IBM's pending acquisition of HRL Laboratories is the biggest structural move in quantum hardware in years — but the announcement names sensing, networking, cryogenics, control electronics, and packaging alongside silicon spin qubits. Thaddeus D. Ladd, Chief Scientist of HRL's Computational Physics Division, joins Sebastian to explain what HRL has actually built, why the 2026 QPU paper may matter more for its integrated control stack than its qubit fidelity numbers, and what it means for the future of quantum hardware when one storied industrial research lab acquires another.

What does it mean when a Big Four professional services firm becomes a named co-author on a peer-reviewed quantum machine learning paper? Aaron Kemp, KPMG's Senior Director of Quantum Research and Enterprise Innovation, joins Sebastian to unpack how enterprise advisory is being reshaped by two simultaneous pressures: the offensive potential of hybrid quantum-classical ML and the defensive urgency of post-quantum cryptography migration. It's a conversation about what "quantum readiness" actually looks like when boards are the audience and the ROI is still on the horizon.

What does it take to invest in a quantum hardware company that has deliberately chosen not to pursue an intermediate product? Sebastian is joined by Barak Bussel – physicist, entrepreneur-turned-VC, co-founder of 7i Capital, and Board Chair of UCLA’s Center for Quantum Science and Engineering – operates at the intersection of frontier investing, scientific innovation, and ecosystem building. In this conversation, he explains how he underwrites the path to fault-tolerant quantum computing, what recent breakthroughs from Oratomic and Google Quantum AI suggest about the timeline to useful machines and the growing convergence of quantum and AI, and why the Bell Labs model may offer the best blueprint for building the next generation of science-driven technology ecosystems.

Days after the CQE-led Bloch Quantum Tech Hub secured $55 million from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to build a domestic quantum supply chain, Kate Timmerman joins Sebastian to explain what that money actually does — and why the Midwest, not Silicon Valley, may become the industrial backbone of American quantum technology. This conversation goes deep on quantum ecosystem building, workforce development, and the choke points in single-sourced components that keep quantum startups from scaling.

What does it take to build durable open-source infrastructure for a field that hasn't yet delivered on its biggest promises? Ben Castanon, the first-ever CEO of Unitary Foundation, joins Sebastian to talk about the structural funding gap facing quantum open-source software, why nearly 40% of full-time contributors go uncompensated, and what a "Linux for quantum" would actually require. It's a candid conversation about community, memberships from companies like NVIDIA and IBM, and the case for treating open tooling as public infrastructure rather than a nice-to-have.

What if a camera could skip the JPEG entirely and process photons at the speed of light, extracting information that conventional optics leave on the table? Diffraqtion co-founder and CEO Johannes Galatsanos joins Sebastian to explain how a quantum-inspired imaging device — built on quantum Fisher information theory — can see beyond the diffraction limit and run neural network classifications directly in the photonic domain. It's a candid conversation about what "quantum" really means in quantum sensing, why space is the first market, and what quantum sensing needs to break out of quantum computing's shadow.

For the 100th episode of The New Quantum Era, the microphone turns around. Bob Karr — partner at Barnes & Thornburg, co-chair of the firm's Quantum Technology Industry Group, and lead architect of the *Quantum Law Navigator* — invited Sebastian to Chicago for a live audience recording at the firm. In front of scientists, investors, policymakers, and students, Bob leads a wide-ranging conversation about what 99 episodes and a new book have taught Sebastian about where quantum technology actually stands, what building a foundation of understanding in an emerging field really requires, and what comes next — including the Helgoland documentary, the evolution of quantum ecosystems, and the launch of Build Quantum Partners. ---

What if the bottleneck in scaling trapped-ion quantum computers isn't the qubits or the lasers, but the design software underneath them? Daniel Faircloth, PhD, co-founder and CTO of Nullspace, joins Sebastian to explain why ion trap engineers have been forced to bend legacy electromagnetic solvers around problems they were never built for — and what changes when you build a simulator from scratch for the physics of confining single atoms. It's a conversation about the quiet emergence of a quantum EDA layer, the engineering work that turns hardware roadmaps into reality, and why nanometer-precise ion height predictions are harder than they sound.

What if the path to a million-qubit processor doesn't run through silicon defects or massive wire bundles, but through single electrons floating a few nanometers above a film of superfluid helium? Nick Farina, co-founder and CEO of EeroQ, joins Sebastian to explain why his team bet a decade on the only commercial electron-on-helium quantum computing platform — and what their recent results, including a new *Nature Physics* paper demonstrating strong coupling between a microwave photon and a single electron on helium, suggest about scaling, coherence, and the "wire problem."

What does it actually take to run a quantum-classical workflow on a real cancer drug — not hydrogen, not a toy molecule, but a photosensitizer already in Phase II clinical trials? Sabrina Maniscalco, CEO and co-founder of Algorithmiq, joins Sebastian to unpack the science behind the company's Wellcome Leap Q4Bio win, its €18M raise, and its move from Helsinki to Milan. Along the way: error mitigation, tensor networks, sampling tradeoffs across hardware platforms, and an honest look at where quantum advantage in chemistry might actually land.