ColdQuanta Awarded Contract of up to $7.4M from DARPA to Accelerate Development of Scalable Cold Atom Quantum Computers

(APNews) ColdQuanta, the quantum atomics company, has been selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a scalable, cold-atom-based quantum computing hardware and software platform that can demonstrate quantum advantage on real-world problems. The award is valued at up to $7.4M.
The DARPA award is part of the ONISQ program—Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices—aimed at developing quantum systems that can scale to hundreds or thousands of qubits with high performance and reliability. The objective is to show quantum advantage of quantum-hybrid systems over classical systems for a range of difficult combinatorial optimization problems including resource allocation, logistics, and image recognition. ColdQuanta’s Quantum Core™ technology uses lasers to cool atoms to near absolute zero and can use individual atoms as qubits in a scalable manner, all without the need for cryogenic refrigeration.
“We are honored by this award from DARPA and consider it strong validation of our cold atom quantum architecture and the extraordinary expertise of our collective team,” said Bo Ewald, CEO of ColdQuanta. “The ONISQ program will drive the industry forward and lead to unprecedented quantum computational capabilities for crucial defense and intelligence applications. Many of these same optimization problems are also applicable to complex industrial applications.”
NOTE: IQT Interviews Bo Ewald, CEO of ColdQuanta