Quantum Ready - The Business Opportunity

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Join us for the insightful panel discussion titled "Quantum Ready: The Business Opportunity," where we explore the transformative potential of quantum technologies and their impact on various industries. As quantum computing rapidly evolves, businesses have an unprecedented opportunity to leverage these advancements for a competitive edge. Industry leaders will share actionable insights on how organizations can prepare to become "quantum-ready," and capitalize on the vast possibilities of quantum computing, sensing, and communication.

Meet our esteemed panelists:  
Mike Butcher (Moderator) – Editor-at-large at TechCrunch and influential force in European technology journalism, recognized for his contributions to startup policy and innovation.  

- Robert Marino – CEO of Qubit Pharmaceuticals, with over 15 years of experience in deep tech and startup development, co-founder of various initiatives supporting quantum ecosystems.  

- Steve Suarez – CEO of HorizonX Consulting and former Global Head of Innovation at HSBC, bringing decades of expertise in consulting, telecommunications, and finance.  

- William D. Oliver – Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor at MIT, leading figure in quantum engineering and advisory roles, contributing to national quantum initiatives.  

- Daniela Herrmann – Co-Founder of Dynex and Mission Leader at Dynex Moonshots, recognized technologist focused on ethical quantum solutions across industries.  

- Kapil Dhiman – CEO and Co-Founder of Quranium, dedicated to advancing digital security through quantum-proof technologies and innovative blockchain solutions.

