Diraq CEO aims for company’s first quantum computer by 2029 

Three-year-old Diraq aims to make its first quantum computers with the help of European R&D organization imec by 2029, company CEO Andrew Dzurak told EE Times in an exclusive interview. Diraq won’t be the first to make a “useful” quantum computer, but the startup will make the most affordable ones, he said. 

Diraq will drive down production costs through massive integration of qubits and classical silicon on a single chip, said Dzurak, who has been working on quantum tech for more than 25 years as a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia. 

In September, European R&D organization imec and Diraq produced silicon quantum-dot qubits that consistently showed error rates surpassing the values needed for quantum error correction. The results were reported in Nature.  

“For at least the next three to five years at the minimum, the actual volume of chips that we require for our technology is really quite small because Diraq technology allows ultimately millions of qubits on a single chip,” Dzurak told EE Times. “We’re working on all of our processing on single chips. We actually can do low-volume fabrication of devices at imec for quite some time.” 

The first half of 2029 is Diraq’s target delivery date for its first quantum computing system that will combine quantum chips and classical chips in a single cryogenic unit.   

Diraq qubits operate “happily” at 1 kelvin, a roughly 100-fold higher temperature compared with typical qubits that only operate close to absolute zero, Dzurak said.  

He notes the higher temperature operation of Diraq qubits aids the cooling power of cryogenic systems by a factor of 1 million, allowing Diraq to package classical chips adjacent to quantum chips.  

“It’s a really crucial aspect of our technology,” Dzurak said.  He declined to give details on the interconnect material between the qubits and classical chips. 

“What you want is to have a good electrical connection but a lousy thermal connection,” he said. “You don’t want the classical chip heating up the quantum chip. Semiconducting materials are one example of what could be used.” 

Diraq devices consistently achieved over 99% fidelity in operations involving two qubits made with imec’s spin-qubit tech platform. It’s a crucial step in Diraq’s roadmap toward “utility”, the point where a quantum computer is worth more than it costs. 

Imec called the development with Diraq an important first, moving quantum chips from research labs to production-scale facilities. 

“For the first time, silicon MOS based quantum-dot spin-qubit devices realized with industrial manufacturing techniques perform as well as academic hero devices,” Kristiaan De Greve, program director for quantum computing at imec, said in a statement. “This shows that imec’s 300 mm process flow for MOS based quantum-dot structures enables a low-noise qubit environment, resulting in high fidelity values for a set of critical qubit operations. The methods used and insights gained from it also show us that there is further room for fidelity improvement.” 

Diraq will rely on imec as its chip supplier for the near term, but the company has been working with GlobalFoundries as a potential second source.  

“We’ve currently got chips we are waiting to get back from them in the not too distant future, so GF is an important foundry partner,” Dzurak said. “One of the reasons we work with GF is their technology called 22FDX that is known to work very well at cryogenic temperatures.” 

“We have an R&D packaging partner, and we are in discussion with commercial packaging partners,” Dzurak said. “For the next three to five years because the volume is low, R&D packaging is sufficient for our purposes for quite some time. Because we are packaging together chips that need cryogenic temperatures, we need interconnects that operate well at those temperatures, and so there’s a number of organizations that are developing that technology. Imec is one of them.” 

Dzurak is talking to potential customers he describes primarily as supercomputing facilities and government laboratories in the U.S., Europe, Australia and Japan with sales starting around 2031 and taking off around 2033.  

“We don’t say we’re going to have the first useful quantum computer,” Dzurak notes. “There will be a few around by the time we bring out our first product in 2029. We believe that we will outperform our competitors on cost.  That’s really the differentiator: driving the cost down with massive integration on the chip.” 

A quantum computing facility based on Diraq hardware would likely be housed in a space measured in tens of square feet, Dzurak added.  

Dzurak says he has been spending more time in the U.S. to raise capital. 

In September, PsiQuantum, led by Dzurak’s schoolmate Pete Shadbolt, raised $1 billion in funding to build the world’s first commercially useful, fault-tolerant quantum computers. Investors included BlackRock, Temasek and Baillie Gifford in the fundraising round valuing the quantum computing company at $7 billion. New investors included NVentures, Nvidia’s venture capital arm. 

Private capital, venture capital and sovereign wealth funds are also looking to invest in quantum startups, Dzurak says. 

“Some of the capital raises have been eye-watering,” he notes. “For Diraq, that’s good news. We’ve raised around $60 million. Capital is located here in the U.S., and you know I’m having all of those conversations continually. That’s a big part of the life of a CEO.”