World Business Chicago board portfolio company PsiQuantum had a landmark week — securing new federal validation for its quantum computing platform and strengthening its leadership bench as it heads toward assembly at its Chicago facility.
It's been a big few days for PsiQuantum, the quantum computing company anchoring the Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park on the site of the former U.S. Steel South Works — and a company we're proud to call part of the World Business Chicago board community through Executive Chairman and co-founder Jeremy O'Brien.
A $125 Million Vote of Confidence from DARPA
PsiQuantum has signed a new agreement with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) worth $125 million, awarded through the agency's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) — a program built to cut through the hype around quantum computing and rigorously test which approaches can actually scale. The funding will support testing and evaluation of PsiQuantum's hardware designs, critical components, system-level performance, and software development.
DARPA's involvement carries weight. The agency has positioned QBI as one of the most demanding independent evaluations in the industry, and PsiQuantum is now one of just two companies — alongside Microsoft — at the most advanced stage of the program.
"DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is one of the most comprehensive and rigorous government programs for evaluating emerging technology that I have ever seen," said Victor Peng, CEO of PsiQuantum, crediting the program with sharpening the company's designs and team.
Pete Shadbolt, PsiQuantum's co-founder and chief scientific officer, echoed that the scrutiny has strengthened the company's plans, calling the collaboration with DARPA an important and appreciated partnership.
The funding will help PsiQuantum build out essential infrastructure at its facilities in Milpitas, California, and here in Chicago, where the company plans to begin assembling its commercially viable quantum computer next year. That build-out requires substantial investment in specialized equipment, including the cryogenics systems central to quantum hardware — and DARPA is expected to maintain a presence at the South Works site as construction continues. The partnership comes as PsiQuantum is also expected to receive an additional $100 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce as part of a broader $2 billion federal investment across the quantum sector.
Read more in Crain’s Chicago Business
Strengthening the Executive Bench
The DARPA news arrived alongside a significant leadership update. PsiQuantum has named Victor Peng as Chief Executive Officer, following his appointment as Interim CEO in February. Peng previously served as President at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and CEO of Xilinx, bringing decades of experience scaling complex technology organizations.
Joining him are two new additions to the executive team:
Rob Soderbery, Executive Vice President — Soderbery will help advance PsiQuantum's silicon photonics platform and its application across AI networking and other next-generation computing infrastructure, while scaling the engineering and operational capabilities needed to bring the technology to market. He joins PsiQuantum after leading Western Digital's multi-billion-dollar Flash/SanDisk business, and previously held senior leadership roles at Cisco, Symantec, and Veritas.
Sriram Sitaraman, Chief Information Officer — Sitaraman will lead PsiQuantum's global IT strategy, overseeing engineering infrastructure, enterprise systems, security, and AI enablement as the company scales its operations. He joins from Synopsys, where as CIO he built one of the industry's largest engineering compute environments, supporting design, simulation, and AI workloads for thousands of engineers.
"Rob and Sriram are outstanding leaders who will help accelerate our momentum as we build the company and platform that will shape the future of computing," said Peng.
Read more in PsiQuantum’s press release
Why It Matters for Chicago
Between a nine-figure DARPA commitment and a newly rounded-out executive team, PsiQuantum is signaling that its Chicago site is moving from groundbreaking to build-out. For a company anchoring one of the city's most ambitious economic development projects, that's exactly the kind of momentum World Business Chicago likes to see from our board community — and a strong sign for Chicago's bid to become a national center of quantum computing.
PsiQuantum's Executive Chairman and co-founder Jeremy O'Brien serves on the World Business Chicago Board of Directors.