With Rolex Quantum, the brand with the crown will redefine the measurement of time

Rolex's quest for precision seems to know no bounds. This year, the Geneva-based company already created a buzz at the Watches & Wonders trade show, unveiling its new Land Dweller collection, featuring its first caliber beating at 5 Hertz, or 36,000 vibrations per hour. These Oyster Perpetual Land-Dwellers benefit from the Superlative Chronometer certification, redefined by Rolex in 2015, meaning a precision of around –2/+2 seconds per day.

But the new company just created in Neuchâtel by the watchmaking giant goes much further: it could contribute to revising the very definition of a second, and therefore of universal time. Rolex Quantum is located a stone's throw from the charming Neuchâtel Observatory, as well as the laboratories of CSEM, the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology. "Following the excellent collaboration between CSEM and Rolex for the design of a new generation of atomic clocks, it was agreed between the two partners to continue with a technology transfer," the Geneva-based company explained to Le Figaro. "To this end, a new company was created under the name "Rolex Quantum SA" in May 2025. The company will expand its activities in Neuchâtel to benefit from the proximity of CSEM. Rolex Quantum SA's mission is the development, manufacture, and sale of optical atomic clocks."

" The company's purpose is the development, manufacture, and sale of optical atomic clocks, as well as all products related to the field of time and frequency measurement with very high precision," the Swiss business registers state. Rolex therefore intends to produce optical atomic clocks in Neuchâtel. But what is it all about? Nothing more and nothing less than the watchmaking industry's entry into the era of quantum time... These rubidium clocks should in fact allow for the improvement of universal time measurement techniques. Currently, hundreds of atomic clocks around the world contribute to the definition of international atomic time. But rubidium optical atomic clocks are simpler, much more compact, and apparently the most precise ever created: they are capable of subdividing a single second into 750 quadrillions... Each of these tiny sections of time represents approximately one femtosecond. Thus, by counting the oscillations of light from these optical atomic clocks, we can be certain of the time to within a femtosecond... Enough to make these rubidium atomic clocks the announced replacements for the cesium 133 microwave models, which have been measuring the second since 1967... By 2030, these optical clocks, a hundred times more precise, could well be used to calculate International Atomic Time (TAI). And what if, tomorrow, the brand with the crown, in addition to offering the most desirable and precise watches in the world, contributed to redefining the second, the unit of time in the international system? With its optical atomic clocks, Rolex would define the new standard of time... And who knows, it would also rewrite the standards of watchmaking precision and timekeeping in the process, by combining precision mechanical calibers and a time reference system on the atomic scale.