Q-CTRL Quantum Computing With Fire Opal & Rigetti’s Ankaa-3
Q-CTRL Quantum
Q-CTRL, a leading quantum infrastructure software provider, has greatly improved quantum computers by merging Fire Opal with Rigetti's Ankaa-3 quantum computer. This partnership, announced June 24, 2025, is a major step towards using quantum hardware to high-value applications.
Fire Opal's Quantum Computing Solution Quantum computers are fragile and error-prone, despite their ability to address problems regular computers cannot. These flaws, which are regarded to be the biggest barrier to new technology development, are produced by qubits' fragility and how they interact with ambient noise. They rapidly degrade computational precision. The complexity of correcting hardware-level faults, which is normally the realm of a few international specialists, has slowed quantum computing's commercial acceptance.
Fire Opal solves this basic problem by optimising device operation and suppressing mistakes. It aims to improve quantum computers so users can get meaningful results while seeking quantum advantage. Fire Opal uses dynamical decoupling instead of standard error correction, which may need many qubits. This method protects qubits from outside noise by applying precisely timed pulses, increasing coherence times and quantum process fidelity without redundancy. Effective and device-agnostic error-suppression technology reduces quantum computer hardware defects.
Rigetti's Ankaa-3 Quantum Computer Combination Fire Opal was combined with Rigetti's latest 84-qubit quantum computer, Ankaa-3, and made available through QCS on June 24, 2025. Quantum developers, researchers, and enterprise clients can immediately use Fire Opal's quantum error-suppression and performance-enhancement capabilities on Rigetti's top-performing system through this strategic relationship. This integration boosts Rigetti device capability without human intervention by enabling more complex circuits and supporting potentially larger and more complex applications in optimisation, quantum chemistry, quantum simulation, and quantum machine learning.
Q-CTRL is a founding member of Rigetti's Novera QPU Partner Program and has been partners for almost five years. Subodh Kulkarni, Rigetti CEO, says building and testing client use cases with increased speed is crucial to quantum advantage.
Proven Ankaa-3 use cases and performance improvements Users have profited immensely from this integration for use case benchmark tests.
BlueQubit increased their use case benchmark tests by seeing correct output in 20-qubit circuits up from 14 qubits in the baseline Rigetti service setup. BlueQubit's CTO, Hayk Tepanyan, was excited about Fire Opal's application in Rigetti and its promise for quantum technology in real use cases.
Nasdaq data was used in a financial portfolio optimisation use case with the Office of the NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer to achieve a 32x improvement in solution quality over Rigetti. Chief Scientist & Engineer Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte says these findings bring quantum computing closer to solving tough problems at realistic scales.
These validated results demonstrate Fire Opal's ability to let users operate more complex circuits and improve performance on Rigetti's largest hardware model.
Integration and wider effects across platforms Fire Opal's native integration with four of the world's most advanced quantum computing platforms—from IBM Quantum services to Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services (QCS), Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) Cloud QCaaS devices, and Diraq's Silicon quantum processors—demonstrates Q-CTRL's leadership in quantum infrastructure software. This wide integration, announced on September 10, 2024, shows Q-CTRL's industry leadership and ubiquity, underpinned by a track record across quantum computer types.
In December 2023, Fire Opal and IBM Quantum services were immediately connected. Users have broken quantum phase estimation and quantum machine learning for quantum chemistry world records using Fire Opal on IBM Quantum equipment. Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation boosted Quantum Phase Estimation circuit width by five.
Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC): Fire Opal is being added to OQC's latest Toshiko devices after prior research showed a >100X performance gain on smaller Lucy devices. This partnership will immediately integrate Fire Opal into OQC's cloud data centre colocation model, which offers top security and minimal latency. Iraq: Integrating Diraq's silicon-spin-qubit quantum computers will enhance value delivery from cutting-edge silicon quantum processors. Q-CTRL's error-suppressing method works with silicon qubits and other qubit technologies.
Michael J. Biercuk, Q-CTRL's founder and CEO, said that seeing 'over a factor of a thousand improvement on a commercial quantum computer' proved the infrastructure software's market-revolutionizing potential.
Q-CTRL's Main Objectives and Products A global leader in quantum technology, Q-CTRL uses AI-powered quantum infrastructure software. In addition to Fire Opal, the business offers Black Opal, an award-winning edtech product that teaches quantum computing quickly. Q-CTRL, founded by Michael J. Biercuk in November 2017, has built a top-tier team of quantum-control engineers to serve Fortune 500 companies, startups, national research labs, and academic institutions that lead quantum technology. Its headquarters are in Oxford, Berlin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sydney.