Insider Brief
- QuEra Computing scientists will serve as co-principal investigators on three of nine teams selected for the US Department of Energy‘s $37 million Quantum Computing for Computational Chemistry (QC3) program.
- The projects target high-temperature superconductors, ultra-strong lightweight magnets and hydrogen production, using quantum algorithms and computational methods to address energy-related materials and chemistry challenges.
- QuEra will contribute neutral-atom quantum hardware access and expertise in algorithm and architecture co-design, with the three-year program aiming to demonstrate major improvements over classical methods at approximately 100 logical qubits.
PRESS RELEASE — QuEra Computing, the leader in quantum computing, today announced that its scientists will work with three of the nine teams selected for the Quantum Computing for Computational Chemistry (QC3) program at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) to develop neutral-atom based modeling frameworks for complex materials and molecules. The three-year program, announced by the Department of Energy in March 2026, directs $37 million across the program performers.
QC3 exists to close the gap between vendor roadmaps that are rapidly transitioning to expanded logical capabilities by the end of the decade but don’t yet clearly map to the resources required for published algorithms for energy-relevant chemistry applications. ARPA-E’s premise is that the gap closes through full-stack co-design, where improvements of two to three times at each layer of the stack compound into an order of magnitude overall. The program asks its teams to identify an application worth a quadrillion BTU of energy or a gigaton of CO₂-equivalent, and to pursue a scalable hundredfold improvement over classical state of the art, validated at approximately 100 logical qubits. QuEra‘s updated roadmap targets 1,000 logical qubits by 2029, providing ample hardware capability for this program.
The Three Projects
QuEra scientists serve as co-principal investigators on each of the following teams, contributing neutral-atom access, expertise, algorithm and architecture co-design.
- SuperKIQ, led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Superconductor search through Krylov-inspired quantum algorithms, aimed at deepening understanding of high-temperature superconductors and accelerating the discovery of new superconducting materials by co-designing algorithms and error-correction protocols for hardware with reconfigurable connectivity. The team also includes NASA Ames, the University of Southern California, Michigan State University, Citrine Informatics, and Azulene Labs.
- MAGNETIQC, led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Quantum and machine-learning-accelerated software tools applied to the discovery of ultra-strong, lightweight magnets for electric motors, generators, and high-performance information technology. The team also includes members from Columbia University, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center Application Technology Group, and Citrine Informatics.
- Quantum Computing for Hydrogen Fuel Production, led by Phasecraft. Optimized quantum algorithms for simulating electrolysis, with the primary objective of reducing reliance on iridium, a critical mineral, in hydrogen production. The team also includes Phasecraft Ltd, Johnson Matthey, and Harvard University.
Why Neutral Atoms Support ARPA-E’s Mission
The QC3 solicitation required every applicant to submit a letter of intent from a quantum hardware provider as part of its application, which made the hardware choice a gating requirement rather than a later implementation detail. Five of the nine selected primes are hardware companies running their own machines. QuEra is the external hardware provider partner for three out of the remaining four projects.
QuEra‘s neutral atom technology and application co-design approach was an attractive choice for partners thanks to the architectural benefits it provides for full-stack application development and optimization across both error correction and application layers. Neutral atoms are identical by nature, controlled wirelessly by lasers, and are reconfigurable, which enables a high degree of connectivity: a core lever in algorithm development and error correction implementation.
“QuEra‘s architecture and software stack give researchers exceptional flexibility to co-design quantum error correction and fault-tolerant applications with the hardware itself,” said Shengtao Wang, VP of Algorithms and Applications at QuEra. “That flexibility is especially valuable in a long-term program like ARPA-E’s QC3, which aims to deliver a step change in computational chemistry and materials science.”
Co-Design as the Method
ARPA-E’s co-design thesis is one that QuEra is closely aligned with. With Los Alamos National Laboratory, QuEra published a transversal STAR architecture in PRX Quantum in June 2026 that delivers up to 250 times faster execution and roughly half the physical qubits of conventional fault-tolerant approaches for structured quantum simulation, achieved specifically by co-designing error correction around neutral-atom reconfigurable connectivity. Separately, algorithmic fault tolerance published in Nature in 2025 reduced runtime overhead by 10 to 100 times for reconfigurable architectures.
“We have a growing body of evidence that the earliest examples of quantum advantage will be the result of co-design across the entire application stack, from the algorithm design to the QEC architecture, to the hardware itself,” said Stefan Ostermann, Director of Quantum Applications at QuEra. “The Department of Energy’s approach through QC3 is one we deeply agree with, and we are excited to partner closely with them over the course of this program.”