The breakthroughs accelerating the growth of California's quantum innovation ecosystem depend on fundamental science and engineering from Caltech and other academic institutions, according to Caltech leaders and researchers who spoke at the statewide Quantum California Convening last month.
Quantum California is a partnership between the California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) and the University of California Office of the President (UCOP). The initiative was launched in November 2025 to align academia, researchers, national labs, industry, investors, and government partners around a shared ecosystem for quantum innovation and job creation.
"History has shown us time and again that today's fundamental discoveries can become tomorrow's world-changing technologies," said Caltech President Ray Jayawardhana, the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of astronomy, in a fireside chat with Dolev Bluvstein, a visiting associate in physics at Caltech and co-founder and CEO of Caltech quantum computing spinoff Oratomic, which is based in Pasadena.
"Oratomic is the latest remarkable example of that in action for its scientific achievement and extraordinary momentum," Jayawardhana continued, "but also because of what Oratomic's story represents: an innovation ecosystem in which breakthrough science, exceptional talent, entrepreneurial vision, bold investment, and interdisciplinary ethos combined to propel frontier technology from the realm of distant possibility to real-world operation. And that doesn't happen by accident."
In March 2026, Bluvstein and Caltech colleagues—including Manuel Endres, professor of physics; John Preskill, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics and Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair of the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter; and Hsin-Yuan (Robert) Huang (PhD '24), assistant professor of theoretical physics and a William H. Hurt Scholar—published research demonstrating that a fault-tolerant quantum computer could be achievable with as few as 10,000 qubits rather than the millions previously predicted. A qubit is the quantum equivalent of a classical bit.
That same month, Oratomic launched in Pasadena. To date, it has raised $775 million in venture capital to build a working neutral-atom quantum computer within the decade. (In a neutral-atom computer, neutral atoms—atoms without charge—serve as the qubits). Caltech and Oratomic say that because of their error-correction breakthroughs, a fully realized quantum computer could be built and be operational by the end of a decade.
Bluvstein said that such an innovation and others like it will kickstart a new industry in California requiring new types of specialists to develop machines that could be used to power quantum networking and cryptography systems, and also to investigate questions related to quantum mechanics, among other potential applications.
"Once you can build one of these computers, that's really just the beginning," Bluvstein said. "The talent ecosystem here is quite special, and that's something we should continue to bolster. It's a whole new discipline of engineering that we're developing to build these fault-tolerant architectures."
In a panel discussion with colleagues from the University of California and California State University focused on the federally funded Challenge Institute for Quantum Computation, Preskill said that the nascent quantum industry cannot sustain itself alone; it will continue to rely on research advancements born from university labs.
"Big tech companies are making large investments in quantum technologies, and venture capital is fueling a burgeoning start-up ecosystem, but let's appreciate how we got here," Preskill said. "These companies are building on fundamental curiosity-driven research, mostly done in universities, much of it in California, going back decades." Preskill noted that error-correction research at Caltech in the 1990s "is guiding what companies are trying to do now to realize fault-tolerant machines. … What it means for universities is that we should be strengthening the university effort, because there's so much we don't know. We're going to have to continue to innovate if we're going to build these technologies into a really profitable and sustainable industry."
Hirosi Ooguri, Caltech's Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics and the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, said Caltech's partnerships with private companies such as Oratomic and Amazon Web Services (AWS) benefits researchers and students at Caltech but also those outside the Institute. The AWS Center for Quantum Computing opened on Caltech's campus in 2021 to advance quantum computers that use superconducting qubits, a different approach than Oratomic's, based on research from Oskar Painter (PhD '01), Caltech's John G Braun Professor of Applied Physics and Physics, and Fernando Brandão, Caltech's Bren Professor of Theoretical Physics.
"For California, this creates opportunities to bring more skilled people into the region and connect university research with industrial development," Ooguri said. "California benefits from having several serious approaches developing alongside one another. Each presents different challenges, and each contributes knowledge and skilled people. For students and young researchers, nearby companies also make it possible to see how a laboratory result becomes a larger engineering effort and to bring new questions back into academic research."
Shouleh Nikzad (PhD '90), chief technologist at JPL (which Caltech manages for NASA), a JPL Fellow, and a Caltech Distinguished Alumna, noted that JPL and space science as a whole are "in the midst of a revolution because of the demand for more precision measurements leading to the need for quantum technologies," which will transform the Lab's technological capabilities and the quality of the data it receives from spacecraft. For example, she noted that NASA's upcoming PRIMA (Probe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics) mission, a $1 billion space observatory to be developed and operated by JPL, will be enabled by superconducting microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) invented by Jonas Zmuidzinas (BS '81), the Merle Kingsley Professor of Physics at Caltech, and JPL senior research scientist Rick LeDuc, in 1999.
"Our close connection and strong relationship with Caltech are so important—always and particularly in this time," Nikzad said. "Our focus at JPL is leaning toward quantum sensing, but we also contribute to quantum computing, such as MKIDs for qubit readout and quantum communication such as Deep Space Optimal Communications. … We are in the realm of high-precision demand, and not just for the science part of our endeavor. It's also for our precision positioning, navigation, and timing. All of these require more precision measurement, so that's why we're in the quantum business."
Image caption: John Preskill, second from left, on stage at the Quantum California Convening at UCLA in October 2026.