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Transcript

(00:08) okay thanks very much for joining us again uh my name just to recap uh my name is Mike Butcher I'm a journalist and one of the editors of tech crunch based out of London Tech crunch covers startups Venture Capital big Tech and everything in between and um uh it's my pleasure to uh do a run a panel now on Con now if you weren't here um if you weren't here um earlier we ran a panel on Quantum and the um Technologies uh behind Quantum which I think was probably one of the best panels I've ever heard not just cuz I
(00:47) was running it but um uh but I think it was really fascinating and I do enjoy and I'm sure you all do as well join getting into the guts of the these Technologies because we can talk about business to the cows come home but now we are going to talk about business till the cows come home um and the and I think you know um not to sound like a broken record but the um we we saw Quantum Computing emerge over the last few years and much of it seemed to be coming out of University labs and now it's getting very very business um the
(01:20) business potential of it is becoming very very real and uh and just so just a recap um uh we're going to assume that you didn't hear the earlier panel um and um but as as I said you hearing different sorts of things now certainly on the business side so if you if you could just raise your hand when I say your name and so everyone knows you're in the room so Steve Suarez Horizon X Consulting formerly of HSBC Innovation to my right William D Oliver or will shall we say who's Massachusetts Institute of Technology um and Daniela
(01:55) Herman joins us again from DX uh doing Quantum as a service and uh a new addition to our panel is capil diman who uh who is from now I I nearly said this wrong earlier but now I know how to say it so I'm going to say uranium as in uranium with a Q so there you are thank you so much for joining us capil and now we also have joining us uh Robert Marino uh from Cubit Pharmaceuticals and Cubit uh sorry Pharmaceuticals and well I mean one of the things that really very fascinating about and I learned something earlier
(02:33) which was this idea that um uh Quantum is very relevant in Material Science and optimization and simulation um so a round of applause for our panel everybody um now I this is going to be fairly free flowing um I don't have a huge agenda because uh but I will just give you some I'll just kick off with some food from thought now I mentioned um earlier but I'll just reiterate that there's been effectively a sort of really interesting war of words going on um I think a lot of it's quite political as a journalist I often see um
(03:12) statements by CEOs um not necessarily to be about Technologies per se but rather political positionings and we saw at one um weirdly um rather negative statements from Nvidia from Jensen from Nvidia about Quantum uh a few weeks ago and then and all sorts of Hell broke loose and then he turned around and said well actually you know we love Quantum so we're going to talk about it in March and and then all the all the stocks sort of recovered another thing really interestingly was I saw that um where's he gone Mark
(03:50) Zuckerberg um Mark Zuckerberg he's an interesting man isn't he um cautioned he cautioned this is a technology guy caution that uses for computers with Quantum capabilities remain years away well I mean this is a man who invested something like $3 billion per quarter for two years in VR so I'm not sure I'm going to take what he Mark Zuckerberg says with a pinch of salt um yeah uh right so two pinches of salt thank you absolutely let that's correct um so so I think we do need a little bit of a kind of reset and a um what's the word
(04:38) reality check about Quantum and the business opportunity um and I'm going to go ladies first with Daniela um uh Danielle you're working on Quantum as a service and very much um uh looking at the startups in the space supporting very you you're very ecosystem oriented and you've been doing a lot of ecosystem work which I think fantastic because it's brilliant that people will actually get involved in that rather than just concentrating on their own companies are interested in the success of others do you want to kick us off on this
(05:07) discussion about business and Quantum yes so with Quantum as a service making it available to everyone at the end uh we still logically need to kind of translate how people can use it that's no question education is an important component that CS in is part of the ecosystem that you refer to as much as the accessibility uh we have an emulation that is uh a size of 1 million cubits that you can compute with and said and that helps like examples be it in the space of nature in the SP of climate protection you can do climate prediction
(05:43) models we are working for example with dyx moonshots on eight investments in the space for nature Society health and N uh and um and uh welcome um and we're and we are um currently um helping such pioneering companies to implement their Quantum strategies and alleviate their Technologies so for the business in general to the question I do think a with a certain responsibility we should get this available to everyone get enough education in the ecosystem make it easy accessible even create llms maybe on Quantum that help people kind
(06:22) of get inspired and make it as mainstream as possible because it's the next Mega cycle in Computing and it's for everyone right um and um so and obviously there's startups appearing in the space um Steve you're you're probably quite aware of that as well yeah no there's a lot of stuff everybody is getting into this space and I think looking at how you commercialize it is going to be important because if we can't make money on it nobody's going to pay attention if you can't get money you can't develop and keep bringing uh
(06:51) people into this space and every day like will mentioned earlier your error correction things are getting better and as things get better more opportunity comes it takes me back to the days of the internet um if you think about Amazon and what he started with in the internet and and and working through that he was building his business but the internet wasn't really there right and he didn't build the internet he's leveraging the internet and same thing with Quantum there's a Quantum industry there's Quantum Computing coming there's
(07:19) going to be a lot of really creative ideas creative companies that are going to develop out of this and so the next Google the next Amazon the next all these companies are going to come out we don't know the names or maybe we know some of the names and that's kind of why I'm excited on commercializing and talking with these guys on the panel uh will if I can turn to you um obviously I understand you're U launching a educational course with Steve um and so what made you guys come up with that did you feel that there wasn't enough
(07:50) knowledge about there about both the sort of the Technologies and the sort of business opportunities yeah so back in 2018 um we started the mitx pro Quantum courses uh because we knew that we're going to have to train people who are already in Industry uh who want to Pivot to Quantum so we can't give them a six-year PhD course in Quantum we have to give them a 4-week or a 16-week course in Quantum so we developed these four courses myself Ike Chang Peter Shaw and Aram Harrow uh from MIT um four weeks each they got some videos text
(08:25) units and um you know anyway so the point is is that these focus on the fundamentals and the Practical realities of quantum and this was to again pivot people who are not Quantum physicists uh become Quantum aware and able to contribute um because if we're going to make an industry we need a Workforce so then um Steve Took the course um liked it presumably and then um said uh hey you know Executives don't have four weeks Executives have maybe four hours if we're lucky so then we thought well why don't we make a
(08:55) fifth course uh which focuses on Executives so it boils it down even further and that that was the uh proy of these courses right I see now um we have have two examples of of companies operating this space perhaps if you would like to go first off with uh Cranium and tell us about what you're doing thank you Mike good afternoon everybody uh my name is capil uh CEO and co-founder of uranium uh we sit on the other side of the table when it comes to uh Quantum development and which is about the security uh securing uh the
(09:28) infrastructure from the threats of the strengths of quantum computer uh firm believer in the development of the quantum Computing as well as the applications of it uh so we are building a layer one blockchain using postquantum cryptography and the focus is to uh secure the decentralized world the crypto assets as well as the uh uh as the money that goes on the decentralized infrastructures so that's our Prime Focus and uh uh in terms of taking it further of why it becomes relevant uh Professor you spoke about the quantum uh
