Boulder-based ColdQuanta wins $1M NASA award

BOULDER — ColdQuanta Inc., a Boulder company specializing in cold atom systems, landed a $1 million award from NASA to make smaller cold-atom sensors for research purposes.

Company spokesman Rob Williamson said the NASA grant is supposed to help ColdQuanta make their products more ready for the commercial market, so they can be integrated into more products for research, aerospace, defense and computing purposes.

ColdQuanta, which was started from research from the University of Colorado Boulder, uses laser technology to get atoms to near absolute zero temperatures and use the specialized qualities of atoms at that state for use in various scientific sensors, Williamson said.

SPONSORED CONTENT

The many benefits of simple, coordinated healthcare

Kaiser Permanente combines health care and coverage in one connected system to maximize employee health and minimize employer costs.

Those atoms are effective in measuring physical forces such as gravity and the movement of time, and can be used as the basic unit of information in quantum computing, akin to a binary bit in traditional computing.

“We received this funding … to make our systems smaller and more deployable, which is of great interest obviously to NASA, but for many applications where you want to take these exquisite, cold atom-based sensors and computing devices and make them down from 400 liters down to 40 liters,” he said.

The company has raised a total of $4 million since its first fundraising offer last year. One of its products is currently in use on the International Space Station.