Google has announced that the team from MIT spin-out Atlantic Quantum is joining its Quantum AI unit.

It’s unclear if the startup has been acquired by Google, as no further details regarding the agreement have been disclosed.

In a blog post announcing the news, Hartmut Neven, founder and lead of Google Quantum AI, wrote: “We’re delighted for Atlantic Quantum to join us as Google continues to invest in the future of quantum computing and deliver its benefits to society.”

Spun out of MIT Professor William D. Oliver’s lab in 2022, Atlantic Quantum develops integrated quantum computing hardware, including a modular chip stack that combines qubits and superconducting control electronics within a cryogenic system.

Previously, the startup has claimed its approach is “the only solution that will allow commercial and national security end-users to experience quantum compute without compromising on clock speed, errors, or scalability.”

In July 2022, Atlantic Quantum closed a $9 million funding round, and in November 2024, the company signed a $1.8m contract with the US Air Force to develop a quantum computer based on fluxonium qubits, in collaboration with MIT.

Google Quantum AI was launched in 2012, with a mission to “build quantum computing for otherwise unsolvable problems.” In December 2024, Google debuted its 105-qubit Willow quantum computing chip, claiming it performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes, which would otherwise take 10²⁵ years on a conventional supercomputer.

In April 2025, both Google and Atlantic were selected as participants for Stage A of the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI). The program aims to determine whether it's possible to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer within a decade and if any quantum computing approach can achieve utility-scale operation by 2033.