office in Slough, United Kingdom, and a UK-registered subsidiary, PSIQUANTUM LTD.

History

After its 2016 founding, PsiQuantum announced a manufacturing partnership with GlobalFoundries in 2019 to produce silicon photonic quantum devices in a commercial semiconductor foundry in upstate New York, and began transitioning production into GlobalFoundries' Fab 8 facility in 2022. In early 2021 its researchers introduced Fusion-Based Quantum Computing. In 2022 it announced a $22.5 million contract with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. DARPA selected the company for its US2QC program in 2023; it advanced to a second phase in January 2024 and to the final phase within the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative in 2025. In 2023 it opened a UK research facility at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory and partnered with the Hartree Centre. In April 2024 the Australian Commonwealth and Queensland governments announced an investment package valued at A$940 million to support construction of a utility-scale machine in Queensland, and later that year the company announced plans for a quantum computer at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park in Chicago. 2025 brought the Omega chipset, the Construct software platform, groundbreaking in Illinois and a $1 billion Series E. In 2026 it named Moreton Bay Central as its Australian site, signed a Letter of Intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for up to $100 million in proposed CHIPS and Science Act incentives, opened Construct to all developers, and appointed Victor Peng interim CEO.

Risks & controversies

Reported risks include the technical difficulty of scaling fault-tolerant photonic systems, which requires large numbers of physical qubits per logical qubit and engineering of integrated cryocoolers that avoid vibration and heat load. One newsletter source alleges PsiQuantum has amassed a patent portfolio worth roughly $2.1 billion, acquired portfolios from failed quantum startups and signed confidential licensing agreements that could create licensing obligations for competitors; these claims are presented as the author's own unverified analysis, include undisclosed and sourced-to-anonymous assertions, and conflict with funding facts reported elsewhere (it dates a Series E to April 2024 and cites a $6 billion valuation), so they should be treated as unconfirmed.