Google, SoftBank back quantum computing startup QuEra in $230 million deal

By Lizette Chapman 

Startup investors including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and SoftBank Group Corp. are betting that quantum computing, often thought of as a fantastical science experiment, is getting closer to having sweeping real-world applications.  

Google and SoftBank’s Vision Fund are new investors in QuEra Computing Inc., participating in a $230 million funding round for the Boston-based startup, which aims to make quantum computing more practical. 

 

QuEra Interim Chief Executive Officer Andy Ory said the latest funding round came together quickly — “in a matter of weeks” — after the startup cleared a series of technical challenges that spurred investors to approach him. Of the new cash influx, $60 million has yet to be paid out, conditional on QuEra hitting certain technical milestones, the company said. 

 

Quantum computing has become an increasingly important topic in the tech world, thanks in part to advances like Google’s new quantum computer, which can complete in five minutes a math problem that would take supercomputers around 10 septillion years.

 

Ory described the difference between the enthusiasm for the quantum industry now as compared to a few years ago as “night and day.” 

 

The industry has attracted tens of billions in investment from governments, public companies and private investors around the globe and is expected to grow into a $173 billion market by 2040, according to a McKinsey & Co. report. Companies like Google, Microsoft Corp., and International Business Machines Corp. are working on the technology, as are hundreds of startups using varying approaches. 

 

“There’s a little bit of a horse race on which tech is better,” Ory said. QuEra’s technology uses what’s known as neutral atom qubits. “It seems these days, neutral atoms are winning,” he said. 

 

Ory said scaling a quantum computer is easier with neutral atoms than other methods because it can be done at room temperature and doesn’t require massive cryogenic refrigeration equipment.

 

Spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018, QuEra says it brings in tens of millions in revenue from Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and other customers. The company will use the funding to nearly double its staff to around 130 by year’s end, hiring mainly scientists and engineers.  

 

QuEra, which previously raised about $50 million, was valued between $750 million and $1 billion in the most recent round, according to a person familiar with the conversations, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The company declined to comment on its valuation. 

 

Hartmut Neven, head of Google’s Quantum AI division, which supported the business’s investment in QuEra, said last week that he expects commercial quantum computing applications to arrive within five years. 

 

“Just like ChatGPT was an overnight success that was 30 years in the making, so are we,” said QuEra Chief Commercial Officer Yuval Boger. “We’re 43 years in the making. Another revolution is coming.”