Several companies, betting on various architectural approaches, are trying to build the first commercially viable quantum computer capable of significantly outperforming current systems.

Oratomic, which entered the race earlier this year with the goal of developing the first utility-scale quantum computer by the end of the decade, said this week that it has raised $300 million. The massive Series A round was co-led by ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Bezos Expeditions, Index Ventures, General Catalyst, Lowercarbon Capital, Bain Capital and others.

Founded by Caltech physicists, Oratomic uses lasers, which act like optical tweezers, to hold individual atoms in place as the basis for its quantum computer.

The startup launched after its researchers discovered that their approach can correct errors using significantly fewer qubits (the basic unit of quantum computing) than previously thought possible. Since quantum computers are sensitive to noise, effective error correction is the key to making them truly useful tools.

“Before we wouldn’t have been able to convince any of us to start a quantum computing company, because we thought it was too far away,” Oratomic co-founder and CEO Dolev Bluvstein told TechCrunch. “Only when we achieved this recent breakthrough did we all change our minds simultaneously.”

While most other quantum companies are making prototypes available to scientists and research corporations, Oratomic has no plans to develop or sell these systems, known as noisy intermediate-scale quantum, or NISQ.

Bluvstein noted that Oratomic should not be compared to PsiQuantum, a startup valued at $7 billion last September, which is also bypassing the NISQ stage and aims to deliver a viable one-million-qubit quantum computer by the end of next year.

Oratomic’s approach is fundamentally simpler and less expensive, Bluvstein argued. “The difference is that we need approximately 10,000 to 20,000 qubits to build a useful computer, and we have already experimentally demonstrated all the necessary core components of that computer on a slightly smaller scale,” he said.

A large-scale quantum computer could facilitate advances in any field that requires complex calculations, from biotechnology, chemistry and logistics to artificial intelligence and cryptography.

Companies working on building these machines and developing software to use them have recently seen a wave of enthusiasm from investors. Several startups in the space, including Infleqtion and Quantanium, went public this year. Meanwhile, existing public companies like Rigetti and IonQ have seen their share prices rise over the past 18 months.

Still, investor Vinod Khosla is so confident that Oratomic will build the first fault-tolerant quantum computer that he wrote in X that it was his company’s “largest initial investment yet.”