Podcast with Yuval Boger, Chief Commercial Officer of QuEra and The Superposition Guy

Podcaster Follows His Curiosity to Explore Quantum

Overview

Yuval Boger, also known as The Superposition Guy, has been podcasting for more than 15 years and discussing technology ranging from wireless charging to VR headsets. The subject of his latest show is quantum technology. He discusses with guests the why behind their quantum journey. On this episode of The Quantum Spin by HKA, he and host Veronica Combs discuss the industry and how to explain the promise of the tech without overpromising.

00:00 Introduction to The Quantum Spin
00:34 Meet Yuval Boger: The Superposition Guy
00:51 The Art of Podcasting
01:54 Quantum Computing Conversations
04:04 Understanding the Audience
08:56 Applications and Use Cases of Quantum Computing
11:32 Challenges and Future of Quantum Computing
18:10 QuEra’s Plans and Announcements
21:40 Closing Thoughts and Farewell

Yuval Boger is the chief commercial officer of QuEra, the leader in neutral atom quantum computers. In his career, he has served as CEO and CMO of frontier-tech companies in markets including quantum computing software, wireless power, and virtual reality. His Superposition Guy’s Podcast hosts CEOs and other thought leaders in quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum communications to discuss business and technical aspects that impact the quantum ecosystem.

Transcript

Transcript

[00:00:00] Veronica: Hello, and welcome to The Quantum Spin by HKA. I’m Veronica Combs. I’m a writer and an editor here at the agency. I get to talk every day with really smart people working on really fascinating subjects, everything in the Quantum industry, from hardware to software. On our podcast, we focus in on quantum communication, and by that I don’t mean making networks safe from hacking or entangling photons over long distances, but talking about the technology.

[00:00:26] How do you explain these complicated concepts to people who don’t have a background in science and engineering but want to understand all the same?

[00:00:34] Veronica Combs: Today I am talking with a fellow podcaster. Yuval Boger is the Chief Commercial Officer at QuEra, and he is also the host of The Superposition Guy Podcast. Thanks for joining me today, Yuval.

[00:00:47] Yuval Boger: Thanks very much for having me, Veronica.

[00:00:49] Veronica Combs: I should be learning from you. I think. How did you get started?

[00:00:53] Yuval Boger: I think I’ve been podcasting for about 15 years. Oh. Most recently in quantum, right? So in quantum I did The Qubit Guy Podcast while I was at Classiq.

[00:01:02] And then The Superposition Guy Podcast now that I’m at QuEra. I’ve reached about two hundred episodes of quantum podcasting.

[00:01:09] But podcasting is something that I’ve been doing professionally for quite some time. I used to run a virtual reality company, one of the virtual reality pioneers. We made high-end goggles and I was The VR Guy Podcast.

[00:01:22] And then,

[00:01:23] Veronica Combs: oh, I was,

[00:01:23] Yuval Boger: chief marketing officer at a wireless power company, one that could send power safely across the room to charge phones or other devices. And I was The Charge Guy Podcast. So this is this part of my schtick for quite some time now.

[00:01:37] Veronica Combs: Well, that must be why you were such a good interviewer because you have all these years of experience in talking to people and drawing them out,

[00:01:43] Yuval Boger: and it’s become so much easier to do a podcast,

[00:01:45] with AI transcription and automatic noise removal and so on,

[00:01:50] Veronica Combs: It’s gotten

[00:01:50] Yuval Boger: really easier.

[00:01:51] Veronica Combs: Yeah, that definitely automation does make, does really make a difference.

[00:01:54] So, how do you pick your guests?

[00:01:57] Yuval Boger: My podcast is, there to, to inform, to educate, to entertain, but egotistically, it’s just things that I’m curious about. Oh, I hear about this company, I’ve never heard about them, or, or, what’s, what’s going on? I hope I’m a reasonable conduit to my audience, but I ask the questions that I want to know because these are things that I’m curious about.

[00:02:18] Veronica Combs: Yes, that’s definitely what I enjoy most too. Just talking to smart people, doing really interesting work. So yes, I, I, we have that same, that strategy in common. Are there any conversations that stick out in your mind of, that were particularly interesting in terms of answering questions or just opening you up to new, new approaches?

[00:02:35] Yuval Boger: So definitely, QuEra does neutral atom quantum computers. So certainly conversations around sensing or quantum communications are areas that I’m less familiar about. Speaking with customers, I remember interviewing the head of Quantum at MasterCard or an executive of Volkswagen. That’s always fascinating.

