Before quantum computing arrives, this startup wants businesses already working on it

Eighteen months after selling his startup to chipmaker AMD for $665 millionThere is Finnish entrepreneur Peter Sarlin resigned from the post of CEO of a unit now known as AMD Silo AI. He is now chairman of two new ventures: a physical artificial intelligence lab to carryand QuTwoan AI startup that aims to help companies prepare for the era of quantum computing

Currently fully funded by Sarli’s family office, My PostScriptQuTwo describes itself as an “artificial intelligence laboratory for the quantum era.” Instead of waiting for quantum computing to catch up, it’s already working with enterprise clients, including European fashion retailer Zalando, which is developing what the two companies call.lifestyle agents,” AI tools are designed to go beyond product search and proactively suggest products and experiences.

QuTwo is built on the premise that artificial intelligence has hit an efficiency wall that quantum computing can eventually help solve. Sarlin told TechCrunch that the company isn’t betting on when that will happen. Instead, the startup is building QuTwo OS as an orchestration layer that allows companies to move from classical computing to quantum computing—using hybrid computing along the way.

Sarlin invested in Finnish quantum companies IQM and QMill through my PostScript and is one of a growing number of investors who believe it will eventually surpassing classical computers in a wide range of industrial applications while easing the energy demands of artificial intelligence. But he also thinks early use cases will require mixed hardware environments, and enterprises will focus more on their business challenges while QuTwo OS handles routing.

In this regard, a potential advantage of the middle ground known as “quantum-inspired” computing is that it is already alive today because it uses classical hardware to simulate quantum behavior, while still working around the obstacles that prevent quantum hardware. At the same time, the QuTwo OS is designed to be flexible, supporting both quantum and non-quantum algorithms and chips.

The QuTwo team brings expertise from both sides of the quantum-AI divide. On the quantum side, IQM’s co-founder Kuan Yen Tan and board member Antti Vasara are also chairman of SemiQon, a Finnish semiconductor startup focused on quantum chips. The enterprise side is represented equally by Sarlin himself and Kaj-Mikael Björk, one of his former co-founders at Silo AI. Pekka Lundmark, the former CEO of Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia, has also joined QuTwo’s board.

In both areas, the team counts more than 30 quantum and artificial intelligence scientists, and Sarlin clearly knows 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.”

This also means that its customer base can be quite large. Apart from Zalando, QuTwo has launched a quantum artificial intelligence research initiative with OP Pohjola, a large Finnish financial services provider.

From the beginning, QuTwo has been commercially oriented and already has “major design partnerships in the tens of millions,” Sarlin said. A design partnership—where a vendor develops its product together with its enterprise customers—is a way for QuTwo to learn what those customers expect when developing its product. They’re also a bet for businesses looking to break ground when and if quantum computing arrives.