John Martinis, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who helped pioneer superconducting quantum computers and led Google’s team to the first demonstration of “quantum supremacy,” is now aiming for a third major breakthrough through his new company, QoLab. Founded in 2024, the company seeks to radically rethink superconducting qubit technology and deliver practical, large-scale quantum computers.

Martinis, a hardware-focused experimentalist who favors lab work over theoretical models, has already shaped quantum computing history twice. In the 1980s at UC Berkeley, he and colleagues demonstrated macroscopic quantum effects in superconducting circuits, proving that quantum behavior could extend to larger systems. This work laid the foundation for the superconducting qubit approach now used by IBM, Google, and other leaders in the field.

Decades later, at Google, Martinis led the team that achieved quantum supremacy in 2019, building a processor capable of verifying random quantum circuit outputs faster than any classical supercomputer—a milestone later surpassed but still a historic proof of concept.

Now, at QoLab, Martinis is seeking to disrupt the field again. The company is taking a fundamentally new approach to superconducting qubits, aiming to overcome persistent challenges in scaling, error rates, and coherence times that have hindered progress toward fault-tolerant, practical quantum computers. Martinis has argued that incremental improvements are no longer sufficient; QoLab’s strategy involves rethinking core qubit design and architecture to achieve a decisive leap in performance.

While details of QoLab’s specific innovations remain confidential, Martinis’s track record suggests the company could redefine what’s possible in superconducting quantum computing, building on decades of pioneering research and his experience pushing quantum processors to new frontiers.