Super computer manufacturer Atom Computing planted a proverbial flag in Boulder Wednesday, the site of its new research and development facility.

The Silicon Valley-headquartered Atom plans to invest more than $100 million in the next three years in the facility and staff to run it.

Atom, based in Berkley, is the latest Silicon Valley startup to choose Colorado to expand. Since the beginning of 2022, at least two California start ups have expanded or moved to Colorado. SnapDNA, a foodtech startup moved to Broomfield, and Genapsys, a biosciences company, expanded to Westminster and will hire up to 250 employees in coming years.

Atom came for the same reasons, the biggest of which is access to tech talent.

“Leading researchers and companies are choosing to partner with Atom Computing to develop quantum-enabled solutions because our atomic arrays have the potential to scale larger and faster than other qubit technologies,” CEO Rob Hays said in the release.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis personally welcomed the company, speaking at a grand opening event in Boulder Wednesday.

“We are excited to welcome Atom Computing to Boulder, which is already one of the world’s most booming centers for the quantum computing sector,” Polis said in a news release. “The addition of Atom Computing helps further position Colorado as an economic leader for the next big wave of technology development and will create more good-paying jobs for Coloradans.”

In addition to the abundance of tech talent here, the company also has several staffers with ties to the University of Colorado Boulder.

“Many of our team members, myself included, have connections with local universities,” Ben Bloom, founder and chief technology officer, said in the release. “We are committed to Colorado.”

Bloom, who earned a Ph.D. from CU-Boulder, helped renowned physicist, Dr. Jun Ye, build one of the world’s most accurate atomic clocks. That work was done in Boulder.

Founded in 2018, the company recently closed on $60M in Series B funding. It will use that to help build “a much larger second-generation quantum computing system that can run commercial use-cases,” Atom officials told Forbes in a recent article.

“A quantum computer is largely defined by its qubit type,” according to Forbes. “Qubits (quantum bits) are the basic unit of quantum information in quantum computers, and coherence expresses the length of time a qubit can maintain its quantum state. Atom Computing creates spin qubits by using unique energy levels in the isotope Strontium-87.”

The company’s 100-qubit prototype system, Phoenix, is housed in Berkeley and recently set an industry record for coherence time, according to the release.

Twenty-two of the current 59 Atom Computing employees, who are based in Berkley, will work at the new Boulder facility.

Atom’s Scientific Advisor Ye, Bloom’s former professor, said the new Boulder location is key to the quantum ecosystem.

“It is extremely gratifying to see our recent CU graduates emerge as the early trailblazers of the rapidly growing quantum industry,” Ye said in the release. “This creates a powerful ecosystem for the best science and technology to develop side-by-side, providing outstanding opportunities for Colorado students to lead the next wave of innovations in quantum research and the market.”