The collaboration brings together Atom Computing’s leading neutral-atom quantum computers and Nu Quantum’s state-of-the-art quantum networking stack.

By combining complementary expertise, the companies are defining a scalable, modular approach to quantum computing, positioning the industry to move beyond foundational research and toward transformative, real-world applications.

This partnership will accelerate Atom Computing’s long-term roadmap to deliver the most credible path to truly scalable photonically networked quantum computing for the GigaQuOp scale and beyond.

BOULDER, Colo. and CAMBRIDGE, England, June 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Atom Computing and Nu Quantum today announced a strategic collaboration to build the hardware essential to scaling neutral atom quantum computers to utility.

Under the proposed collaboration, formalised via a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the companies will explore integrating Atom Computing’s neutral-atom quantum computers with Nu Quantum’s dynamically reconfigurable photonic networking hardware, marking an important step toward realizing utility-scale quantum computers.

The work will focus on integrated photonics network switches, qubit-photon entanglement technologies, and the modelling of distributed fault-tolerant computing architectures.

“Nu Quantum is a global innovator in quantum networking technology and a leader in the UK quantum ecosystem,” said Dr. Ben Bloom, CEO and Founder of Atom Computing. “We are pleased to partner with them as we accelerate our path toward scalable, utility-scale quantum computers.”

“The future of quantum computing depends on distributed architectures capable of scaling beyond single QPUs to deliver real-world utility and meaningful commercial impact. We are excited to launch this substantive technical collaboration and solve together some of the most challenging problems on the path to fault tolerance,” said Dr. Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, CEO and Founder of Nu Quantum.

Atom Computing continues to lead the quantum computing industry through its pioneering work in neutral-atom quantum technology. The company recently demonstrated a breakthrough in quantum error correction using toric code and announced a $100 million Letter of Intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce. Atom Computing is also deploying the world’s first commercial quantum computer with logical qubits and performing in Stage B of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), where it is demonstrating its pathway to utility-scale quantum computing.

Nu Quantum’s advanced photonic quantum networking hardware is designed to interconnect quantum processors into utility-scale distributed architectures. The company raised a record-breaking $60 million Series A investment round, the largest for a quantum networking company globally. Nu Quantum has developed a unique design for networking, leveraging qubit-photon interfaces for high-efficiency photon collection, optical circuit-switching technology based on integrated photonics, and expertise in distributed approaches to quantum error-correction.

By combining complementary market-leading expertise in quantum computing and quantum networking, Atom Computing and Nu Quantum are defining a scalable, modular approach to quantum computers, positioning the industry to move beyond foundational research and toward transformative, real-world applications.

About Atom Computing

Atom Computing is developing large-scale quantum computers to enable companies and researchers to achieve unprecedented computational breakthroughs. Utilizing highly scalable arrays of optically trapped neutral atoms, the company has developed systems with over 1,200 qubits, featuring advanced capabilities towards fault-tolerant quantum computing. Atom Computing’s on-premises systems provide customers with new computational tools and logical qubit capabilities to address increasingly complex applications and to grow their quantum ecosystem. In 2025 Atom Computing sold its first commercial on-premises quantum computer to QuNorth, a Nordic quantum initiative funded by EIFO and Novo Nordisk Foundation. Learn more at atom-computing.com and follow us on LinkedIn.

About Nu Quantum

Nu Quantum is the category creator and leader in distributed quantum computing. The company’s approach represents a shorter path to useful quantum computing by implementing a modular layer for interconnecting multiple QPUs into a single, more powerful distributed quantum computer. This ‘Entanglement Fabric’ approach to interoperable networking of quantum computers presents a faster and more scalable method to deliver useful fault-tolerant quantum computing for industrial users. Founded in 2018, the company has raised over $70 million from investors and now has more than 60 team members located primarily in Cambridge and Los Angeles. For additional information, visit nu-quantum.com.

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SOURCE Atom Computing

Venture Capital was supposed to fund the future. Instead, too often it traps founders, employees, and early backers inside a system that can take a decade or more to return a dollar. Rafe Furst, Chief Strategy Officer of The Crypto Company, argues that the deepest flaw in VC is a structure built around delayed liquidity, misaligned incentives, and early-stage bets.

