About Oratomic, A Neutral Atom Startup

Oratomic announced a $300M Series A raise.

Oratomic is a California-based quantum computing company that emerged from CalTech. John Preskill is listed as an advisor.

They are focused on the Neutral Atom modality. Some people think that Neutral Atoms will be one of the top 3 modalities, along with Superconducting and Trapped Ions. Some people think that Superconducting is just too expensive to ever be a viable modality. I’m not convinced that Superconducting is out of the running; they may find a way to reduce build costs over the next few years. Regardless, Oratomic is quite interesting.

First, they delivered a very compelling error correction story when they announced their formation earlier this year. Their initial 6100 physical qubit system portrayed a clear path to a 10,000 physical qubit system that can deliver fault-tolerant capabilities. Previously, it was thought that true fault-tolerant systems required 1,000,000 physical qubits. A 100x improvement means less complexity, and likely a much lower cost of solution.

Read “Shor’s algorithm is possible with as few as 10,000 reconfigurable atomic qubits”

Second, they are emerging at an interesting time. The market is orienting around several companies that have been building quantum for a decade or more. Oratomic is new, and sometimes new entrants have something innovative aand are not held back by their legacy. I think Oratomic has both of these. Oratomic is mostly unencumbered by having to convince the world that quantum computing is possible. Their starting point is far ahead of the incumbents, and they have a running start, rather than a crawl.

Third, John Preskill is a luminary in the field, one of the leading academics. His joining a commercial entity means he genuinely believes that Oratomic has the goods. I wouldn’t weigh Oratomic solely on this, but his presence means, at least, that Oratomic has a shot at being a key player in the Neutral Atom space, and perhaps in Quantum Computing generally.

Oratomic says that they expect to deliver a fault-tolerant machine by the end of this decade. I suspect that they will achieve that sooner.

The quantum era is far from over: expect new entrants, new techniques, new breakthroughs.

Update: Scott Aaronson, a leading quantum information researcher and academic, is also listed as an investor. Having Preskill and Aaronson involved is meaningful.