ColdQuanta Raises $110 Million in Series B Funding, Originator of Cold Atom Quantum Computing
On November 1, ColdQuanta announced a $110 million Series B funding round[1] to continue commercializing the company's product portfolio, including quantum computing, quantum algorithms and applications, atomic clocks, sensors and components. To date, ColdQuanta has raised approximately $190 million in cumulative funding.
Led by Dallas-based investment firm LCP Quantum, investors include In-Q-Tel, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, Breakthrough Victoria, BOKA Group Holdings I LP and others. Participation from existing investors is also strong, including Foundry Group, Global Frontier Investments and Maverick Ventures.
01Widely recognized by investment clients: Continued innovation and building a quantum ecosystem
As an investor in ColdQuanta, Christopher Galvin, former Chairman and CEO of Motorola, has joined ColdQuanta's Board of Directors. "ColdQuanta's core technology has a wide range of applications in quantum technology. They are not just solving quantum computing problems, they are advancing quantum technology in the development of next-generation atomic clocks and radio frequency (RF) technology, which offers significant advantages over traditional antenna-based receivers. Quantum RF sensors will be a transformative technology in communications, and ColdQuanta is leading the way."
Breakthrough Victoria participated in this round of funding in the amount of A$29 million to help establish an Asia-Pacific quantum computing and technology facility at Swinburne University of Technology headquarters, called the ColdQuanta-Swinburne Quantum Technology Centre.
The quantum ecosystem is experiencing a global wave of innovation and our market leadership has been recognized by investors around the world, validating our unique approach," said ColdQuanta CEO Scott Faris. Customers are already adopting ColdQuanta's quantum RF sensors, quantum atomic clocks and quantum software. These are key building blocks for the quantum industry that will drive significant impact in today's society while we work to realize the enormous benefits that quantum computing will bring in the future."
02The first team to work on cold atom quantum technology
In 1995, Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman of the University of Colorado at Boulder used gaseous rubidium atoms at temperatures as low as 170nK to obtain the first Bose-Einstein condensate: for which they received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics. Building on this foundation, Dana Anderson collaborated with the university's Nobel laureates Cornell and Weiman and ColdQuanta co-founder Theodor Hänsch on cold-atom technology, found its potential to be enormous, and founded ColdQuanta in 2007.
From left to right: the process of Bose-Einstein condensation
After more than a decade of development, ColdQuanta has introduced its unique Quantum Core™ technology, which uses lasers to cool atoms to deep cold temperatures close to absolute zero, which will create Bose-Einstein condensates, equivalent to a cloud of atoms, and the control of these ultracold atoms (individually or as a cloud) enables everything from atomic timing to quantum logic.
03
Implementation of a cold-atom quantum computer
For the first 11 years of the company's existence, ColdQuanta did not have a single funding round. But two important studies in 2018 began to attract the attention of capital markets and the U.S. government.
In a paper published Sept. 20, 2018, in Physical Review Letters, Harvard physicist Mikhail Lukin's team was able to accurately program a double rubidium atomic logic gate 97 percent of the time by designing a higher-quality laser. This brings the method closer to the performance of superconducting quantum bits, which have achieved a fidelity of more than 99 percent.
In a paper published Sept. 5, 2018, in the journal Nature, Antoine Browaeys and his colleagues at the Charles Fabry Laboratory in Paris demonstrate an unprecedented level of control over a three-dimensional array of 72 atoms. To demonstrate their control, they even arranged the atoms in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. Their use of three-dimensional space allows them to compress more quantum bits into a small space.
Although neutral atoms lack charge and interact reluctantly with other atoms, they seem to make poor quantum bits. But by using specially timed laser pulses, physicists can excite the outermost electron of an atom and remove it from the nucleus, expanding the atom to billions of times its normal size. This is known as the Reedeburg state.
Physicists can use this behavior to create entanglement. If two adjacent atoms are excited into a superposition of states, then the two atoms are partly in the Ridderberg state and partly in the ground state, and the measurement will cause the atoms to collapse into one or the other state. But because only one atom can be in the Rydberg state, the atoms are entangled and the state of one atom depends on the state of the other atom. Neutral atoms have some inherent advantages once they are entangled. First of all atoms do not need mass control because they are by definition identical. They are much smaller than silicon-based quantum bits, which means that, in theory, more quantum bits can fit into a small space. The system works at room temperature, unlike superconducting quantum bits that need to be placed in a huge cooler. Finally, because neutral atoms are less prone to interact, they are more immune to external noise and can maintain quantum information for relatively long periods of time.
The core part of the ColdQuanta cold-atom quantum computer is a vacuum chamber made of glass with a built-in tessellated array of cesium atoms, each acting as a separate quantum bit.
Hilbert's workflow
Hilbert quantum processor rendering and physical picture
In December 2021, ColdQuanta is once again laying out its cloud platform: it will make its upcoming quantum computer Hilbert available to members of the Strangeworks Backstage Pass first, and then fully open it up later. strangeworks is a quantum-enabled Platform as a Service (PaaS) designed to Strangeworks is a quantum-enabled platform-as-a-service (PaaS) designed to help experts in various fields provide quantum solutions to their problems. Backend Passes, a program launched by Strangeworks this year, will offer a series of early or limited access passes to all quantum computers, including the IBM Q, through the cloud.
In January 2022, ColdQuanta and Classiq announced a partnership to provide 100-quantum-bit quantum circuits to companies and researchers who desire quantum computing to solve their most pressing problems. The partnership combines the power of two industry-leading platforms: ColdQuanta's cold-atom quantum computer and Classiq's quantum algorithm design software. Among other things, ColdQuanta's Hilbert quantum computer will provide companies and researchers with the opportunity to simulate and execute quantum circuits of 100 quantum bits, with even larger models coming in the future.
On May 11, 2022, ColdQuanta changed the company's software capabilities by acquiring Super.tech, a quantum algorithms and applications company. As a result of the acquisition, in addition to Argonne National Laboratory, the Berkeley Advanced Quantum Testbed (AQT), EPiQC and Q-NEXT, prominent financial companies and national energy companies are using Super.tech's software to accelerate the value of today's NISQ-era devices.
Regarding the future, ColdQuanta says they will build a version with 1000+ quantum bits (35×35 arrays) over the next three years, continuously enhancing connectivity and fidelity, and progressively miniaturizing. "ColdQuanta will work to solve important customer computing problems faster and more efficiently, such as financial services, logistics and pharmaceuticals (drug discovery) and quantum computing as a cloud service (QCaaS) delivery."
Reference links：
[1]https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coldquanta-announces-110-million-series-b-to-continue-commercializing-quantum-technology-products-across-the-global-ecosystem-301664442.html
[2]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04592-6
