A technology once feared too error-prone to underlie a quantum computer is hitting the big time.
QuEra, an academic spin-out company that uses atoms and lasers to encode quantum bits or ‘qubits’, announced on 11 February that it has raised US$230 million in funding — one of the largest single investments in any quantum firm so far. Other companies using a similar technology to build machines — called neutral atom quantum computers — are also making gains on industry leaders such as IBM.
Neutral atom technology “is catching up”, says Doug Finke a computer scientist who works at business-analysis firm Global Quantum Intelligence in Orange County, California. “As far as we know this is the largest venture investment in a neutral-atom company.”
Neutral atoms are stable and can remain in their quantum states without bulky cooling systems. These are features that should make them excellent qubits, the building blocks of a quantum computer, equivalent to classical bits of information. But for years, progress in neutral atom quantum computing was stymied by how precisely physicists could coax the particles to carry out calculations.
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