Less than a year into Lenovo veteran Rob Hays' tenure leading Atom Computing in Cary and the quantum computing company has raised $50 million.
The raise gives the company, which last year relocated its administrative headquarters from California to Cary last year, a runway to prove out its technology “and then get a plan to go scale it,” Hays said.
The company has already completed its first 100-qubit quantum computing system, and the new money, raised from Third Point Ventures with participation from investors like Prime Movers Lab, Innovation Endeavors, Venrock and Prelude Ventures, will go toward building a second generation system – as well as commercializing the technology.
Hays sees it as good news for the Triangle, where the firm has been recruiting – particularly in sales and administrative roles.
“Just having more investment coming to the technology … it’s good overall for the ecosystem here,” Hays said.
While much of its operation is in its home state of California, Atom Computing’s top brass – including Hays – is in the Triangle for a reason, and that’s workforce talent. Atom Computing has been able to recruit heavy hitters here, such as Denise Ruffner, formerly of IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) and IBM (NYSE: IBM), as chief business officer; and Justin Ging, formerly of Honeywell (Nasdaq: HON), as chief product officer.
And the plan is to take off.
“It gives us plenty of capital to go and build our second generation of systems to market,” Hays said.
With the latest investment, Atom Computing will turn its focus to developing much larger systems that are required to run commercial use-cases.