[00:02:55] Some of the most popular episodes are sort of scientific episodes. We don’t introduce Hamiltonians or, or draw equations on the screen. But I think my most popular episode was one with Mikhail Lukin from Harvard, our scientific co-founder and, and two co-authors of a paper that they published about logical qubits and quantum error correction.

[00:03:18] That I think continues to be the highest rated episode. So sometimes I’m surprised, I dunno how it goes about you, but my biggest fear as an interviewer is the people who answer with two word or one word answers, how are you doing? Fine. What’s new? Nothing. And then 10 minutes into this, I’m like, what am I going to do with this guest?

[00:03:38] How can I get, how can I get them talking about something?

[00:03:41] Veronica Combs: Your background is physics, right? Your first degree is in physics, and then you went back for a business degree, right? So you, you, you can have a scientific conversation if you want to.

[00:03:50] Yuval Boger: Yes, I have a graduate degree in physics in fiber optic sensor arrays and then an MBA, so I’m equally bad at both sides, business and physics.

[00:04:00] Veronica Combs: Or equally curious about both sides.

[00:04:02] That’s another way to think of it. One thing that we always talk to our clients about here at HKA is think of your audience, remember who you’re talking to. So as you mentioned, you can’t necessarily go really scientific if you’re hoping to attract investors, or you can’t, talk about marketing strategy if you’re trying to hire scientists or physicists or engineers or whoever to work at your company.

[00:04:22] So how do you think about the audience for The Superposition Guy Podcast?

[00:04:26] Yuval Boger: First, I know that the audience is very diverse, so you got people who are just college students that want to hear about quantum computing. You’ve got certainly industry insiders. You’ve got customers or potential customers that want to hear about that.

[00:04:40] So you can’t go too much into, oh, we’re going to use Q-L-D-P-C code and we’re going to use this error. And, we don’t want to get people off the cliff from a technical level, but at the end of the day, people are curious, does this work? How does it work? When will it work? And what can I do with it?

[00:05:03] That’s always a good starting point. What does it mean for the customer? The other thing that I found useful is a general question. Someone told me that physicists care about the derivative, meaning that they don’t just ask you how are you, they ask you What’s new? What has changed since the last time I, I saw you?

[00:05:21] So asking people what have they learned over the last six or 12 months, or what’s new in their business is always interesting because it talks about more recent events than things that happened three or five years ago.

[00:05:34] Veronica Combs: Asking about the derivative.. That’s a good one. I’ll have to remember that. As you mentioned, there’s certainly a a skill set at interviewing people and drawing out the right information, asking the right questions, or asking again.

[00:05:44] I imagine some of those skills are also useful in your role as the chief commercial officer.

[00:05:49] Yuval Boger: I would hope so. I think that we usually start our conversations with customers in asking, where are you in your quantum journey? Where, where are you today? Where would you like to be in 18 months, and why are you not there yet?

[00:06:03] I mean, what’s stopping you? Of course, we could start the conversation by saying, oh, we’re the world leader in neutral and quantum computing and, and, and we’ve got this fantastic science and these deployments, but yeah what’s the problem that you’re trying to solve? There’s a saying that people go say to Home Depot.

[00:06:21] And they buy drills. But what they actually wanted to buy is holes. But Home Depot doesn’t sell holes. So they buy a drill that can help them make holes. So instead of saying, what kind of quantum computer do you want to buy, it says, what kind of hole do you want to create? What, what is your goal?

[00:06:39] And we find that the goals are different for different audiences. So you have enterprise customers that might say. What I really want is competitive advantage. I want to reduce my operating costs, or I want to improve my logistics supply chains, or I want to discover new materials. You go to governments and what they really want is economic prosperity.

[00:07:02] They might believe that just like AI and autonomous driving and 5G and the internet, then quantum could be a seed for economic growth. So that’s what they’re really looking for. They’re not looking for a quantum computer just because it’s cool,

[00:07:16] Veronica Combs: right?

[00:07:17] Yuval Boger: And then you go into HPC centers, and what they really want is just to solve problems that they couldn’t solve classically.

[00:07:23] Now, no one says, I just want a quantum computer. Here’s what I want to do. I want an economic advantage, or I want to solve intractable problems, or I want competitive advantage. There, we can tie it into some of the things that we offer at QuEra, whether it’s quantum systems or application co-design services or, or other things.

[00:07:43] Veronica Combs: And I think not everyone realizes that companies like Volkswagen and JP Morgan Chase and MasterCard are exploring quantum and trying to figure out what are the problems they can’t solve now that potentially they could solve with a quantum computer. And it, not everyone’s ready to talk about their research to the press, but it is certainly a proof point for the industry to say, you know, the top 10%

[00:08:04] of the Fortune 500 are exploring this right now. I’m hopeful people see more upside to talking about their work in that space. But, a lot of reporters still start their articles with the basic explanation of a qubit. We haven’t quite gotten to ease of talking about different modalities: superconducting, neutral atom, trapped ion.

