Before Wall Street wakes up to quantum, the Pentagon already has. That's the subtext of Rigetti Computing Inc's (NASDAQ:RGTI) latest pivot — one that increasingly mirrors Palantir Technologies Inc's (NASDAQ:PLTR) early years as a defense-funded deep-tech player before it became a data analytics powerhouse.
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Government Leads, Industry Follows
Rigetti CEO Subodh Kulkarni isn't chasing finance clients; he's chasing sovereign ones. "For the time being, government-funded areas like defense and energy are driving more demand," he told Benzinga in an exclusive email interview. From encryption-resistant security systems to grid optimization and advanced materials research, national programs are advancing more rapidly than corporate labs.
It's a playbook that feels familiar. Palantir's early lifeline came from government contracts that allowed it to refine its product long before commercial buyers stepped in.
Read Also: Palantir Won Pentagon—Next Target: Fortune 500
Rigetti's $5.7 million in new Novera system orders — for delivery in 2026 — marks a similar shift: quantum is moving from research access to owned infrastructure.
As governments in the U.S., Europe, and Asia embed quantum computing into their security and energy strategies, Rigetti is positioning itself as a key hardware provider for sovereign-grade systems.
Quantum Advantage Could Flip The Script
Still, Kulkarni isn't ignoring the private market. He sees finance and pharma demand accelerating once "higher-fidelity qubits and algorithm breakthroughs" push the field closer to quantum advantage.
A single leap in quantum machine learning or chemistry simulation could ignite a multi-sector rush — the same way AI models went from lab experiments to enterprise must-haves almost overnight.
The Palantir Parallel
Palantir built its moat by mastering complexity for governments before monetizing that expertise with corporations. Rigetti's trajectory hints at a similar pattern — only this time, the battleground isn't data, it's physics. Defense contracts could underwrite years of R&D while positioning Rigetti as the trusted quantum backbone when commercial workloads finally scale.
If Palantir was the intelligence platform of the last decade, Rigetti could become the quantum infrastructure platform of the next — funded by defense today, fueled by disruption tomorrow.
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