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Rigetti Computing to go public

rigetti.com

51–60 of 83 posts

Re: Rigetti Computing to go public

#51
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. Why are we OK with smart people ripping anyone off? Just because investors have excess wealth it’s OK to steal from them?

without trying to be extra provocative, but we are A-OK with rich people ripping people off by exploiting their weaknesses, addictions or lack of oversight, so the reverse is not much different. Capitalism has a place for borderline, gray, unethical-but-legal 'frauds'

This is clearly a strawman, so good job not being “extra provocative”. Please drop the Robin Hood complex and try to have an intellectually honest conversation.

Re: Rigetti Computing to go public

#52
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantum computing may not be all it's cracked up to be , but i 'm ok with some smart people becoming newly minted millionaires by investors with excess wealth.

Unfortunately i don't think you understand how a SPAC works. Retail gets burned, original investors make money through liquidity and so do the executives and whoever brought the SPAC to the market as long as the company doesn't crash and burn before 6 month lock-up. What you are unintentionally saying is that you don't care if a bunch of smart people just made money off mom and pop (retail) investors if it turns out…

Caveat Emptor. Probably better odds than PowerBall at least. But yes, avoid, avoid, avoid IMO. You can't stop people from trying to get rich quick.

Re: Rigetti Computing to go public

#54
Aside from the obvious problems with SPACs, I wonder if they wind up having more of a chilling effect on the overall tech spaces than not.

A lot of nascent technologies run in cycles - quantum, ai, synbio, vr all have had hype cycles in which a lot of money floods the field and a lot of progress can be made, even if the underlying technology isn't ready for the mass market yet. At some point it becomes clear there's no market yet, and the investors flee, and we have to wait for another cycle.

The SPAC seems like an obvious way for one company to make a boatload of cash - Rigetti stands to take in a few hundred million, which is a hell of a fundraising round, and bully for them, but it also means the market's taking a closer look at them an awful lot sooner than they would otherwise, because there's no way they'd be going public via the traditional method at this point. I can't see that being good for fundraising elsewhere in the quantum sector overall right now, and I wonder if it presages an earlier retreat from the sector than would otherwise have happened.

Re: Rigetti Computing to go public

#55
Rigetti is a completely vertically integrated company, from design to manufacturing (Fab-1)[1] to cloud access (Rigetti's own QCS [2] as well as AWS Bracket[3]). They have their own Fab which is extremely advantageous and I cloud be wrong but neither Google, IBM or anyone has that capability in-house. I guess, it is not fair to draw comparisons to other semiconductor companies like Intel or TSMC since the scale is off by a factor of 10,000x, nonetheless, having your own Fab creates opportunities for process engineering that would otherwise be too slow. I think the holy grail of quantum computing is how best to architect, design and manufacture quantum chips with low noise, everything else is sort of secondary. Cloud access is a solved problem.

Congrats to the team!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yaY4Fw-ovM

[2] https://qcs.rigetti.com/

[3] https://aws.amazon.com/braket/hardware-providers/rigetti/

Re: Rigetti Computing to go public

#57

Everytime I hear this company name I am reminded of something else... Olivetti, the Italian typewriter and computer maker from forever ago ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_S.p.A .

That is exactly what I thought. Didn't even know they were still around.

Re: Rigetti Computing to go public

#59

That is crazy high valuation for something that will not be useful for at least 20 more years.

You may be right, but then what should they be valued at?

It's ultimately a gamble for something that's some unknown distance beyond the horizon but would, if fully realized, actually change the world.

Re: Rigetti Computing to go public

#60
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantum computing may not be all it's cracked up to be , but i 'm ok with some smart people becoming newly minted millionaires by investors with excess wealth.

Unfortunately i don't think you understand how a SPAC works. Retail gets burned, original investors make money through liquidity and so do the executives and whoever brought the SPAC to the market as long as the company doesn't crash and burn before 6 month lock-up. What you are unintentionally saying is that you don't care if a bunch of smart people just made money off mom and pop (retail) investors if it turns out…

"Mom and pop" retail investors aren't making substantial investments in SPACs without ample warning. Mom and pop are mostly in ETFs.

I don't believe anyone unaware of the risk is systematically or substantially investing in SPACs.

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