The Stack
Every modality lives at the bottom of the same dilution refrigerator. Corban Tillemann-Dick bet the stack was the more durable layer. This page is what he bet on.
Quantinuum's IPO priced the qubit layer at roughly $14.3 billion fully diluted. The qubit is one thing. The dilution refrigerator that holds it at the operating temperature this publication is named for, the wiring that gets the signal in, the amplifier chain that gets the signal out, the room-temperature electronics that close the loop, are the stack. The Deep argues that a former BCG consultant read the modality war from inside the practice, saw that the layer beneath the qubits was the more durable bet, and left to build it.
Scroll from room temperature, 300 kelvin, to the base plate, roughly 10 millikelvin. At each stage the page names the temperature, the cutaway equipment, the supplier set, and the publication's editorial line on who captures the value at that layer. Maybell sits inside every stage. The qubit sits at the bottom.
The reader who arrives at the base plate has not read about Corban. They have read the diagram of what he saw.
The stack
One apparatus. Six temperature stages. One end product.
Hover any plate to highlight it. Click any plate to pin its layer card. The dewar is Maybell's. The wires are Maybell's. The TWPA at the cold stage is Bifrost's. The qubit at the base plate is whoever's modality won.
300Kroom temperature
Control rack
RF signal generators, arbitrary waveform generators, the classical computer that closes the loop. Lives outside the dewar.
Quantum MachinesZurich InstrumentsKeysightTektronix
The bet at this stage is that every quantum hardware company already has a vendor. The picks-and-shovels position above the dewar is taken. Maybell did not start here.
~50Kabout 50 times colder than outer space
Pulse-tube upper
First cooling stage. A pulse-tube cryocooler pulls heat off the wiring and shields before it can reach the colder stages.
CryomechSumitomoMaybell (integrated)
The bet at this stage is that the dilution refrigerator gets sold as a system, not a parts kit. Maybell ships the integrated stack. Cryomech and Sumitomo ship the cryocooler.
~4Kthe boiling point of helium-4
Pulse-tube lower / HEMT stage
Second cooling stage. The cold end of the pulse tube. Where the high-electron-mobility-transistor (HEMT) low-noise amplifiers sit on the readout chain.
CryomechLow Noise FactoryMaybell (integrated)
The bet at this stage is that 4 K cooling will be commoditized. The integrated-system buyer cares about throughput and reliability, not which vendor sourced the cryocooler.
~800mKthe start of the dilution stage
Still
Where helium-3 evaporates off a helium-3 / helium-4 mixture, pulling heat out of the colder stages below. The defining stage of the dilution refrigerator.
Maybell (Big Fridge, ColdCloud)BlueforsOxford Instruments
The bet at this stage is the bet itself. Every modality that needs millikelvin temperatures buys this stage. Maybell shipping the still as part of an integrated system, at the throughput numbers ColdCloud claims, is the test of the infrastructure-bet thesis.
~100mKabout a hundredth of a kelvin
Cold plate
Continued cooling. Optional vibration isolation. The April 2026 vibration-decoupling paper from Maybell sits at this stage.
MaybellBlueforsOxford Instruments
The bet at this stage is that vibration is a competitive surface. Maybell's April 2026 vibration-decoupling work is the publication's signal that the integrated-system vendor is racing on engineering, not just on cooling.
~10to 50 mKnear the base plate
TWPA stage
Traveling wave parametric amplifier (TWPA). The first amplification of the qubit's readout signal. Bifrost's strontium-titanate platform eliminates the Josephson junctions legacy TWPAs depend on. Magnetically insensitive past 2 Tesla, at 10 mm chip scale.
Bifrost ElectronicsLegacy TWPA vendors
The brother thread layer. Zenith's bet is that the legacy TWPA, in his framing, does not scale to the 100,000 amplifiers a utility-scale machine needs. The page renders that bet in the brother-thread inset.
~10mKthe temperature the publication is named for
Base plate / mixing chamber
The mixing chamber. Where helium-3 mixes back into the helium-3 / helium-4 phase boundary, pulling the last heat out of the qubit chip. The qubit chip lives here, on the base plate.
Maybell (mixing chamber)Quantinuum, Atom, Google, IBM, etc. (qubit chip)
The end of the chain. Every modality lands here. The qubit is the only thing on the stack the qubit company makes itself. The infrastructure-bet thesis turns on this fact: the qubit is contested. The base plate it sits on is not.
The architectural bet
What ColdCloud does. What the brother thread is.
Two smaller diagrams. ColdCloud is the next move on the same bet: one cooling capacity, many nodes. The brother thread is Bifrost's strontium-titanate amplifier at the cold stage, rendered to scale next to the legacy alternative.
