The Pure Plays: 5 Companies Building Quantum From the Ground Up

The article profiles five pure-play quantum computing companies pursuing different hardware approaches: IonQ (trapped-ion systems), D-Wave (annealing and gate-model systems), Rigetti (modular superconducting chiplets), Xanadu (photonic quantum computing), and Infleqtion (neutral-atom systems). Each company has demonstrated significant technical milestones including record gate fidelities, distributed quantum networking, and room-temperature operations. While the field is making measurable progress toward fault-tolerant quantum computing, the article emphasizes that no single modality has yet proven definitively superior, and commercial viability remains uncertain.