The head of the US government’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is leaving the unit this month to take a job with a quantum computing company, WIRED has learned. Rick Muller’s pending departure from IARPA comes amid broader efforts to downsize the United States intelligence community, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which oversees IARPA. Muller, a chemist and long-time computer science researcher, had overseen some quantum computing programs at the Department of Energy before taking the reins of IARPA in April 2024. He is joining IonQ, which is part of a race to commercialize quantum computing. It has funded dozens of research projects at universities and other labs across the country, including efforts to improve systems for face and speech recognition.