Diraq opened a U.S. engineering hub in Santa Monica, California, on August 25, 2026. The facility launches with a 20-person engineering team and gives the Australian silicon spin-qubit company a second U.S. node alongside its Chicago measurement laboratory and its Palo Alto commercial headquarters.
What the hub does
The Santa Monica team focuses on integrated circuit design, cryogenic CMOS architecture, device modeling, and machine learning for automated device calibration. Diraq plans to double the headcount over the next 12 months. The work complements the Chicago lab, which houses dilution refrigerators and cryogenic test infrastructure, and the Sydney headquarters, where device fabrication and physics research happen.
Diraq says the time-zone split between Sydney and the U.S. supports continuous experimental cycles. A device fabricated in Sydney reaches Chicago for measurement without losing a full day, and the Santa Monica hub adds design and control-electronics engineering closer to the country's semiconductor and defense talent pools.
Why silicon spin qubits need this kind of expansion
Diraq builds electron-spin qubits in quantum dots using standard commercial CMOS processes. The pitch is manufacturing leverage: existing foundries already produce silicon chips at scale, so Diraq does not need to invent a new fabrication industry. The challenge is integrating the qubit arrays with the control electronics that operate at cryogenic temperatures.
Cryo-CMOS work is central to that integration. Moving drive, readout, and multiplexing circuits onto the same silicon substrate as the qubits reduces the wiring and thermal load that limit how many qubits fit inside a dilution refrigerator. The Santa Monica hub is where much of that co-design work will happen.
What the expansion does not prove
Opening an engineering office is a real estate and hiring decision, not a hardware result. Diraq has not yet shipped a commercial quantum processor, and its roadmap still targets a first product launch by 2029. The value of the Santa Monica hub depends on whether the designs produced there lead to competitive qubit fidelity and error-correction overhead.
The company has now opened three U.S. facilities in quick succession: Palo Alto in 2025, Chicago in August 2026, and Santa Monica later the same month. That pace shows confidence and access to capital, but facility count is not the same as shipped systems.
What to watch next
The meaningful milestones are silicon spin-qubit devices fabricated in a commercial foundry, tested in Chicago, and controlled using cryo-CMOS circuits designed in Santa Monica. Diraq's next public hardware result, qubit count, fidelity, or a small logical-qubit demonstration, will say more than any lease signing.
For background on Diraq's first U.S. lab, see our Chicago IQMP post.