TAMPA BAY, Fla., June 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Venture capital is not slowing down, it is concentrating. The number of active U.S. VC firms fell from 8,315 in 2021 to 6,175 in 2024, while more than half of the $71 billion raised by U.S. venture firms last year went to just nine players. On this episode of Disruption Interruption, host Karla Jo Helms (KJ) speaks with Rafe Furst, World Series poker champion, five-time founder, bestselling venture-capital author, and Chief Strategy Officer of The Crypto Company, about why the traditional 10-year lockup model is breaking early-stage investing, why VC incentives have drifted away from true company building, and why blockchain may finally offer founders and investors a path to liquidity. As Furst puts it, “The biggest structural problem with VC is there’s no liquidity.”

Why Venture Capital Keeps Missing
Furst’s core argument is that Venture Capital no longer behaves like true Venture Capital should. Too many firms now approach early-stage investing less as a genuine commitment to founders and more as a strategic placeholder. They view it as a low-cost way to preserve the option to invest bigger once the risk has already been reduced. “They’re looking to buy a lottery ticket to be able to deploy capital much later on”, Furst says. The result is a market where the earliest builders still absorb the most uncertainty, but do not always receive the deepest alignment or support.

That misalignment gets worse because the asset class is unforgiving. Nine out of ten early-stage companies will still fail, while the winners can take 10 years or more to generate liquidity. According to the Wall Street Journal, that delay is not theoretical: more than 90% of 2021 venture funds had produced zero distributions as of mid-2024, underscoring how long capital can stay trapped in the system. In his words, “It’s just a lifetime. It’s just untenable. It doesn’t work.”

This is where incentives begin to warp. Instead of committing to one clear strategy, either deep hands-on conviction at the earliest stage or broad high-volume early-stage allocation, many firms try to split the difference. Furst says that this middle ground creates the wrong behavior: less patience, weaker founder alignment, more pressure to control outcomes, and lower returns than the asset class should be capable of producing. His critique is not of VC in principle, but of a version that no longer matches the realities of early-stage risk or the founders it claims to support.

Blockchain Can Bring Liquidity Back to Innovation
Furst believes the unlock is liquidity. That is why he sees blockchain not as a side bet, but as the logical next evolution of venture finance itself. His view lands at a moment when even top-tier firms have been rethinking the traditional venture structure and its long lockup periods, according to Sequoia Capitals. Early public markets can be compared to a form of equity crowdfunding that originally allowed capital formation and liquid ownership to coexist before regulation, and market abuse changed the landscape. “Blockchain now offers a new version of that missing bridge,” Furst says. “The future of venture capital is through decentralized technologies, Web3, crypto, and blockchain.”

That thesis is now shaping The Crypto Company’s next move. The company has acquired the technology behind a new layer-one blockchain and cryptocurrency called Frame, which Furst describes as a unifying liquidity and interoperability layer across fragmented crypto ecosystems. His analogy is the interstate highway system: local economies can thrive on their own, but real commerce accelerates when movement between them becomes seamless. In that sense, Frame is meant to help separate blockchain economies interoperate, transact, and share liquidity more effectively.

For Furst, the opportunity is only growing as AI and blockchain converge. He says AI agents are already transacting on-chain because they cannot use the traditional banking system the way humans do, and he believes that trend will accelerate. His advice to founders is not to wait for certainty, but to position themselves early. “The way to not get swept away is to get in front of the wave.”

Links

Disrupting Venture Capital: Why the 10-Year Lockup Is Dead with Rafe Furst

Disruption Interruption is the podcast where you will hear from today’s biggest Industry Disruptors. Learn what motivated them to bring about innovation and how they overcame opposition to adoption.

https://omny.fm/shows/disruption-interruption/disrupting-venture-capital-why-the-10-year-lockup-is-dead-with-rafe-furst

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafefurst/
Company Website: https://www.thecryptocompany.com/

About Disruption InterruptionTM
Disruption is happening on an unprecedented scale, impacting all manner of industries — MedTech, Finance, IT, eCommerce, shipping, logistics, and more — and COVID has moved their timelines up a full decade or more. But WHO are these disruptors and when did they say, “THAT’S IT! I’VE HAD IT!”? Time to Disrupt and Interrupt with host Karla Jo “KJ” Helms, veteran communications disruptor. KJ interviews badasses who are disrupting their industries and altering economic networks that have become antiquated with an establishment resistant to progress. She delves into uncovering secrets from industry rebels and quiet revolutionaries that uncover common traits — and not-so-common — that are changing our economic markets… and lives. Visit the world’s key pioneers that persist to success, despite arrows in their backs at www.disruption-interruption.com.

