John Martinis | Nobel Prize, Entrepreneurship vs Google, AI Replacing Jobs

About this episode

John Martinis is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, recognized in 2025 for his pioneering 40-year career developing superconducting qubits. He led Google’s team that achieved quantum supremacy in 2019, and today he is co-founder of Qolab, his quantum computing startup. 00:43 – Welcome & Introduction 00:48 – Science Fiction and "For All Mankind" 01:36 – Zero to One & Leaving Google 04:35 – Entrepreneurial Mindset & Google Experience 05:03 – Finding a Co-Founder (Alan) 08:02 – Raising Money as a Truth-Teller 08:54 – Academia vs Startup Life & Nobel Prize 11:33 – Is Quantum Volume a Good Metric? 13:52 – Optical Quantum Computing & Hype 16:07 – Science Culture: France vs USA 18:28 – Quantum…