From the First Qubit to Qolab: John Martinis on Building Scalable Quantum Systems

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Prof. John Martinis firsthand, and talk about the remarkable story behind Qolab, his new venture aiming to scale quantum computing through a system engineering mindset.

John takes us on a journey from his early days in the 1980s building the first superconducting quantum devices before the term “qubit” even existed to developing scalable qubit architectures at NIST, UC Santa Barbara, and eventually Google, where he led the team behind the 2019 quantum supremacy experiment.

Now, with Qolab, he’s drawing on decades of experience to approach quantum computing differently with a clear technical roadmap and a collaborative, horizontal business model. Instead of doing everything in house, Qolab partners with experts across the stack from chip designers to control systems to cryo hardware manufacturers building a platform with manufacturability, performance, and cost in mind.

Key themes in this conversation:

• Why real engineering discipline is critical to scaling quantum hardware
• The role of control electronics in reducing error rates and enabling automation
• Qolab’s strategy for modularity, manufacturability, and specialization
• How low error, small scale systems could train the next generation of physicists
• Lessons from building teams, systems, and companies with a long term vision

From heroic 2 qubit gate fidelities to 32 qubit low error arrays and from lab noise suppression to ASIC level control this discussion is packed with insight into what it really takes to build a useful quantum computer.