Atlantic Quantum is enabling a step change in global computing capabilities by developing scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computers.
THE CHALLENGE
To power their R&D, Atlantic Quantum needed immense amounts of electricity and unique cooling systems that would have been cost-prohibitive had the team leased their own commercial real-estate.
THE SOLUTION
The flexibility provided by The Engine allowed Atlantic Quantum to build and power their first quantum computers at The Engine — at a fraction of the cost of commercial real estate.
“The Engine’s flexibility was instrumental in getting Atlantic Quantum out of the lab and to the point where we could demonstrate the feasibility of our technology. ”
Tim Menke, PhDCo-Founder and COO
Over the last 50 years, the increasing power of computers — from the first PC to the GPUs that now power AI — have led to an explosion of progress and economic growth. Quantum computers are poised to take this evolution to unimaginable new heights: from discovering new drugs to developing room-temperature superconductors, the technology promises to transform our approach to solving our greatest challenges.
Given quantum computing’s critical importance to the future of American technological leadership, the nation is locked in a global race to build the first quantum computer that can outperform classical computers. But today, quantum computers are held back by high error rates that prevent them from scaling to the point where they could achieve an advantage for practical applications.
Atlantic Quantum Co-Founder, Tim Menke, with their record breaking quantum computer
To address this problem, Atlantic Quantum is building the first integrated quantum circuits that would allow error-corrected quantum computers to scale — much like how integrated circuits led to Moore’s Law in classical computing.
The company has strong credentials: it was spun out of MIT’s Engineering Quantum Systems Group with a leadership team including Prof. William D. Oliver, one of the most influential voices in the field. But in order to raise the capital they needed to grow and scale their technology, they first needed to prove it would work.
“We had gotten it to the point at MIT where we felt confident that if you invested enough resources into our approach, it would significantly accelerate the scaling of quantum computers,” said Bharath Kannan, PhD, co-founder and CEO at Atlantic Quantum. “The fundamentals checked out, but we still had to build it. It’s a weird middle ground of requiring a lot of resources without any clear near-medium term source of revenue, but being too large scale of an effort for an academic setting. And so for that, you need to be in a community that has a mindset of patience.”
Atlantic Quantum’s core chip uses a fluxonium-based superconducting qubit architecture that has demonstrated record-low error rates and record-high single-qubit fidelity
It’s a common problem facing Tough Tech companies: unlike digital startups building apps and B2B software, startups building hardware-based solutions — whether in climate tech, biotech, and advanced systems — require capital-intensive infrastructure to build, test, and iterate on their technology. This may include lab space, engineering and fabrication equipment, or — as in the case of quantum computing — large amounts of electricity.
Under conventional commercial real estate arrangements, the electricity provided to a company is proportional to the quantity of floor space leased. By this logic, Atlantic Quantum would have needed to rent a significantly larger — and thus more expensive — space than they actually needed to power their first quantum computer. “We need very little physical space, and a lot of power,” said Bharath, “and that's just not an equation that works out in most places.”
However, The Engine is not a conventional commercial real estate arrangement. Our interest is in providing Tough Tech companies with the resources they need to scale — and ultimately grow beyond the walls of The Engine. By providing shared access to spaces and equipment, we can flexibly and strategically allocate resources based on the needs of our residents. This means companies don’t get a set allotment of power based on how much space they take up.
Given their initial pre-seed funding, they could have leased a larger space outside the city with the electricity they needed, but they would lose access to the rich talent pipeline available in the Boston area. By building their first quantum computers at The Engine, Atlantic Quantum was able to prove its unique approach to quantum computing without sacrificing its access to some of the brightest quantum engineers and scientists in the world.
The Engine provided the company with a relatively small footprint in the building’s high-bay industrial space to build their quantum computer. However, the device consumes roughly a quarter of the building’s total electricity usage. To get the same electricity elsewhere, Atlantic Quantum would have needed to lease an order of magnitude more space.
“The Engine’s flexibility was instrumental in getting Atlantic Quantum out of the lab and to the point where we could demonstrate the feasibility of our technology,” said Tim Menke, PhD, co-founder and COO at Atlantic Quantum. “Their facilities team helped us at every step to coordinate modifications to the space and deliver the power necessary to install our pilot quantum computer in The Engine’s industrial space.”
Atlantic Quantum was acquired by Google Quantum AI in 2025
When the expensive cooling system Atlantic Quantum needed to chill their quantum computer broke down, the replacement wouldn’t arrive for another six months. The company couldn’t wait that long. The Engine’s facilities team stepped in fast to help, finding a cost-effective chilling system that met the company’s specs and that would arrive in two days. Three years later, this improvised solution was still working to keep the quantum computers humming.
The team also got help from The Engine in securing non-dilutive funding from government grants, including contracts with the Air Force Research Lab, IARPA, the US Department of Energy, and DARPA. Until there are viable commercial applications for quantum computing, government grants are critical to the technology’s continued development — not to mention ensuring America’s leadership in this next-generation computing technology.
“The Engine’s Public Affairs team has helped us tremendously in navigating policy changes and funding opportunities at the state and federal level,” Menke added. “Moreover, they have coached us through structuring our future legislative affairs needs, resulting in a Head of Government job description and recruiting process as well as introductions to high-level candidates for the position.”
“The Engine’s Public Affairs team has helped us tremendously in navigating policy changes and funding opportunities at the state and federal level. Moreover, they have coached us through structuring our future legislative affairs needs.”
Tim MenkeCo-Founder and COO
The team’s computer has already achieved technical milestones, including peer-reviewed research showing that the company’s fluxonium-based qubit architecture achieves the lowest error rates to date for superconducting qubits, a record they have since broken with the highest ever single-qubit fidelity of 99.998% — a game-changer for fault-tolerant quantum computing.
These breakthroughs did not go unnoticed. In October 2025, Atlantic Quantum joined Google Quantum AI to accelerate progress on their roadmap to a large error-corrected quantum computer and real-world applications. By enabling error-corrected quantum computers to scale, Atlantic Quantum’s contributions could lead to better simulations of quantum chemistry, better solutions to industrial optimization problems, and enhanced machine learning for quantum systems.
