Chattanooga Accelerator Selects Four Quantum Startups For Commercialization Program

Insider Brief

• Chattanooga’s CO.LAB selected four quantum startups for a 12-month commercialization program connecting them with technical resources, prospective customers and pilot opportunities.
• The inaugural cohort includes Ridge Quantum, Superquantum, Esoteriq and Kottackal, whose technologies span secure communications, quantum computing software and industrial sensing.
• Each team will follow an individualized commercialization plan, receive a readiness assessment and present to an internal review board to track progress.

Chattanooga’s CO.LAB has selected four quantum startups for a yearlong program aimed at turning their technologies into commercial products.

The inaugural CO.LAB Q cohort includes Ridge Quantum, which is commercializing encryption technology licensed from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, alongside software developers Superquantum and Esoteriq and sensing company Kottackal, according to Teknovation.

The companies begin work in November in the 12-month commercialization studio, which The Company Lab announced in August. Each will follow an individualized plan connecting it with technical experts, infrastructure, prospective customers, pilot projects and capital.

The program brings together companies pursuing different parts of the quantum market, from securing communications and monitoring industrial equipment to helping developers assess and run computing tasks. Their work will draw on a regional network that includes EPB, Quantinuum, Davidson Technologies and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

“Quantum companies don’t fail for lack of science. They stall in the gap between a breakthrough and a paying customer,” CO.LAB CEO Tasia Malakasis said, according to Teknovation. “These four teams are working on problems that matter right here in the Tennessee Valley: securing the grid, monitoring critical assets and making quantum computing usable. Our job over the next twelve months is to put them in front of the infrastructure, partners and customers that turn that work into commercial proof.”

CO.LAB Managing Director Bryan Barringer told Teknovation that each team will begin with a commercialization readiness score assessing its business, leadership, product, market fit and technology readiness. The companies will also present to their own internal review boards throughout the program to track progress.

That structure gives each startup a separate set of commercial objectives. Those include testing deployment on a communications network, comparing software performance across computing hardware, finding a development partner and arranging an industrial monitoring pilot.

Four Paths to Market

Ridge Quantum is developing a business around continuous-variable quantum key distribution, or CV-QKD, licensed from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Quantum key distribution uses quantum properties of light to help two parties establish shared secret keys for protecting communications.

The company’s technology uses components oriented toward telecommunications. Its target customers include utilities, operators of critical infrastructure, defense organizations and corporate security teams, Teknovation reported.

During the program, Ridge Quantum plans to validate deployment on EPB’s fiber and quantum network and identify a specific security application for operational use. That work will connect the licensed technology with the network conditions and security requirements of prospective customers.

Superquantum is developing software to help plan and run calculations on fault-tolerant quantum computers — systems designed to keep computing reliably despite errors.

Its tools cover estimating computing requirements, improving how resources are used, coordinating operations and executing calculations. The company’s intended customers include quantum hardware manufacturers, computing platform providers and application developers.

Superquantum will use the studio to benchmark its compiler and execution tools across hardware and develop a commercial route to platform users, according to Teknovation. A compiler translates a program into instructions that computing hardware can carry out.

Esoteriq is addressing an earlier step in the process: determining whether real-world data can be prepared for a useful quantum computing task.

Its software, Rune, estimates the computing cost of encoding data for a quantum computer and assesses whether a dataset is viable for quantum execution. Encoding is the process of representing information in a form the machine can use.

The company plans to test the feasibility of computing tasks on quantum hardware using representative customer data. It will also seek a design partner, giving it a prospective user with whom to develop and test the product.

Kottackal combines quantum and conventional sensors with secure networking, software that brings together data from multiple sources, and artificial intelligence.

Its intended markets include energy and battery operators, industrial infrastructure and defense. During the studio, the company will work toward a pilot for monitoring assets with regional energy and industrial partners, Teknovation reported.

Building a Regional Business Base

The studio also serves a local economic development objective: connecting quantum founders with Chattanooga’s technical resources and encouraging them to build businesses in the area.

“Our goal is to plug them in with our local technical partners, showing them that Chattanooga is a cluster of quantum innovation with the workforce to support it,” Barringer told Teknovation. “Of course, our hope it that they eventually want to start or grow their businesses here.”

EPB, Quantinuum, Davidson Technologies and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga are founding partners of the inaugural program. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is among the additional partners and could provide access to researchers and specialized hardware, according to the report.

CO.LAB and Oak Ridge signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this year to accelerate commercialization of laboratory technologies in quantum, energy and transportation. Ridge Quantum’s inclusion gives the first cohort a company already working with technology licensed from the laboratory.

Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly linked the accelerator to the city’s efforts to attract investment and create skilled jobs.

“By matching quantum startups with the world-class infrastructure, technical expertise and real-world opportunities to test and scale solutions, the accelerator program will help create skilled jobs and new investment in Chattanooga,” Kelly said, according to Teknovation.