Illinois-Based Photon Queue Bags $4M in Seed Funding Round

The company will use the funding to speed up product development, expand its manufacturing capacity, and deploy its products to more customers.

Quantum computers rely on photons arriving at the right place at the right time. As quantum systems grow, they will need to connect many smaller processors, making it essential to synchronize single photons. Quantum memory solves this challenge by storing photons until they are needed.

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Photon Queue has developed devices that store photons in free-space optical loops using its own high-reflectivity mirrors and optical switches. Unlike many other technologies that require cryogenic cooling, vacuum systems, or complex processes, Photon Queue's solution works at room temperature with standard power while delivering high efficiency and fast performance.

Photon Queue's devices are designed to work with almost any wavelength, making them compatible with a wide range of quantum computing platforms, including photonic, trapped ion, and neutral atom systems. The company has already deployed its first commercial quantum memory device at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Maryland.

“Quantum computing is hitting a scale problem that better qubits alone cannot solve. The industry needs new infrastructure to move, store and synchronize photons with far greater efficiency,” said Marissa Ramirez de Chanlatte, Investor at Playground Global. “Photon Queue has built an elegant solution, turning breakthrough quantum optics into commercial hardware, with early customer traction.

“Quantum memories are a critical enabling technology for distributed quantum systems, and performance, efficiency and ease of integration are essential,” said Saikat Guha, Clark Distinguished Chair Professor of Electrical, and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park and director of the NSF Center for Quantum Networks. “Photon Queue’s room-temperature, free-space approach is compelling because it stores photons directly without the complexity of cryogenics, vacuum systems or transduction.

“Useful quantum computing will require photons to move through networks with extraordinary precision, efficiency and timing. That is the problem Photon Queue was founded to solve,” said Nathan Arnold, co-founder and CEO of Photon Queue. “In less than two years, we have taken technology from the lab to deployed commercial hardware with leading national lab and university customers.

About Photon Queue

Founded in 2024 by Nathan Arnold, and Kelsey Ortiz, Photon Queue is a quantum technology company developing advanced free space quantum memory devices. Spun out of the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign the company build's quantum memory system's that store photons using linear optics at room temperature. Its technology delivers high efficiency and fast performance without the need for cryogenic cooling vacuum systems or complex conversion processes.

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