Our History
Founded in 2019 as a spinoff from Institut d’Optique, Pasqal emerged from groundbreaking research in neutral atom quantum computing led by quantum physics pioneer Alain Aspect.
Scaling from fundamental research to commercial deployment, we engineer neutral-atom quantum processors. Today, Pasqal partners with industry leaders across finance, energy, and advanced materials to target complex computational bottlenecks within classical HPC systems.
History
Milestones
1982
Alain Aspect Experiment
First quantum mechanics experiment to demonstrate the violation of Bell’s inequalities
2001
Single Atom Precision
G. Reymond achieved the controlled trapping of a single atom in an optical tweezer, published in Nature. This technical milestone demonstrated high-fidelity control over individual quantum particles, establishing the foundational technique that enables Pasqal to manipulate arrays of neutral atoms as qubits.
2009
Rydberg Blockade Breakthrough
Antoine Browaeys demonstrated the first Rydberg blockade effect between individual atoms, a phenomenon that prevents nearby atoms from simultaneously entering excited states. This discovery, published in Nature Physics, provided a critical mechanism for creating quantum gates between neutral atoms, opening new possibilities for quantum information processing.
2016
30-Qubit Quantum Simulation
Thierry Lahaye and Antoine Browaeys achieved quantum simulation with 30 qubits using neutral atoms, published in Nature. This experiment demonstrated the inherent scalability of neutral-atom platforms, providing early validation of the architecture’s coherence and control capabilities.
2018
3D Quantum Architecture
The team led by Lahaye and Browaeys pushed boundaries with a simulation using 49 qubits and 72 atoms in a three-dimensional configuration. This advancement, published in Nature and Physical Review X, showcased the unique scalability of neutral atom systems and their ability to implement complex quantum models in three dimensions. principles that would later enable Pasqal’s technology.
2019
Pasqal’s Inception
Thierry Lahaye, Antoine Browaeys, Georges-Olivier Reymond, and Christophe Jurczak founded Pasqal to engineer commercial-grade quantum computing solutions. The company launched with the mission to develop neutral-atom quantum processors designed to map and overcome complex computational bottlenecks across industrial sectors.
2021
Pasqal’s Inception
Published in Nature, the team demonstrated scalable quantum simulation. This milestone reinforced the scalability of the neutral-atom architecture, paving the way for Pasqal’s current deployment of commercial-grade 100+ qubit systems.
