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On the Quantum Valley map · Boulder, mile 00Private
Boulder, CO

Atom Computing

Neutral atom quantum computing pioneer. The first company to demonstrate more than 1,000 qubits on a neutral atom platform.

Founded
2018
Stage
Series B
Location
Boulder, CO
Employees
~80

Atom Computing was founded in 2018 in Boulder, Colorado, by physicists trained in the NIST and JILA tradition. The company builds quantum computers using neutral atoms, specifically rubidium or ytterbium atoms trapped and manipulated using lasers in ultra-high vacuum. In October 2023, Atom Computing demonstrated a 1,225-site neutral atom array populated with 1,180 qubits, the largest neutral atom quantum computer at that time. The company has established a partnership with Microsoft, placing it in Microsoft's quantum computing ecosystem alongside their own topological qubit research. CEO Ben Bloom won the Colorado Technology Association CEO of the Year award in 2026, the first time the award has gone to a quantum computing founder. Neutral atom systems have a potential scalability advantage: adding more atoms does not require the same engineering complexity as adding superconducting circuits.

Key details
Technology
Neutral atom qubits
Total raised
$60M+ across Series A and B
Key people
Ben Bloom (CEO, CTA CEO of the Year 2026)
Products
Neutral atom quantum computers
Notable milestone

1,180 qubits in a 1,225-site array (Oct 2023); Microsoft partnership

neutral atomsseries bMicrosoft partner1,180 qubitsBoulder
atom-computing.com
People
Ben Bloom
Founder and CEO
Investors and funders
Microsoft
Strategic partner; integrates Atom Computing neutral atom hardware via Azure Quantum.
Related glossary terms
Microkelvin
One millionth of a Kelvin. The temperature regime reached by laser cooling, where neutral atoms and trapped ions are held still enough to act as qubits.
Qubit
The basic unit of quantum information, analogous to a classical bit but able to exist in superposition, a combination of 0 and 1 simultaneously.
Neutral Atom Qubits
Qubits built from individual neutral atoms, laser-cooled and trapped in optical tweezers or lattices. A leading qubit modality with strong scaling potential.
Quantum Decoherence
The process by which a quantum system loses its quantum properties through interaction with its environment. The primary enemy of quantum computation.
Coherence Time (T1, T2)
How long a qubit holds its quantum state before decoherence destroys it. T1 is the energy relaxation time; T2 is the dephasing time. Longer is better.
Laser Cooling
A technique using laser light to slow atoms down, cooling them to temperatures within millionths of a degree above absolute zero. Essential for neutral atom and trapped ion quantum computers.
Optical Tweezers
Tightly focused laser beams used to trap and hold individual atoms or particles in precise positions. A key tool in neutral atom quantum computing.
NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum)
The current era of quantum computing: systems with 50-1000+ qubits that are too error-prone for fault-tolerant computation but large enough to be potentially useful for some tasks.
Magneto-Optical Trap (MOT)
The standard first step for cooling neutral atoms: six laser beams and a magnetic field gradient that chill millions of atoms to microkelvin temperatures.
Logical Qubit
An error-corrected qubit: information spread across many imperfect physical qubits so errors can be caught faster than they pile up. The metric that actually matters.
Two-Qubit Gate
An operation that makes one qubit's state depend on another, the step that creates entanglement and where most of a quantum computer's error budget goes.
Rydberg Blockade
The effect that gives neutral atoms their two-qubit gates: excite one to a giant orbit and within a blockade radius only a single atom can be excited at a time.