DARPA is dramatically expanding its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative to help the private sector build a workable quantum computer by 2033, the Pentagon’s top R&D agency announced this morning. Almost 20 new companies will join prior award recipients Microsoft and PsiQuantum, which won awards under a pilot phase of the program that began in 2023. Today’s announcement named 15 new entrants, ranging from giants like IBM and Hewlett-Packard to small startups such as Alice & Bob, a US-French joint venture. They include five foreign firms: two Australian, two Canadian, and one British. Another three awardees remain unnamed while contract negotiations are finalized, bringing the expected total to 18. That so many proposals made it through QBI’s rigorous assessment process is a vote of confidence from DARPA in the rapidly growing quantum computing industry. QBI is run by a self-proclaimed “quantum skeptic,” physicist Joe Altepeter, who told Breaking Defense just six weeks ago that he was still “definitely trying to eliminate companies” from the competition.

Full report : U.S. DARPA selects 18 quantum computing companies including Microsoft and startup PsiQuantum to a quantum program, granting them funding and testing benchmarking tools.