[00:08:22] But I feel like we are making some progress in that area. Are there questions that you are still surprised to hear from potential customers?

[00:08:29] Yuval Boger: I think most customers just want to know when it will actually be truly useful. How close are you to

[00:08:36] Veronica Combs: mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:08:37] Yuval Boger: Running a Shor’s algorithm or, or running something that I couldn’t do classically.

[00:08:43] That’s the key thing. Yeah. I mean, Sometimes they can get into sort of the technical questions about oh, why is neutral atoms better than superconducting? Or, I’ve heard about this and, and that’s all good but we’d love to talk with them first and foremost about the application.

[00:08:56] Veronica Combs: And are there new use cases or interesting applications that that you’ve heard recently or that you think are particularly compelling when explaining the power and potential of quantum computing?

[00:09:07] Yuval Boger: Applications fall into three broad categories. One is simulation of things that happen in the microscopic level. The other is machine learning. So for instance, together with American Amgen and Deloitte, we published a paper that shows that quantum machine learning outperforms classical machine learning when it comes to clinical, to data from clinical trials.

[00:09:29] So the problem is that sometimes when you have new medications or new drugs, say a COVID vaccine, well you’ve got millions and millions of users and you have all the data you’d ever want, but sometimes the disease is very rare or treatment is expensive. It’s an early stage clinical trial and so you don’t have a lot of data.

[00:09:49] And what they were able to show using our technology is that you can extract more insight faster or sooner with a smaller dataset than you could do classically. So that, so quantum machine learning in that case is very exciting. And the third area is optimization. So for instance, we did work with an energy company on saying, could we find the optimal locations to place EV charging stations?

[00:10:15] We have a region, we have potential sites that we could place a station. We don’t want to have stations that are too close to each other because then we’re paying double to serve the same customer base. What’s the optimal solution? So that is a nice problem that we were able to help solve using quantum computer.

[00:10:30] But it’s still, as you mentioned, it’s early stage. These are sometimes toy problems in the sense that they’re not large scale enough, but they give people the confidence that the technology works. They allow them to develop and test the algorithms. If I give you a program that does something that couldn’t be done classically, how do you verify the results?

[00:10:50] So sometimes taking a toy problem and saying well, I can solve it classically, let’s see what’s better is a good approach to go about it.

[00:10:58] Veronica Combs: And it seems, at least for the moment, the general consensus is material science will be a place where we’ll see early advantage. Certainly, that would fall in the simulation, maybe machine learning depending on what you’re doing.

[00:11:09] Do you share that opinion that material science will be an early beneficiary of quantum? That seems

[00:11:14] Yuval Boger: to be a popular opinion. Right. And where we’re engaged with a couple of these projects, we’re engaged with the Wellcome Leap P rogram, The Welcome Foundation for mm-hmm drug discovery.

[00:11:26] And we’re doing other, chemical material in pharma sciences. And so far so good.

[00:11:32] Veronica Combs: What do you think is still one of the biggest barriers to understanding quantum computing? Or at least being willing to put together a, an RD team or an exploratory team?

[00:11:40] Yuval Boger: I think you and I sort of have the same challenge.

[00:11:43] How do we promote the technology and get people excited without overdoing the hype? Some companies were a little bit too optimistic about how soon, a, a big company publishes a result from a quantum computer experiment, with a single qubit or sometimes with half a qubit and all of a sudden it’s, oh, this is going to change the world tomorrow.

[00:12:03] Well, it’ll change the world, but probably not tomorrow. It’s finding that right balance. I think a lot of companies have gone through the use case discovery so they can understand where quantum could potentially help and sometimes with their prioritization. But they’re trying to figure out how much should we invest and how soon.

[00:12:20] Of course, the challenge is that the cost of investing, five people and a little bit of cloud time is going to be much less than the cost of not investing. If this becomes a truly game changing technology in two or three years and your competitor has it. So a lot of companies are trying to find that right balance and to find the right partners, the right technology. Today

[00:12:43] it’s very difficult to write a program that works equally good on all computers. Every computer is different. They’ve got different strengths and weaknesses. So selecting the right partner, both in terms of hardware capabilities, approach, and the team is really important.

