flight delay sao paulo brazil. Truck drivers drive on unsafe routes Richmond, Vermont. and grid outages whole ukraine. These problems stem from a global communications system that relies heavily on GPS satellites and their transmission signals for basic functions.
To ensure that America’s infrastructure doesn’t collapse—even if the country’s GPS satellites are disrupted by weather, war, or age—a Boulder, Colorado, startup called Mesa Quantum is developing wafer-sized replacement technology.
Specifically, Mesa Quantum is building “wafer-scale atomic clocks” and other miniaturized quantum sensors that can measure and detect changes in a device’s surroundings to signal where the device is in the world and where it needs to go. where to go and keep it in place.
These sensors can ensure clear and stable video calls no matter where the user is, or enable robots, underwater drones and autonomous vehicles to maneuver around obstacles such as dense populations or where GPS signals are weak or unavailable. .
The company, co-founded in 2023 by Mesa Quantum CEO Sristy Agrawal and Chief Technology Officer Wale Lawal, has received a $1.9 million grant from the Space Force to demonstrate its technology as a replacement for GPS technology in military and civilian applications.
The company also raised about $3.7 million in a seed round led by Boston-based health and defense technology fund J2 Ventures and hardware investor SOSV.
Alex Harstrick, co-founder and managing partner of J2 Ventures, told CNBC that his fund backed Mesa Quantum in part because of the founder’s exceptional technology background.
Agrawal recently received his PhD from the University of Colorado in an elite program affiliated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her research focuses on quantum information, computation and gravity.
Agrawal told CNBC that she has the most accurate clock in the world in her lab below her university office. “Working here and interacting with all these different groups has made me realize the real impact these technologies can have, not just the theoretical impact in the future like you hear about quantum computing,” she said.
Her co-founder, LaVar, is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, a PhD in materials science and nanoengineering from Rice University, and an MBA from Harvard University.
Prior to starting his own business, he spent several years working in military research, developing systems for use in “GPS competitive environments” such as precision-guided missiles, swarm drone technology, and magnetic navigation systems used to guide military aircraft.
Rawal explained that the systems of military aircraft and other vehicles cannot be compromised and jammed. Any disruption could lead to “catastrophic events for warfighters” in the air and on the ground. “If the drone loses its GPS signal (drone relies on the GPS signal to monitor the environment and provide intelligence information to the troops within the range), the troops will be unable to complete key tasks such as search and rescue.”
Many GPS satellites operated by the United States are now aging beyond their life expectancy.
When they met, the scientific duo quickly agreed that there was an urgent need for wafer-scale technology that could be manufactured at scale to mitigate the risk of GPS-related failures in military and commercial systems.
Harstrick said his fund hopes Mesa Quantum will be able to demonstrate the first large-scale “atomic clock” (quantum timing sensor) verified by top semiconductor manufacturing partners in the next few years.
He also speculates that companies building or operating their own data centers will need Mesa Quantum’s sensor technology.
“Data centers today use GPS to synchronize their networks so that communications or data can be accurately exchanged in the cloud,” Lawal explains. “Any kind of disruption in network synchronization can cause a crash – whether it’s a financial system or a hospital system or a social network.” network.
Technology that helps data centers protect against such crashes could help them prevent data loss and improve cybersecurity, the chief technology officer said.
CEO Christy Agrawal said that regardless of which private companies ultimately embrace the startup’s quantum sensors, the U.S. government will likely be one of Mesa Quantum’s biggest early customers. “The U.S. government has developed major initiatives to stimulate innovation in this area and is seeking to purchase a million quantum sensors per year – if they can simply be produced at scale,” she explained.
With grant funding and seed rounds in place, Agrawal said Mesa Quantum will look to expand its team in Boulder, specifically hiring atomic molecular and optical physicists, engineers and manufacturing experts this year.
The long-term vision, she said, is to “bring to market a set of quantum sensors that can do everything that current GPS-based systems can do, without any of the risks and vulnerabilities.”
