One Impossible Idea: Why Pete Shadbolt left academia to build PsiQuantum

Wild Hearts

What if you could take the most mysterious force in physics—and make it useful?

In our final episode of this season of Wild Hearts, we sit down with Pete Shadbolt, co-founder of PsiQuantum, a company racing to build the world’s first utility-scale quantum computer. But this isn’t a conversation about quantum theory. It’s about execution. Engineering. Scaling. Building something that moves humanity forward - not in decades, but now.

Pete shares why 300 or 3,000 qubits won’t cut it, and why a million is the magic number. We explore the technical marvels (and madness) involved in the team’s journey: superconducting detectors millimetres from red-hot heaters, lasers brighter than a trillion photons, and a cryostat that throws out the chandelier model altogether.

But most of all, this is a story of ambition. Of leaving behind prestigious academic careers, raising a billion dollars, and assembling a team of physicists, welders, aerospace engineers, and cryo-specialists to take one shot at building something historic.

In this conversation, we cover:

🚀 Why PsiQuantum is chasing 1 million qubits—not 300, not 3,000🏗️ What it takes to move quantum computing from theory to hardware—with welders, chip designers, and aerospace engineers

📉 Why academia can be a trap—and how PsiQuantum built an anti-academic company culture

🌐 The real-world applications of quantum computing: from designing drugs to revolutionising materials science

👩‍🔬 How team DNA, not just tech, shapes PsiQuantum’s ability to scale and execute

⚙️ Why quantum computing isn’t a mass adoption tool - and why that’s perfectly okay

🔥 How engineering targets that once caused mutiny are now being hit daily

This episode concludes our fifth season of Wild Hearts. Over the past 40 weeks, it’s been our honour to chat to the founders and operators shaping the world we live in. If you’ve enjoyed the conversations, we would be grateful if you could like, subscribe, and share our program with other wild hearts.

Wild Hearts will take a short break, and will return to all streaming platforms later this year.

From everyone at the Wild Hearts team, thank you!