About Rafe Furst
Rafe Furst is Chief Strategy Officer of The Crypto Company, a five-time founder, investor, and longtime builder at the intersection of early-stage finance, emerging technology, and market design. In the episode, he traces his path from advanced study in artificial intelligence at Stanford and early web entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley to angel investing, poker, and blockchain-based venture infrastructure. Publicly, he is also known as a World Series of Poker champion and as the author of a bestselling book on venture capital. Today, his work is focused on solving what he sees as venture capital’s deepest structural flaw: the absence of liquidity for founders, employees, and early backers, and the role blockchain can play in fixing it.

About Karla Jo Helms
Karla Jo Helms is the Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR® Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors™. Karla Jo learned firsthand how unforgiving business can be when millions of dollars are on the line — and how the control of public opinion often determines whether one company is happily chosen, or another is brutally rejected. Being an alumnus of crisis management, Karla Jo has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators, and the media to help restore companies of goodwill into the good graces of public opinion — Karla Jo operates on the ethic of getting it right the first time, not relying on second chances and doing what it takes to excel. Helms speaks globally on public relations, how the PR industry itself has lost its way, and how, in the right hands, corporations can harness the power of Anti-PR to drive markets and impact market perception.

References

Primack, D. (2021, October 26). Scoop: Sequoia Capital just blew up the VC fund model. Axios. axios.com/2021/10/26/sequoia-capital-fund-venture-capital-modelChernova, Y. (2024, August 16). More than 90% of 2021 venture funds have had zero distributions thus far, report shows. The Wall Street Journal. wsj.com/articles/more-than-90-of-2021-venture-funds-have-had-zero-distributions-thus-far-report-shows-32b0348fFinancial Times. (2025, January 1). Number of US venture capital firms falls as cash flows to tech’s top investors. ft.com/content/7a787423-9466-4e55-8c0e-8811cfe44dd3

Media Inquiries:
Karla Jo Helms
JOTO PR™ 
727-777-4629

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SOURCE Disruption Interruption

ITASCA, Ill., June 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Across aerospace and defense applications, industrial systems, and medical devices, modern technologies increasingly depend on precise, reliable, and repeatable power delivered in tightly controlled timeframes. These needs place a greater demand on the components, particularly capacitors, that store and release energy in these high-reliability applications.

As Knowles continues to expand its portfolio of high-performance capacitors, including film and ceramic high-energy pulse discharge capacitors, the company’s capabilities are aligned with these requirements, supporting customers worldwide in a broad range of pulse power applications.

In pulse power applications, engineers are designing around defined energy discharges, where both the amount of energy and delivery timing must be tightly controlled. Capacitors largely define the precision of energy storage, the reliability of its release, and the consistency of system performance over time. Knowles designs capacitors to meet these demands across a wide range of energy levels and operating conditions.

Low energy pulses are used in neuromodulation therapies for pain management. Higher energy pulses drive industrial and scientific systems such as CO₂ lasers used in semiconductor manufacturing, downhole perforation systems in energy exploration, and life saving medical equipment including defibrillators and advanced imaging systems. At the extreme end are ultra high energy pulses used in energy research.

What these applications have in common is the need for precision. Regardless of the amount of energy required, a pulse must fire at the right moment, at the right level, every time—even under electrical, thermal, and environmental stress.

“In pulse power, consistency is everything,” said Jeff Niew, President and Chief Executive Officer of Knowles. “As systems move from the lab into real world deployment, components have to perform reliably, not just once, but over and over again, under demanding conditions. That’s where Knowles focuses—designing and validating high-performance capacitors for the environments our customers actually operate in.”

Knowles is investing in advanced testing, tighter process controls, and application specific design expertise to deliver custom pulse power solutions at scale.

Pulse power turns stored energy into real world outcomes. Knowles designs and manufactures the capacitors that make that delivery precise, repeatable, and scalable.

Knowles is demonstrating its high-performance capacitors at upcoming power and plasma science events, including the International Conference on Plasma Science June 22-26 and the IEEE International Power Modulator and High Voltage Conference July 12-16.

About Knowles

Knowles is a leading manufacturer of specialty electronic components. The company designs parts that perform unique, critical functions for innovative technologies. Through extreme reliability, custom engineering, and scalable manufacturing, Knowles enables businesses to succeed in the most demanding applications across MedTech, Defense, and Industrial markets.

Knowles’ high-performance capacitors, RF/Microwave filters, advanced medtech microphones, balanced armatures, and miniaturization products enable and enhance the performance of technologies with the power to change, improve, and save lives. Founded in 1946 and headquartered in Itasca, Illinois, Knowles has grown into a global organization with employees spanning 11 countries.

For more information, please visit knowles.com.

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SOURCE Knowles Corporation