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Diraq expands to Chicago, aiming for thousands of qubits by 2029

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August 19, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

Diraq has opened its first U.S. quantum laboratory in Chicago, with development work already underway on qubit measurements and cryogenic testing. The new facility, established through the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park’s On-Ramp program at mHUB, expands Diraq’s research and development capacity as it pursues utility-scale quantum computing. “Chicago’s superb quantum facilities offer Diraq the ability to rapidly test and prototype our uniquely scalable technology,” said Diraq CEO and founder Andrew Dzurak, positioning the city as central to the company’s goal of building a system containing thousands of qubits by 2029.

Diraq’s Chicago Lab Advances Silicon Qubit Development

Diraq is already conducting active research within its newly established Chicago laboratory, with development work encompassing qubit measurements, cryogenic CMOS testing, and component verification processes. This immediate activity demonstrates a rapid deployment strategy beyond simply establishing a physical presence in the United States. The facility’s infrastructure includes two quantum refrigeration units, critical for maintaining the extremely low temperatures required for stable silicon qubit operation and detailed characterization of the quantum technology.

These units allow for comprehensive testing and analysis, accelerating the development timeline for Diraq’s roadmap toward scalable quantum computing. Chicago has become an important center for quantum development in the U.S., and this program provides Diraq with access to dedicated cryogenic and measurement infrastructure while the permanent IQMP campus is under construction, enabling immediate collaboration within Illinois’ innovation network, the company says.

Harley Johnson, CEO of IQMP, stated, “The opening of Diraq’s Chicago laboratory represents the progress we envision for Illinois’ growing quantum ecosystem: Leading companies putting down roots, building their teams, and conducting work here.” Diraq intends to expand its Chicago-based team over the next year, building upon existing expertise in quantum theory and device fabrication, with potential growth into broader engineering roles.

This expansion is part of a larger global R&D effort, utilizing complementary time zones to maximize experimental throughput and contribute to Diraq’s goal of creating a commercially viable quantum computer containing thousands of physical qubits by 2029. Illinois Economic Development Corporation Chief Quantum Officer Dr. emphasized, “Illinois EDC is proud to support Diraq’s continued expansion and to help connect the company with the workforce and resources it needs to succeed in Illinois.”

Chicago’s superb quantum facilities offer Diraq the ability to rapidly test and prototype our uniquely scalable technology as we advance toward deploying commercial systems.

Andrew Dzurak, CEO and founder at Diraq
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Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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