Quantum is Finally Here! What's Changed?

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Welcome to Colorado Tech People, the podcast where we talk with the founders and leaders using technology to solve some of the world's hardest problems. Today's episode explores the future of quantum computing, asking the question, why quantum now? I'm joined by Justin Ging, Chief Product Officer at Colorado-based Atom Computing, a company building large-scale quantum computers using neutral atom technology. We'll discuss the hard product decisions behind commercializing quantum systems, how this technology is evolving, and what it could mean for the next generation of computing.

Welcome, Justin. First question for you. What was the problem atom computing was created to solve, and what is the solution? Justin Ging: Atom Computing is a quantum computing hardware company.

We build quantum computers ⁓ every computer company is really racing for the same thing, which is value added types of economically valuable computation that just can't be done other ways. So quantum computing particularly tackles certain kinds of problems that with classical approaches, the scale reaches a point where you just, you could spend billions of years computing and you never come to a solution Quantum computing's different approach allows some of these things to be tackled.

So things like chemical and molecular simulations where there's corollaries between the... energy bonds and the angles and things like this that get very complicated the more atoms and molecules you've joined together perfectly suited for what quantum computers can do ⁓ so ⁓ racing for that ability ⁓ a journey to go on to be able to reach that. So Atom Computing is one of those companies and ⁓ particular way of making the quantum computer, the modality, is called neutral atoms.

There other approaches that are kind of popular. Some of the big names in the industry are taking those. Our approach different in that the goal is to be able to scale up faster than these other approaches. So it really is about ⁓ getting to finish line sooner We continue to hire aggressively.

We're up to about 120 people. We'll probably be about 150 people by the end of the year. We have more than half of our company located in Boulder, Colorado. A large contingent of PhD researchers who are atomic, molecular, optical physicists who driving the technology, but increasingly of the people we hire are actually engineers of various disciplines, mechanical, electrical, control systems, optics engineers, as well as folks.

Monisha Saldanha: Can you talk to us a bit about what it's like to build a quantum computing company in and what that tech ecosystem is like? Justin Ging: So we as a company actually got our start out in Berkeley, California. as expanded, we were choices. Where's best place to continue to expand?

⁓ Colorado and Boulder particular are, it's a great place, because of the workforce. type of ⁓ approach that use is very focused, controlling and manipulating atoms. And there's a long rich history within this community in Boulder. NIST and CU Boulder and the JILA, the organization that shares ⁓ two resources.

Many Nobel Prize winners ⁓ around various topics. ⁓ And great PhD programs that produce the kinds of employees that we need. ⁓ And ⁓ top it, ⁓ Boulder and are just beautiful. A great place to have work-life balance.

So it's quite easy actually to recruit people who ⁓ in this area of the ⁓ to get them to join. So it is about the We have PhDs from all over the country and people who in the field. Monisha Saldanha: about networking? there a network within the companies that work in quantum?

Like, do you meet regularly with other companies working in quantum? Justin Ging: At maybe different levels of meeting up. So within Colorado, there's an organization called Elevate Quantum, which has a convening element to it. So it does get everyone together to kind of think about topics as diverse as like workforce, but also kind of like what's going on in the industry.

There are national groups, Quantum Economic Development Consortium that is now actually inclusive of international groups as well that gets everyone together but the ⁓ the thing is there are a lot of quantum conferences around the globe ⁓ and to some degree, it's a relatively small community. So you end up seeing ⁓ the same crew of folks at a lot of these events. Increasingly, there are events that go outside of the quantum domain. Recently there was an oil and gas conference that S &P Global put on in Texas, ⁓ and quantum companies participated in that to kind of introduce what quantum do for a particular industry.

And that's just one example of that industry. ⁓ With quantum benefits pharmaceuticals, and finance and other types of industries. Monisha Saldanha: Quantum has been five 10 years away for decades. So what's changed right now in the field of quantum computing?

Justin Ging: Well, computing is a journey. And I think the ideas started in the ⁓ and really formulated once there was this very real, tangible ⁓ path cracking encryption that got people very interested in ⁓ how this work. So there was over the years. I think there were some big milestones, inflection points.

One was IBM taking it in a lead and getting some of the first systems out around 2015, 2016, making it available to researchers, a five qubit system that they put out. And it was very beneficial to have everyone realize, oh, this is real. Quantum computers aren't theoretical. They are real devices that you can actually work on.

Five qubits, five physical qubits, there's not too much you can do, but people got very creative and it inspired many others to follow. Our particular modality came about because a lot of things came together in the industry to make it possible. One of those key things for us is lasers. So order to control and manipulate atoms, you use ⁓ colors of laser depending on the element that you're using, ⁓ ⁓ that you're using.

