About
Qolab is a superconducting quantum computing company based in Los Angeles, with an office in Madison, Wisconsin, and founded in 2022 by Dr. John Martinis, the company's CTO, a 2025 Nobel laureate and former lead scientist at Google Quantum AI, and Dr. Robert McDermott of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Led by CEO Alan Ho, Qolab combines a physics-driven approach with a focus on qubit quality, using semiconductor fabrication tools and scaling techniques to develop utility-scale quantum processors. Qolab secured more than $16 million in Series A financing led by Octave Ventures, with co-investment from the Development Bank of Japan, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and Phoenix Venture Partners. The Series A closed in January 2025. Applied Ventures, the venture arm of Applied Materials, also joined the round for scalable quantum processor manufacturing. Earlier, in October 2024, the Development Bank of Japan invested $3.5M in Qolab for equipment. In December 2025, Western Digital made a strategic investment in Qolab to combine its nanofabrication expertise with Qolab's superconducting qubit design. In December 2025, Qolab deployed its superconducting qubit system, the Qolab Start, at the Israeli Quantum Computing Center, the first facility outside Qolab's home lab to host its hardware. The partnership involves the IQCC and Quantum Machines. In February 2026, Qolab partnered with Singapore's National Quantum Federated Foundry to engineer cryogenic low-pass filters on semiconductor wafers, targeting a path toward millions of qubits. In March 2026, Qolab launched the John Martinis Prize for superconducting qubit research, with applications opening on March 16, 2026. Update 2026-04-11: Qolab launched the John Martinis Prize for Experimental Superconducting Qubit Physics to support researchers and educators. Source: https://quantumzeitgeist.com/superconducting-qubit-research-qolab-john/
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