Photon Queue

We had a very exciting week in the desert of Albuquerque! Coinciding with IEEE Quantum Week, our cofounders Nathan Arnold and Kelsey Ortiz hand-delivered our first memory to customers at Sandia National Laboratories. This is just the beginning of a great collaboration with the scientists at Sandia, and we are looking forward to further developing our memories with them. Nathan was also an invited speaker in the Photonic Quantum Computing workshop at Quantum Week. Thank you to the organizers for the chance to spread word about the benefits of free-space storage of photons!

Last week held many exciting milestones for us during Tech Chicago week! We are proud to announce that our co-founder Kelsey Ortiz got 3rd place pitching at the Grainger Engineering Tech Startup Challenge! This event was an excellent showcase of the strong deep-tech talent in the Illinois ecosystem. We also wrapped up our year-long participation in the Duality Accelerator with our CEO Nathan Arnold pitching at the UChicago Tech Ventures Demo Day. Duality has been instrumental in helping us launch successfully and prepare for the technical and commercial challenges ahead as we scale our quantum memory systems. Huge thanks to The Grainger College of Engineering for organizing the event and for selecting us to participate, as well as the entire Duality Accelerator team for supporting us!

Big news: our CEO Nathan Arnold was accepted into the 9th cohort of Chain Reaction Innovations, an entrepreneurship program hosted at Argonne National Laboratory. This two-year fellowship will give us access to world-class facilities, mentorship from entrepreneurs and researchers, and will help us accelerate our products to market. We are beyond excited to grow our presence in the Chicago quantum ecosystem and push the boundaries of efficient photon storage through this program. Thank you to the CRI team for the opportunity!

Today marks one year since Photon Queue launched with the goal of making efficient quantum memories and accelerating the adoption of quantum technologies. In just 12 months, we’ve: - Secured our first two memory sales: one to a U.S. national lab, and one to a top-tier research university - Launched with the Duality Accelerator - Pitched across the country, from Q2B in Silicon Valley (1st place!) to Deep Tech Demo Day in San Francisco Thank you to everyone who’s believed in us—from mentors and customers to the quantum community at large. We have lots of exciting developments on the horizon, so here’s to year two! 🥂

We’re proud to share that our co-founder, Kelsey Ortiz, represented Photon Queue at the San Francisco Deep Tech Demo Day, pitching our quantum memory technology to a room full of investors, founders, and technologists. San Francisco Deep Tech Week brought together some of the most ambitious minds building the future of hard tech. Being part of this community—and getting to share our work on scalable, free-space quantum memories—was an exciting step forward for us. Huge thanks to the many organizers for inviting us among several other talented deep tech founders and for helping build a thriving ecosystem for quantum and beyond. Stay tuned for exciting updates on our memory development!

🚀 Introducing Photon Queue 🚀 We are a quantum hardware startup spinning out of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, developing high-performance quantum memories for quantum computing, networking, and sensing applications. At Photon Queue, we tackle one of the biggest challenges in quantum information: storing and synchronizing photonic qubits. We leverage reflection cavities and free-space storage loops to store single photons—think of it as putting photons on a metaphorical treadmill, allowing them to travel without ever going anywhere. ✨ Exciting Updates: - In July, we were accepted into the 4th cohort of the Duality Accelerator, an incredible opportunity to advance our mission. - Our CEO, Nathan Arnold, recently won the pitch competition at #Q2B24 in Silicon Valley! We’re thrilled about the momentum and grateful for the support of the quantum community. Follow us for more updates as we build the future of quantum technology! #QuantumComputing #QuantumHardware #QuantumNetworking #Photonics #StartupJourney