Inactive

This is a Notice of Proposed Contract Action under FAR Part 12 Acquisition of Commercial Items and FAR Part 13 Simplified Acquisition Procedures. This notice is for information only; a solicitation wi... This is a Notice of Proposed Contract Action under FAR Part 12 Acquisition of Commercial Items and FAR Part 13 Simplified Acquisition Procedures. This notice is for information only; a solicitation will not be issued. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL. No contract will be awarded on the basis of offers received in response to this notice. The associated North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code is 334111 with a small business size standard of 1,250 employees. AFRL requires the establishment of a five (5) year Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ), Firm Fixed Price (FFP) contract to purchase Rigetti Foundry Services, including yearly subscription renewal, use of a Product Design Kit for the development of new super conducting quantum devices and use of Rigetti’s existing fabrication processes and templates as well as the capability to submit custom designs for fabrication services. The Government requires the procurement of customizable designed superconducting quantum devices for research and development of quantum networking hardware. The required devices include 3D integrated (aka flip-chip bonded) structures enabling high density and efficient microwave and photonic interconnects; hybrid superconducting and 2D materials (i.e. h-BN, graphene, etc.) for enhancement of superconducting qubit and resonator performance, and low noise superconducting amplifiers for measurements of microwave light. This includes multi-project (partial) wafer + cap, custom indium deposition, custom flip-chip bonding, (single) Quantum Integrated Circuit (QuIC) wafer + cap, custom quantum processing unit (QPU) lattice, custom QPU packaging, 12-channel RF diplexer, traveling wave parametric amplifier, uncharacterized QuIC test chip, uncharacterized packaged QuIC test chip, and cryo-characterized QuIC test chips. The Government has determined that due to Rigetti’s established template and fabrication processes and the Government’s need to develop designs for new superconducting quantum devices and submit those designs to Rigetti’s in house quantum foundry for fabrication, dicing, and packaging, only Rigetti can meet this requirement. Rigetti is the only known commercial foundry that is dedicated to producing high-quality, state-of-the-art superconducting quantum bits (qubits) while allowing users the option to submit custom designs for fabrication. No other companies other than Rigetti sell the qubits that they manufacture to external researchers, such as the Government. Further, the Government has previously purchased the Rigetti Foundry Services Product Design Kit specifically for the purpose of ordering and customizing quantum devices manufactured by Rigetti. Each annual subscription the Government has purchased enables our researchers to specify the desired options and device parameters from the collection of Rigetti’s proprietary processing capabilities; the Product Design Kit would thus not be compatible for use with other micro-fabrication and nanofabrication facilities to reproduce Rigetti’s capabilities without the Government experiencing a substantial duplication of cost and effort. The government intends to negotiate a sole source contract with Rigetti & CO, Inc. 2919 7th St. Berkeley, CA 94710. This is a notice of proposed contract action and not a request for competitive proposals; however, all responsible sources may submit a capability statement or proposal, which shall be considered by the agency. All inquiries should be sent by email to Brooke.McDonald@us.af.mil. Responses must be submitted by the date/time listed on the notice. Any response to this notice must show clear and convincing evidence that competition would be advantageous to the Government in future procurements. Responses received will be evaluated; however a determination by the Government not to compete the proposed procurement based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. The Government anticipates an award date by July 2023. A Sole Source Justification will be attached to the subsequent Notice of Award.