[00:12:59] Veronica Combs: Yes, definitely. Obviously the customers are subject matter experts on their particular challenge, finance, material science, logistics, whatever. But then, certainly the right quantum partner can, can explain how to move ahead with the right hardware and software. I was talking with some colleagues of mine and, we were talking about evangelists and I was explaining Guy Kawasaki and how he was one of Apple’s famous evangelists. Do you think we’re at the point where we need quantum evangelists? Are they already out there?

[00:13:26] Yuval Boger: I think there’s always opportunity to evangelize more. I mean, quantum computing is a small community right now. You mentioned 10% of Fortune 500 companies are exploring well, that’s great. What about the other 90% and why are they not doing that? Is that they’re not aware? Is it that they don’t think it applies to them?

[00:13:44] Is technology not there yet? So I think there’s a lot of opportunity for really educational material and going and explaining this is where you might find use for quantum computing. We just have to be realistic not to create false expectations, because ultimately we can win the battle and lose the war if we disappoint a customer.

[00:14:06] And then they’ll say, all right, that didn’t work. We’ll come back in five years, and then we, we lost someone for five years.

[00:14:11] Veronica Combs: Yes. That’s, that’s a very hard line to balance, like you said, explaining the potential, but not over promising. Like you said, it’s not tomorrow. Still not tomorrow, yet.

[00:14:21] So, I always like to take advantage of my time with guests on the show to ask about their perspective. Are there parts of the industry that you’re sort of keeping an eye on, just out of curiosity or out of a strategic perspective from QuEra?

[00:14:34] Yuval Boger: Um, I think two things. One is we’re always curious about the balance of on-premises quantum computers versus on the cloud. I think that some years ago people had assumed that it’s only going to be cloud. Quantum computers change quickly. They’re not mature yet to the point where you solve truly important business problems.

[00:14:55] You can experiment on the cloud with multiple vendors. You could do it very inexpensively. But at QuEra and others have said no, we see customers that really want to buy a computer because they want to integrate into an HPC center or because they think they’re going to have data sensitivity or data residency issues that they can’t put on the cloud or because they want to create that economic prosperity,

[00:15:16] and they think that a quantum computer will generate an ecosystem of people and companies and funding in their country and region, and that could swing one way or the other. So that’s certainly an area that we’re keeping an eye on. The other is for better or worse, geopolitics. Quantum is perceived as a strategic technology for many countries and every country has a different approach about it.

[00:15:36] Some believe that supporting the local vendors, and creating a wall so no foreign vendor mistakenly or intentionally comes in, is a good strategy and others believe more in open innovation and let the customer win. So there are questions of where should we sell? Where could we sell? There are questions of reciprocity.

[00:15:59] Okay, we want to trade with Country X. Does Country X want to trade with us? What does that mean from a policy perspective? So I think that’s certainly an area that we’re keeping an eye on, even though we’re a relatively small company, we don’t have significant political power, but, we certainly are aware and, and we talk with our other partners in the industry about these issues.

[00:16:22] Veronica Combs: Yes, I would to go back to your first point about on-prem versus the cloud. When I was reading through the QuEra site, I noticed that, on-prem addition to the sentence about how to access a quantum computer. And I think it does seem so much more real and there’s so many more, business options

[00:16:36] If you have it on-prem, not to mention the data sensitivity and those issues as well. So yeah, I’ll be, be curious to see how that plays out as well.

[00:16:44] I was talking with another colleague of mine, Christian Balzora, who’s our resident science expert. And we were talking about benchmarks and metrics. Quantum advantage is sort of, some people love it and lots of more people hate it.

[00:17:00] Is there a metric that you like when you’re looking at the industry or measuring QuEra’s progress?

[00:17:06] Yuval Boger: I personally prefer to look at the usefulness, what can it do for the customer and how can it help them in their journey?

[00:17:13] You can compare a car to an airplane and say, an airplane can go much faster. Does that mean that an airplane is better? In some cases it is. In others it is not. Right? So when people talk about gate speed or gate fidelity, or a number of qubits or connectivity, they all come together to create some experience, but the fact that you can do things one way or on one computer doesn’t mean that, that’s the best way to do it on, on everyone.

[00:17:40] I think this is an area where quantum vendors are a little bit to blame. Everyone is picking their favorite benchmark and sometimes even giving it their favorite name, it’s really hard for customers to compare but ultimately I want to say, how large of a portfolio can I optimize? How complex a molecule can I simulate?

[00:17:59] What can I do or not do with quantum machine learning on your machine? And I think that’s the real benchmark that matters to customers.

[00:18:05] Veronica Combs: Yes. How complex a molecule can I simulate? That is a really good way to put it into perspective. So what is on the agenda for QuEra this year? Do you have any major announcements coming up soon or should we keep our eye out later this year?