Prior to 2016 timeframe, if you were gonna tackle this, you'd have to build each of those lasers yourself. So you'd need to be as much a laser company as a quantum company. But because of advancements in those laser technologies and the commercialization of those, where you can purchase a laser that you turn on and it works, then you can move forward to using that as kind of just one component in the system. And that was an inflection point for neutral atoms particularly.

In very recent times, I think the energy around quantum is picking up because, when people say 10 years out, that's usually like beyond a reasonable window where you're like, sure, anything can happen in 10 years. ⁓ We're at the point where we're more five years out. So there's very tangible path at this point ⁓ to get from where the industry is and particularly ⁓ our company. The systems that we will put out and reaching that threshold to utility scale.

Currently we're building systems, systems that can use to make quantum computers essentially, test out algorithms at smaller scale ⁓ and start showing the technology and moving towards it. But at that point where we're making utility scaling, change quite a bit. And that inflection point is only five years away or so, where customers any longer just researchers, but actually enterprises. So ⁓ when ⁓ says, right now, hey, why don't you invest in a quantum computer?

⁓ Well, we're talking many tens of millions of dollars. And that's a big chunk of a research budget to say, well, what's my ROI? You'll get research, you'll learn some things. It's true, you will, but it's a hard type of number to propose to an enterprise.

if you fast forward to, hey, this quantum computer is going to compute these particular things that you care about, reduce cycle time on development through simulation or ⁓ costs in some way. Now it's a very particular ROI and you're paying for computation that helps you do things and you can line up. I know it's worth paying this much for the computation because it ⁓ me so much on the other side or it helps me make so much more money ⁓ that is the point where people get very excited and where ⁓ all the work in quantum starts to pay off.

Monisha Saldanha: five years away from being able to quantify that ROI? Justin Ging: I think that's a time frame, give or take a year to something like that. We believe we will start to dip into that threshold with our next generation system, which will be about two years from now, into the range where many people have shown theoretically the level of computation that you need and will be hitting those thresholds. So some of the first things, there might be one or two very scientific niche type of applications such as something around magnetic materials or something like that that maybe isn't as widespread and helpful to everyone, but it'll start to cross into that threshold.

And then as the quantum compute resources, the performance increases, that'll open up a lot more. The other wild card in of this is the algorithm side. So when people started thinking about, ⁓ what size quantum computer do need to do some of these problems, ⁓ they came up with, okay, gotta be millions and billions of these qubits and gonna have to be quite large. ⁓ And over the years, we see a aggressive shrinking of those requirements to news that even just came out this past week of some of the things that are being proposed to, hey, we just figured out, here's a way we could do it with even fewer resources.

So at the same time that hardware keeps improving as fast as it can, the software and algorithm side keeps shrinking the, what do we think we need, what size machine do we need to be able to do these things? Monisha Saldanha: Is It's mostly US based or is it more international? ⁓ Justin Ging: It's a global market right now. There are various, wouldn't say it's everywhere in the globe, but there are various hotspots around the world where there are great quantum ecosystems.

⁓ market for quantum computers is very much selling on premises systems ⁓ the customers ⁓ usually private partnerships who are very intent building out their quantum ecosystem. So ⁓ they recognize an important technology, similar to AI. They don't want to get left behind. It's crucial to the future of their economy.

And not having quantum is a big disadvantage. And so how best to build their own ecosystem of suppliers and researchers and talent and workforce. Generating those jobs in the future, but to have a quantum system at the foundation of that. So a system that can benefit the local universities, the professors and others, researchers can use it to have dedicated access to quantum computers, but even more importantly, who haven't touched or thought about quantum computers, maybe aren't even in the field, ⁓ biologists or something like that that say, can I touch a quantum computer?

And having that to be able to introduce people to it and start training them becomes a crucial part. ⁓ And so of that together makes the ⁓ quantum computer an ecosystem builder kind of the product at the moment. And so ⁓ around the world, various regions, ⁓ states, countries, provinces, et cetera, who to have quantum. Monisha Saldanha: you name the top five centers for quantum globally?

Justin Ging: The US is obviously very strong, in addition to that, the EU and UK, in Asia Pacific there is ⁓ and Korea and Singapore. ⁓ has a strong ecosystem ⁓ the Middle East ⁓ Monisha Saldanha: What's the biggest bottleneck to scaling quantum systems today? Justin Ging: ⁓ For us it's much more on the engineering side. So have a technology that scales well, but that scaling is an challenge.

