CHAMPAIGN, Ill., (July 14, 2025) – /U.S. Department of Energy/ — Nathan Arnold, CEO of EnterpriseWorks startup Photon Queue, has been selected for the ninth cohort of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program, a highly competitive initiative designed to support early-stage energy startups on their path toward commercialization.
Arnold is one of just 27 entrepreneurs nationwide chosen for the fellowship. He will join the Chain Reaction Innovations program at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, where he will work with a network of mentors and experts to develop transformative energy technologies.
“This two-year fellowship will give us access to world-class facilities, mentorship from entrepreneurs and researchers and will help us accelerate our products to market,” said Photon Queue on LinkedIn. “We are beyond excited to grow our presence in the Chicago quantum ecosystem and push the boundaries of efficient photon storage through this program.”
Photon Queue’s selection into LEEP marks the latest step in its efforts to scale its quantum memory hardware for industry adoption, a journey rooted in its home at the University of Illinois Research Park. The startup recently celebrated its one-year anniversary, having launched through the Duality Quantum Accelerator, secured its first two sales and pitched to West Coast venture capitalists during the Quantum Startup Pitch Competition and San Francisco’s Deep Tech Week.
Past fellows have developed breakthrough technologies that became the foundation of thriving businesses. Since the program’s inception in 2015, 182 LEEP startups have attracted $4.2 billion in follow-on funding and created more than 3,800 jobs, according to a press release from the DOE.
Participants perform critical research and development to hone their startup technologies with the goal of advancing those technologies from lab to market. The program also supports fellows by providing training in business development, networking opportunities and access to the resources and expertise of the U.S. national laboratories.
“The LEEP Program epitomizes DOE’s commitment to empowering American inventors and entrepreneurs to improve the affordability, reliability, and security of our energy system,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Lou Hrkman. “I look forward to seeing this new round of fellows make its mark on American energy and manufacturing.”
About Photon Queue
Photon Queue is a hardware company developing quantum memories and the first quantum startup from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The company aims to become the premier supplier of photonic quantum memories for the emerging quantum communication, networking, and computing sectors. Quantum memories comprise many of the required components for these sectors and will command a significant fraction of this market size, but the currently available quantum memory technologies lack many performance metrics.
The quantum memory technology at Photon Queue has been pioneered by the research group of Prof. Paul Kwiat over the past two decades. It outperforms all competing technologies in head-to-head comparisons for several critical quantum applications. The company aims to accelerate the realization of important quantum applications by providing high-performance quantum memories.
About EnterpriseWorks at University of Illinois Research Park
EnterpriseWorks is the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s technology incubator. Its mission is to launch, support, and advance successful science-based startups that are commercializing disruptive technologies. EnterpriseWorks is located at University of Illinois Research Park, an innovation hub for technology commercialization with a unique environment that cultivates startups and increases capabilities for established. Located on campus, Research Park has more than 120 companies and growing, employing over 2,100 people in high-technology careers.