A number of companies, betting on various architectural approaches, are trying to build the first commercially viable quantum computer capable of significantly outperforming current systems.
Oratomic, which entered the race earlier this year with the goal of developing the first utility-scale quantum computer by the end of the decade, said this week that it has raised $300 million. The massive Series A round was co-led by ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Bezos Expeditions, Index Ventures, General Catalyst, Lowercarbon Capital, Bain Capital, and others.
Founded by Caltech physicists, Oratomic uses lasers, which act as optical tweezers, to hold individual atoms in place as the basis for its quantum computer.
The startup was launched after its researchers discovered that their approach can correct errors using significantly fewer qubits — the basic unit in quantum computing — than previously thought possible. Since quantum computers are sensitive to noise, effective error correction is the key to turning them into truly useful tools.
“You would have not previously been able to convince any of us to start a quantum computing company, because we just thought it was way too far away,” Oratomic’s co-founder and CEO Dolev Bluvstein told TechCrunch. “Only when we made this recent breakthrough did we simultaneously all change our minds.”
While most other quantum companies are making prototypes available to research scientists and corporations, Oratomic has no plans to develop or sell these systems, known as noisy intermediate-scale quantum, or NISQ.
Bluvstein noted that Oratomic shouldn’t be compared to PsiQuantum, a startup valued at $7 billion last September, which is also bypassing the NISQ stage and aims to deliver a viable, million-qubit quantum computer by the end of next year.
Oratomic’s approach is fundamentally simpler and less expensive, Bluvstein argued. “The difference is that we need roughly 10,000 to 20,000 qubits to build a useful computer, and we have already experimentally demonstrated all of the core components required of that computer at a slightly smaller scale,” he said.
A full-scale quantum computer could facilitate breakthroughs in any field requiring complex calculations, from biotech, chemistry, and logistics to artificial intelligence and cryptography.
Companies working toward building these machines and developing software for their use have seen a wave of enthusiasm from investors recently. Several startups in the space, including Infleqtion and Quantanium, have gone public this year. Meanwhile, existing public companies like Rigetti and IonQ have seen their share prices surge over the past 18 months.
Still, investor Vinod Khosla is so confident Oratomic will build the first fault-tolerant quantum computer that he wrote on X it was his firm’s “largest initial investment yet.”