So ⁓ the we operate our quantum computers, we hold individual atoms in a vacuum chamber and we use laser tweezers, which is a very finely focused laser beam, ⁓ to those atoms in free space. ⁓ And once you have it held, you can actually move your around, almost like a tractor beam in Star Trek, you can hold those atoms. ⁓ And we create many of those spots of life, these tweezers that are holding atoms. Once you're holding that atom, you can use other lasers to send pulses to it to control the quantum information.

And you can cause them to interact have the entanglement ⁓ perform these quantum operations. So for us to scale, we add additional atoms, are the qubits, into vacuum chamber, and we control them. ⁓ So is where the engineering starts to come in, is how do you add more and more of these atoms and control all of them and do in a way that you're doing it very quickly? So there's the number the quality of these qubits, but also how fast you are doing the computation, because...

even when you're talking things that happen at microsecond scale or millisecond scale, doesn't sound like much, but then you have many, many, of these operations. And so starts to add up. And so the engineering challenge is how do we control that many spots of light and how do we move them around efficiently. Monisha Saldanha: You mentioned hiring PhDs.

What types of are you looking for? What types of backgrounds? Justin Ging: Well, usually the PhDs are ⁓ AMO physicists, the Atomic Molecular Optical. They have very often worked in the exact type of work in their PhD program of how do I control and manipulate atoms to do various things.

And so that's a large part of it, but a very particular type of physicist. And there's ⁓ so many around the world and getting trained. Monisha Saldanha: Could tell us a little bit about the trends around what people want to use quantum computers to do? Justin Ging: Yeah, so would in the past five to 10 years when quantum computers were relatively low capability types of systems, people were making the most of it.

So using those physical qubits and doing what are called MISC algorithms, noisy intermediate scale quantum. The interactions are not necessarily the highest fidelity interactions, not quite reliable. But people got creative and started showing at least demonstration algorithms. Like here's how you could do some chemical modeling.

Here's how you could do some optimization problems. ⁓ was several years where ⁓ that ⁓ the bulk of the activity was ⁓ showing quantum computers can do these things. ⁓ Usually scale problems where you would kind of say like, well, ⁓ I almost do that just with a ⁓ paper pencil. They're small problems.

⁓ But point was, ⁓ if write a quantum algorithm to do this thing on a small scale problem, it actually computes and does the right answer. You can start to build up that credibility that the quantum computer does work in essence. But the reality is for a quantum computer to do these actual utility scale problems, they have to be very high quality interactions. And so the way that you get that is, there's a limitation on the physical qubit fidelity.

And so how do you get across the barrier to making it way, way, way better? You start grouping physical qubits together to each essentially act as one qubit. So it's a logical qubit it's called. So it's like a virtual qubit that has made up of actual physical qubits so that collectively they act like high quality.

Those are the ones that you can do these great algorithms with. the question is, how do you take those physical qubits, make qubits and make a lot of them? Well, ⁓ algorithmic What is the algorithm for working with these physical qubits to track the errors and correct for them such that they work this way? And so that is where all the is channeled now.

I say all, but ⁓ a majority of the research around the world, everyone's very interested in how can they make a error correction algorithm that ⁓ makes logical qubits ⁓ does it in ⁓ ⁓ way possible to increase ⁓ highest quality at the ⁓ physical qubit resources. And so ⁓ are very interested in using the quantum computers now. ⁓ that's not as appealing to the end users of like, well, how's that gonna help me in my pharmaceutical or finance? It's not solving those problems.

It's actually solving, how do we get the hardware so that it can solve your problem? So ⁓ a little bit of ⁓ setting aside those end goals for a moment Monisha Saldanha: ⁓ What kinds of problems could quantum computers solve that classical struggle with today? Justin Ging: Yeah, so I mentioned some of those. I think the one that we're excited about is chemical molecular modeling.

And is beneficial materials, to many different things in sustainability aspects. Can you design a more efficient solar panel, for example, or can you improve a process ⁓ with Could you improve, let's say, oil and gas drilling or something like that? All of those types of chemical molecular types of things. And part of the reason that's exciting is because we expect that to be one of the first applications, something that requires ⁓ resources from the quantum computer.

As the quantum computers get bigger, of these types things open up of what could you do for finance or some of these other things, but that chemistry the materials seems to be first. And part of the way we see this interaction going is actually in conjunction with AI. So a interesting tie in with AI. One is perhaps quantum computers can actually be a in the training process, which is exciting from the energy consumption point of view.