[00:18:18] Yuval Boger: We are fortunate to start there very well on the announcement side. We completed the $230 million investment round led by Google and SoftBank.

[00:18:27] Veronica Combs: Congratulations, that is very impressive..

[00:18:29] Yuval Boger: Yes, that is the same Google that has a quantum program of their own. Yes. We announced that we were selected for DARPA’s QBI, Quantum Benchmark Initiative.

[00:18:36] Veronica Combs: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:36] Yuval Boger: Phase A, so that’s good. The other thing at GTC at the big NVIDIA conference, NVIDIA announced that they’re opening what’s called the NVIDIA AQC, the NVIDIA, I think, Accelerated Quantum Computing Center. It’s a quantum supercomputer research center. Magically it is in Boston, in our backyard. And I, I think it’s not entirely a coincidence, but we’re very happy that we’re going to be next door to this amazing facility, amazing research facility, and we definitely hope to collaborate, expect to collaborate with NVIDIA significantly this way.

[00:19:08] We’re also shipping systems. We started installing our system that we shipped to Japan, to the National Institute of Standards of Technology.

[00:19:18] Veronica Combs: Yes, I saw that. Very exciting.

[00:19:20] Yuval Boger: Got some algorithmic breakthrough coming. So yeah, it’s never a dull moment.

[00:19:25] Veronica Combs: Never a dull moment. Yeah, it was, I was really glad to see the announcement of that center in Boston that seemed like a really important vote of confidence from NVIDIA.

[00:19:32] I mean, I think it was a little confusing to hear uncertainty about the prospects for quantum computing, considering that so many companies partner with NVIDIA. And, they’re not, they’re not ignoring the industry. They’re certainly very involved.

[00:19:45] I know that when you close out your podcast, you always ask your guests who they would invite to dinner from history or from modern day or the past. And so I wanted to turn it around on you and ask: is there a person that you would like to have dinner with? If you could speak with anyone?

[00:19:59] Yuval Boger: So first, once in a while I do run and sometimes publish the statistics of the answers. I think Feynman by far leads the answers, maybe just a default answer, maybe just, a combination of a very colorful person, so it seems, and of course, a great physicist. It took a long while for someone to say Einstein, and I think that’s what I would say. One reason,

[00:20:22] it doesn’t have to do anything with quantum computing. Of course Einstein has his views on quantum computing and it would be interesting to figure out if he still believes that or so on. But Einstein was also a very good violinist.

[00:20:37] Veronica Combs: Oh.

[00:20:37] Yuval Boger: I started playing the violin when I was young.

[00:20:39] And at some point when I was young and ignorant, I said, I want to be the best physicist as a violinist and the best violinist as a physicist, and neither are true. And, you know, Einstein sort of took that away very, very quickly ’cause he was both a very good violinist, and of course you know a one-of-a-kind in physics.

[00:20:58] So, yes, I would, I think, very much enjoy a dinner with Einstein.

[00:21:02] Veronica Combs: Yes, that’s true. He could provide a little musical interlude and, and then talk about physics and debate the state of things. I’ve been reading so much more about history of physics and just all the different Nobel Prize winners because of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.

[00:21:18] I don’t know who I would invite. I’m still mulling all that over in my head. I’ll have to look for the analysis of who says what ’cause when I was listening to a few episodes, I was wondering if you’d ever made those tallies.

[00:21:28] Yuval Boger: I don’t know if it’s cheating, to say, no, I don’t want dinner. I want a dinner party and I want this and that and that, and that. All these people.

[00:21:35] Veronica Combs: Yes. You’ve got to pick one. You’ve got to have rules. You’ve got to have limits. Well, Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate the chance to talk with you and we’ll definitely keep an eye on QuEra for the rest of the year.

[00:21:46] Yuval Boger: Thank you very much. Veronica. QuEra is growing. We’re hiring for lots and lots of positions and someone is listening to this and really wants to work with one of the companies that’s both fun to work with, but at the same time, really a technology leader then look us up.

Host Veronica Combs is a quantum tech editor, writer and PR professional. She manages public relations for quantum computing and tech clients as an account manager with HKA Marketing Communications, the #1 agency in quantum tech PR. You can find them on X, formerly known as Twitter, @HKA_PR. Veronica joined HKA from TechRepublic, where she was a senior writer. She has covered technology, healthcare and business strategy for more than 10 years. If you’d like to be on the podcast yourself, you can reach her on LinkedIn, Veronica Combs, or you can go to the HKA website and share your suggestion via the Contact Us page.

July 29, 2025