The quantum computing world got a jolt when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced, after market close yesterday, a list of companies selected to advance to Stage C of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), widely considered to be the most rigorous and objective vetting program for cutting-edge quantum hardware.

Last November, DARPA selected 11 companies to enter the second phase of the initiative, Stage B. Since then, they’ve had to show the agency that they have a viable R&D plan, identified key risks, and produced the necessary prototypes to put them in position to build a ‘utility-scale’ quantum computer by 2033—a computer, in other words, that generates more revenue than it costs to own and operate. 

In Stage C, selected companies will build and test, working with the government to verify and validate that their “concept can be constructed as designed and operated as intended,” according to DARPA’s program description. Each Stage C company could get up to $300 million in funding from the U.S. government.

Of the 11 companies on the Stage B list, only four appear on the new one: Atom Computing, Diraq, IBM, and IonQ. They join Microsoft and PsiQuantum, which advanced to Stage C in February 2025,  via a parallel vetting process. 

Even at this late stage in the process, a single dominant approach to building a quantum computer has yet to emerge . The four companies announced today represent essentially all the current “modalities,” or ways of constructing a qubit, the fundamental unit of quantum calculation.

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