If you could pass off at least some of the computational jobs of training which are using all this energy of data centers. If you could do it more efficiently with quantum that'd be a big win right away. And there is a lot of research into how can quantum computers not tackle the whole training but particular aspects of it. another interesting aspect is how do you make the AI better?

⁓ the is essentially using quantum computers ⁓ to data doesn't exist in the world. So AI models are taking the world's data, ⁓ compiling that together to be very smart but it's only as good as what you're feeding it. So if you can use a quantum computer to model interactions go at a much more higher resolution and use that as a new data set for AI to train on, the AI will become better at actually predicting what they can do. So you could use the AI to do your simulation based on the data that quantum computers fed Monisha Saldanha: Atom Computing is building quantum computers based on neutral atom arrays.

How does that architecture differ from other quantum approaches? Justin Ging: Yeah, Several different modalities are out there. Essentially, you need something that has a two-state interaction that is quantum. And so we particularly use the nuclear spin state of spin up or spin down a nucleus.

You can use electron states. Superconducting is another approach used by IBM and Google. super chilled circuit and use the current, ⁓ direction of the current as your qubit. For us, the atomic approach provides a lot of benefits.

The neutral nature means you can pack a lot of atoms close together, so it allows us to scale. The nuclear spin, because in nucleus, it has some inherent protection because the electrons kind of provide a shield around that. And so we have very long coherence time. So it holds that quantum information for a long time.

It helps you in the computation. the approach that we have where I was describing with the tweezers and you're moving them around, ⁓ can actually, instead of having a fixed topology where if qubit wants to talk to a qubit that's far away, ⁓ in it's printed in circuits. So ⁓ one has to talk to the next circuit and talk to the next qubit and forth, whisper down the lane. And so you lose a little bit of fidelity each time.

With our approach. ⁓ can go grab whatever two qubits you want, put them together, have them get entangled, and go put them back. And that allows any qubit can talk directly to any other qubit, which turns out to be a huge win when you're doing error correction schemes so that you can ⁓ be efficient with those schemes. ⁓ So of these pieces together give you the ability to create these logical qubits and create a lot of them in the near Monisha Saldanha: Quantum is still an emerging field.

How do you make product decisions when the underlying science is evolving so rapidly? Justin Ging: When you're about a product from the technology, so we're taking research is very cutting and productizing it. There's a balance and there's a lot of negotiation between what do you need from a side? What is the customer expecting?

⁓ is that overall experience? ⁓ what can we actually build at this time? And so we have to be very realistic about what's possible. I mean, it would be a dream if you could just say, ⁓ okay, working it until I have the ultimate system.

⁓ But have to kind of ⁓ set out in a staged approach because ⁓ at least believe that ⁓ having systems are not ⁓ full utility scale is actually helping other types of research happen. So if there isn't a system in existence for software and algorithm development, that won't make progress. And so having interim milestones of ever-increasing system sizes, think is beneficial to pull everyone along to the readiness. ⁓ we magically produce that utility-scale hardware today, ⁓ think people will be scratching their heads.

⁓ wait a minute, how do I use this and maybe spending a long time just thinking that through of ⁓ okay, you've given me everything I wanted, but now I don't, I haven't done the prep work of how am gonna take advantage of it. we believe in putting out almost a trained schedule of ⁓ that trained schedule is of those kind of product development type of basics. Monisha Saldanha: How's the commercialization journey? Justin Ging: Yeah, so we sold our first commercial system last year to the country of Denmark and Novo Nordisk Foundation.

actively delivering on that and seeking out other customers. ⁓ build and deliver quantum systems. Then ⁓ where we them, also set up a facility. So ⁓ first of just to support that system, because it's going to be hands on for keeping it running the whole time.

These are not. you know, black boxes that just run forever on their own. we have support people, but then also ⁓ it's goal to participate in each of these ecosystems. So ⁓ that our customer goal to build out their ecosystem and it's our goal as well.

So if we, ⁓ if had a magical buyer who said, I want to ⁓ put in a glass case and just look at it because it's beautiful. ⁓ That's We would like to make a sale, ⁓ but not actually serving our long-term goals of cultivating the right research to move this forward. It's not a finally we deliver this product and we're done. This is just the start of quantum computing as an industry.

So the more that we can these quantum computers used in those ecosystems ⁓ doing interesting research, helping us our hardware forward but also moving these applications forward is beneficial. And so ⁓ wherever we deploy a system also have ⁓ folks that will participate in ecosystem actively make sure there is strong demand for system and that people are taking advantage of our particular Monisha Saldanha: Has fundraising been difficult or has it been easy? ⁓ Justin Ging: ⁓ ⁓ typical thing is ⁓ always raising as a company.