2026 · the next move
ColdCloud, distributed
One central cooling capacity, modular nodes operating below 10 millikelvin. Stated efficiencies are versus legacy dilution-refrigerator architectures, first system online late 2026.
90%
less electricity
vs legacy · per Maybell
90%
less cooling water
vs legacy · per Maybell
80%
less helium-3 / qubit
vs legacy · per Maybell
hours
cooldown
vs days · per Maybell
2025 · 2026 · the brother thread
Two layers. Two brothers.
Corban runs Maybell. The stack on the left is his. Zenith runs Bifrost. The amplifier at the cold stage is his. The dotted block to the right of Bifrost is a legacy TWPA, scaled. Zenith called it a cinder block on May 25, in the publication's brief.
One brother on the cryogenic stack. One brother on the readout stack. Two layers of the same picks-and-shovels bet.
Who else reached distributed
Bluefors KIDE
The legacy incumbent's own distributed answer. A hexagonal three-cooling-unit platform built to cluster past 10,000 qubits, first multi-module delivery late 2026.
Oxford Proteox
The modular Proteox family already ships. Oxford reached the distributed pattern before the bet had a name.
Bifrost Heimdall
The brother thread's amplifier. A 10mm TWPA that holds above 2 tesla with no shielding, where the legacy cinder block needs 100,000 at utility scale.
"
Maybell or Vescent or Meadowlark or Octave, who are building the kind of picks and shovels for the quantum gold rush that is enabling the hardware that these folk need.
Corban Tillemann-Dick · Colorado Sun · October 20, 2023
Open questions
What this page is waiting on
Six of seven closed through a primary-source pass. Each resolved row carries its finding. The seventh stays live by design, until Maybell names it.
resolved
Maybell Series A details. Size, lead, year. The Series B was on file. The Series A was not.
$25M led by Cerberus Capital Management, March 4, 2024. Co-investors include Lavrock Ventures, Mark IV Capital, In-Q-Tel, Decisive Point, Caruso Ventures, and Olive Capital. Chris Darby, former In-Q-Tel CEO and now head of venture investments at Cerberus, joined the board. The In-Q-Tel lineage is the cleanest signal: the round reads as a national-security bet.
Cerberus release · TQI, March 4 2024
resolved
Maybell co-founder list. Two of the most important named-people gaps in the publication's coverage.
Kyle Thompson, founder and CTO. Bryan Choo, co-founder and COO. Jon Byars, director of engineering. MayQ Labs has run in Denver and Copenhagen since 2023.
Maybell about page · LinkedIn
resolved
BCG quantum-practice years. Which years did Corban lead the BCG quantum practice, and which Quantum Valley companies were clients during his tenure?
Roughly 2011 to 2021, partner at exit, leading the SaaS innovation and quantum computing practices in parallel. BCG does not publish client rosters, so the specific Quantum Valley clients during his tenure stay undisclosed by firm policy.
BCG alumni · LinkedIn · QTP Ep 32 transcript
resolved
Bluefors and Oxford Instruments distributed-architecture roadmap. Have the legacy vendors announced any distributed pattern of their own?
Yes, and it is a material finding. Bluefors KIDE is a hexagonal three-cooling-unit platform built to cluster past 10,000 qubits, first multi-module delivery late 2026, presented at the APS Global Physics Summit in Denver in March 2026, with an AIST MOU for the next generation. Oxford Instruments already ships the modular Proteox family.
Bluefors KIDE · Oxford Proteox · APS Summit 2026
resolved
Helium-3 supply exposure. Maybell's 80 percent reduction claim sits on a single-source-dominated global helium-3 market.
DOE-controlled, sourced from tritium reservoirs in the US nuclear stockpile, about 90,000 liters as of the 2021 DOE filing, priced between $1,000 and $20,000 per liter. In early 2026 continuous adiabatic demagnetization refrigeration reached below 30 mK without helium-3, holding a five-qubit superconducting processor.
Science, As helium-3 runs scarce · DOE isotope program
resolved
Bifrost as Maybell customer or partner. The May 25 brief flagged that the "partner" framing is not the same as a customer.
An active engineering collaboration to tailor systems for commercial deployments, in Bifrost's framing. A partnership, not procurement. The May 25 brief's read holds.
Both founders · joint press
open
First ColdCloud customer. When does Maybell name the design partner? Hardware company, national lab, or hyperscaler? Verified undisclosed as of June 4, 2026: first system online late 2026, customer not named.
Maybell comms · Q-PAC · Q3 floor