ColdQuanta joins IBM working group for quantum-computing startups, research

BOULDER — ColdQuanta Inc. has joined a consortium of businesses and academic researchers with the International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) Quantum Network.

In a statement, the Boulder company said it will integrate its existing products within Qiskit, an open-source development platform sponsored by IBM that allows developers to build control systems for quantum-computing hardware.

The Quantum Network counts more than 140 entities spanning major corporations, startups and academic researchers to apply quantum computing to practical issues.

The partnership will also allow developers to write build-to-suit programs for “Hilbert,” the working name for ColdQuanta’s first commercial product. Hilbert is a planned 100-qubit quantum computer expected to go on sale in the second half of 2021.

A qubit, or quantum bit, is the base unit of a quantum computer and comparable to a bit in a traditional computer. While a bit is a binary representation of data such as 1 or 0, or on or off, a quantum bit can represent any proportion of either end of the binary scale and process problems at a speed and scale considered nigh-impossible by traditional computing standards.

ColdQuanta’s “cold atom” method attempts to achieve stable qubit activity by freezing atoms to near-absolute zero, where they produce minimal vibrations.

The company most recently raised $20 million in bridge financing as it continues to build a Series B round that will likely pass more than $100 million in size.

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