Quantum computing is an expensive ⁓ type endeavor, but there's in the community for it, especially now as we're getting so much closer. think people can actually see the end goal, see the light at the end of the tunnel. There's definitely interest in that. I think ⁓ with ⁓ moving to public markets, we've seen even retail investors get more educated and more involved and excited about quantum.

So ⁓ think there's many to funding at this point. Monisha Saldanha: is your vision for where atom computing will be, five to ten years from now? Justin Ging: Well, hopefully in the five year frame, talking about utility scale systems. There come a time when we're no longer selling on-premise systems that we're delivering to customers in various places around the globe, but actually moving back to a data center model.

We believe once the ⁓ compute itself what's ⁓ then a cloud actually serves everyone quite well. So once you know exactly what your compute's going to do, you're buying your time and you don't really care as much about the physical system and physically touching it. You can have it happen in the background and ⁓ longer term when people say, how's it gonna affect my life? You won't know that a quantum computer is doing the computation today.

In fact, I would that most people don't know ⁓ when they the cloud for something, did a GPU help that? Did a particular ASIC, ⁓ did my get encoded by a CPU or transcoding chip in the cloud? Nobody knows. people probably don't care.

They're like, did it do what I wanted to do? ⁓ I think the same thing will happen with quantum, where the quantum portion of a computation ⁓ will ⁓ sorted within the cloud. ⁓ People's will definitely be affected by ⁓ the things people do with quantum to invent new materials and make products better to do particular applications. ⁓ Monisha Saldanha: Do you think they'll always be something that's more for commercial purposes?

Justin Ging: I think quantum computers are a bit more of a specialty computation tool. There are certain kinds of problems that are better tackled by quantum. And it turns out one plus one is not one of the things that it does well. You actually can do it with a quantum computer.

You can make an adder. But there are many more efficient ways to do that type of a problem. But for the kinds of number variables, high computation space problems, ⁓ quantum computers are the best for it. So does everybody need that?

Not necessarily. So ⁓ for their daily life. So ⁓ think that we'll just continue to see compute ⁓ of be this heterogeneous mix of ⁓ the best type of processor for what you're going to do. I've in the quantum for about eight years.

⁓ Before that, I was in the semiconductor space, particularly all the chips and ⁓ and sensors and cameras and things that are in cell phones. In cell phones, the processors are systems on a chip. There's actually more than one CPU in these architectures for those chips. Usually have big CPU cores and little CPU cores.

And the reason is sometimes I need a lot of horsepower, but it uses a lot of power and my battery is limited in what I carry around in my cell phone. And sometimes I just need a little bit of processing power and I can do that at very low power. And so within that processor, you're actually diverting the job to ⁓ here's where I need a big one, here's where I need an energy efficient one, here's where I need a particular function done and there's a little special core for doing that.

⁓ So think the same kind of thing happens at a macroscopic scale with compute. ⁓ Hey, this case, I just regular CPU, in this case, I need a QP, a quantum processing unit to actually tackle that problem. In some cases, ⁓ I need supercomputer that is doing ⁓ weather analysis weeks on end. So I think there will continue to be this bifurcation of specialization of processors Monisha Saldanha: You mentioned that the current computers are tens of millions.

Do you think there will be quantum computers available for less? ⁓ Justin Ging: Yes, I think that ⁓ as soon as you start to produce them in much higher numbers, there's many ways that costs can be addressed. The goal right now for quantum companies, computing included, is ⁓ it work first. Worry the costs later.

We have many ideas about how to reduce those costs. Once you're producing, you know, we're doing ⁓ at a per year. But ⁓ if you increase that... let's say 2x, 3x, 4x, that already would start to show some benefits that we can do from the supply chain point of view.

And if you say, I'm to do 10 or 100x the number of quantum computers, there are some really big things that could be done and some technologies that could help that move along. So we strongly believe that the cost will come down for quantum compute as they proliferate. Part of it is to get to the goal of doing something economically valuable. Monisha Saldanha: What is one book every builder should read and why?

Justin Ging: I am a big fan of Chip and Dan Heath's books. More recently, Power of Moments is one that from business side and from marketing and telling the story of quantum, the book is essentially about ⁓ how do you make special when people are presenting something new? For us, we're certainly in new space. how do we make that experience a positive one?

⁓ Monisha Saldanha: Fantastic. Well, Justin, thank you so much for joining us. This was a really interesting conversation. I think some really great nuggets in this for people that are very familiar with quantum, but also for people that don't know very much about quantum.

So thank you for sharing your expertise.