Eighteen months after he sold his startup to chip maker AMD for $665 millionFinnish businessman Peter Sarlin has stepped down from his role as CEO of the unit now known as AMD Silo AI. He is now chairman of two new ventures: the natural artificial intelligence lab; NestAIand QuTwoan artificial intelligence startup that aims to help companies prepare for the age of quantum computing
Currently fully funded by Sarlin’s family office, PostScriptumQuTwo describes itself as “an AI lab for the quantum era.” However, rather than waiting for the quantum computer to mature, it is already working with corporate clients — including European fashion retailer Zalando, with which it is developing what the two companies call “lifestyle agents,AI tools designed to go beyond product search and proactively recommend products and experiences.
QuTwo is based on the premise that artificial intelligence is hitting a performance wall that quantum computing can eventually help solve. But the company isn’t betting on when that will happen, Sarlin told TechCrunch. Instead, the startup is building QuTwo OS as an orchestration layer that allows companies to transition from classical to quantum computing – making use of hybrid computing along the way.
Sarlin has invested in Finnish quantum companies IQM and QMill through PostScriptum and is one of a growing number of investors who believe it will eventually surpass classical computers in a wide range of industrial applications while reducing the energy requirements of artificial intelligence. But he also believes that initial use cases will require mixed hardware environments and that businesses prefer to focus on their business problems while QuTwo OS takes care of the routing.
In this regard, the potential advantage of the middle ground known as “quantum-inspired” computing is that it is already viable today because it uses classical hardware while simulating quantum behavior, working around the obstacles that still stand in the way of quantum hardware. Meanwhile, QuTwo OS is designed to be flexible, supporting quantum or non-quantum algorithms and chips.
QuTwo’s team brings experience on both sides of the quantum artificial intelligence divide. On the quantum side, there’s IQM co-founder Kuan Yen Tan and board member Antti Vasara, also president of SemiQon, a Finnish semiconductor startup focused on quantum chips. The business side is equally represented by Sarlin himself and Kaj-Mikael Björk, one of his former co-founders at Silo AI. Pekka Lundmark, the former CEO of Finnish telecom giant Nokia, has also joined QuTwo’s board.
In both areas, the team counts more than 30 quantum and artificial intelligence scientists, and Sarlin is clear about where the company stands. “We’re building for the quantum world, but QuTwo is an AI company,” he said, meaning QuTwo is “pushing AI workloads from classical to quantum.”
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This also means that its customer base could be quite broad. Beyond Zalando, QuTwo has also launched a joint quantum AI research initiative with OP Pohjola, a major Finnish financial services provider.
From the start, QuTwo has been commercially oriented and already has “major design partnerships that run into the tens of millions,” Sarlin said. Design collaborations — in which a supplier co-develops its product with enterprise customers — is a way for QuTwo to learn what those customers expect as it builds its product. They are also a bet by businesses seeking to get an early foothold on when and if quantum computing arrives.
