ColdQuanta, a University of Colorado spinoff, uses lasers to cool atoms to near absolute zero for quantum computing applications. By cooling the atoms down to use them as qubits, ColdQuanta enables the creation of large lattices of identical atoms. ColdQuanta is betting that cold, neutral atoms will end up solving the scalability problems of quantum computing. ColdQuanta knows what it's talking about--their CEO, Bo Ewald, was previously president of D-Wave Systems, a giant in quantum technology. Bo joined ColdQuanta in March of 2019.

ColdQuanta is not all talk either. In December 2019, ColdQuanta's Cold Atom Laboratory was delivered to the ISS, where it was used in what NASA has called "the coolest experiment in the universe" to produce a Bose-Einstein condensate in orbit for the first time.

ColdQuanta filed for their first patent in November of 2019, and is entering a very crowded landscape. Could their success make them an acquisition target for D-Wave Systems? Or will another competitor seek to acquire this swiftly growing company?