Allston quantum computing firm plans to nearly double workforce

Boston Globe

12-02-2025

With working tech and real revenue, the company announced on Tuesday it raised $230 million from backers including Google and Japanese investment firm SoftBank Group, ranking as the fourth-largest quantum computing venture capital deal ever and the largest in Massachusetts, according to data from Pitchbook. Only rivals Quantinuum in Colorado and PsiQuantum in California (in two deals) have raised more.
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Instead of relying on the electronic transistors in standard computer chips, quantum computers calculate using atoms and subatomic particles dubbed quantum bits or 'qubits.' While transistors can only be turned on or off, qubits can inhabit multiple states at one time, allowing a quantum computer to tackle programs that would take a typical computer eons to complete.
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Still progress has been slower than hoped. Boston quantum computing software company
Jensen Huang, chief executive of AI chip maker Nvidia,
The simulations that run on QuEra's devices haven't yet fulfilled the promise of quantum computers to crack problems impossible to solve with standard computers yet but those days are only a few years away, QuEra interim chief executive Andy Ory said. He replaced QuEra founder Alex Keesling, who is now chief technology officer, last summer.
'We stand a very good chance of delivering [programs] you can't do with a classical computer to the market over the next three years or so,' Ory said. The experienced Boston entrepreneur led networking startup Acme Packet through an initial public offering and
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Academics who study quantum computing agree that breakthroughs in the use of lasers, photonic circuits, and other key areas are starting to add up. 'Advances in all these things are coming to a confluence,' said Douglas Petkie, physics professor and head of the department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 'I think in terms of major accomplishments happening in three years.'
Inside, QuEra's Aquila quantum computer, laser beams trap and manipulate tiny rubidium atoms in an area less than the width of three human hairs. The rubidium qubits in Aquila still generate too many errors to fully realize the promise of quantum computing but early users have been testing the system, which is accessible over Amazon's cloud computing service.
As they improve, quantum computers should be able to work in tandem with typical computers on artificial intelligence. A quantum computer could, for example, generate massive amounts of simulated data about the behavior of drug molecules that a typical computer running an AI app could analyze to uncover new cures.
And while computers running the latest AI software are using huge amounts of electricity, quantum computers require much less. 'People are talking about starting up Three Mile Island to power data centers building AI and our computer today, as powerful as it is, only takes as much electricity as three hair dryers,' Ory said.
QuEra employed 69 people at the beginning of the year and plans to use the new funding to expand to about 130 by year end, Ory said. He does not plan to move far from the company's Allston base, down the road from Harvard, however.
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'We want to be a bike ride — no further — from the universities, because we are still actively translating a lot of science and we are collaborating,' he said. 'To move too far away at this stage is a hurdle we don't necessarily need to have.'
Aaron Pressman can be reached at