(09:58) uh course that you have built uh with Peter Shaw so uh and of course sh algorithm is the one which gave birth to uh all of it and which gave birth of course to the existence of uranium as well so short algorithm uh if run on a quantum computer can break the encryption that exists today and that secures all the blockchains and that's why the need of postquantum cryptography and using new algorithms to build any future uh infrastructures so that uh parallely as and when the developments of quantum computer progresses the
(10:32) applications using quantum computers progresses you also have the infrastructures which is secure against the same Computing stent and that's actually uh the future right the the developments of technology has to happen parall on both sides so uh yeah my fellow panelists uh they are building quantum computers the courses and the applications using it uh I'm on the other side who's building the postquantum uh security layer to prevent from what you build right I I I I'd love to hear a little bit more about that in a moment
(11:01) but um Robert if you want to tell us more about uh about what you're doing um hi everyone Cubit for yeah as the name says we are developing drugs using computational platform that platform is accelerated by high performance Computing so we are big users as of gpus and we also explore how quantum computer can help us in improving the design of Novel drugs that aim at complex Targets in the field of cancer and chronic immune disease um few few learnings on the way first I like what you said Steve just before in the panel before it's a
(11:35) marathon so you are not going if you hope to get quick results it's not going to be the case it will take time uh both the hardware is maturing as well as the software the algorithms we are discovering new algorithms every day um but it's it's it's very impressive to see how fast the industry evolves second one uh people often see Quantum as a standalone uh resource ources to compute we think that it will be hybrid so as when you buy the most expensive Hardware at Nvidia it's called the dgx you have eight gpus with a few hundred CPUs
(12:09) around and uh we think that's the way also uh Quantum will will reach the market you will have some part of your algorithms some part of very hard computation that will be run on the qpu but most of the computation will continue to run on gpus because they are fast available at scale etc etc so we think about how can we leverage both Computing and we have made a few examples on how we improve the design of drugs How We Do quantum chemistry computation we recently publish a paper also on Monte Carlo optimization so new
(12:40) theory on how we can have exponential acceleration with Monte Carlo so although our end products are are drugs that we out license to Pharma to do so and best leverage Quantum we need to have multidisciplinary team that go from very fundamental mathematics we have physicist that understand the hardware an application people that know what are the problems we need to solve with quantum computers amazing right well when we talk about business in especially in the technology world we usually talk about three fundamental
(13:10) things we need the technology of course uh we need talent uh so we need to know where the talent has come from where and how we're going to develop it who are the leadership in that Talent base uh the engineering capabilities the design whole marketing the whole works and we need need money we need Investments and actually I should have add a fourth um we need exits um eventually so um let's which one should we start with I think we've done we we've delved deeply into the technology in our first panel but we
(13:48) can do a little bit on that um uh there's clearly technology opportunity but let's combine it with technology and the uh investment side so I think maybe let's go with uh Daniela and Steve if you want to talk a little bit about where's the money going to come from from investment is it venture capital is it private Equity is it family offices is it uh strategic Investments by big companies M Mike the answer is yes so uh right now there's you can see a lot of governments coming in I think somebody brought in kind of governments
(14:21) and there's the public Alexander and earlier she mentioned the whole public versus private investment and so you're getting a lot of com uh governments that are very interested in the technology they see the opportunity but they also see the threats and so they're investing in this uh driving and they're obviously motivated by the potential for cryptography to be broken absolutely and defense capabilities and God knows what else well let me also say that it's it's not just Doom and Gloom I think um governments can also see The Economic
(14:52) Opportunity in the future right so of course there's a strong National Security aspect to this which is very important and governments need to keep track of that but they also see the potential for economic growth look we don't know yet but Quantum could be as important to the 21st century as classical Computing was to the 20 I think continues to be sorry to interrupt no no no no that's good and you know what the the good thing the reason I asked will because I think I asked will about eight months ago you need to come
(15:17) to Davos with me and because will is the guy that keeps me kind of I'm I'm the guy that wants to keep but Will's good so we want to be trusted partners and you're absolutely right we're not here to scare people so but you do need to look both on the opportunity and the threat side that motivates people to invest and so I use their motivation to invest so the people that are looking at the threat and the security side we look at it and we there are ways to protect on the opportunity side I know you brought up earlier about Banking and
(15:45) optimization so uh Alexander mentioned simulation and optimization in the optimization who in this room doesn't have an opportunity to optimize something well guess what Quantum Computing has the opportunity to help you and back to your point Robert is you're going to do it in combination and most of it will be on classical computers um and then you're just going to send those specific use cases uh to them so it within banking it's around collateral optimization pricing optimization and then working on Monte
(16:15) Carlo analysis so for value at risk um Daniel so investors yes so from an investment perspective um I so for for me at least Quantum is here right um that's clear I mean we're in the market we we are engaging in healthc care right now um we are helping with ocean Health projects by the way as well Etc so really really wanting to make it happen investors um we are talking to investors to also co-invest we did eight investments in our portfolio right now with DX moonshot and we are also partnering with VCS now
(16:50) that will very quickly take existing technology companies and make them Quantum ready so that they can actually leverage out of their situation into the next gen that can be AI enhancement that can be kind of we're working for example on a supply chain optimization tool in combination with weather predictions and these are all possibilities where you can suddenly play with the field right and that's um that's for the Investments I think it's going to come strongly from the private sector the governmental sector I appreciate but they're often
(17:21) slow and then they have a lot of discussions and conversations I think it's really coming a little bit out of the out of the Rebel corner and talk any hard numbers about those Investments I mean what sort of things are we talking about we talking early stage sort of preed seed series a what kind of numbers are we talking about you mean with which kind of category of investment categories and you know I mean give us throw out some ideas I mean you know typically on Tech runch we'll sort of sniff at a preer a series a seed or 5
(17:53) million or get so the interesting aspect we are seeing okay I I you need to ask me in a year time because I will have more experience to confirm what I'm saying but um what we are seeing is that a lot of companies that have actually worked years already on their things right we have one now asset in supply chain optimization where it's actually uh not an a early stage it's like a pre it's like a it's like a late stage serious it's it's a late stage seed stage um prior to serus a kind of okay late seed then yeah right okay where
(18:29) that's where I see a lot of opportunity I mean I can give a concrete example um you know I co-founded with some students Atlantic Quantum about 3 years ago the seed round was $11 million we got 10 million in um non-dilutive Government funding you know both sides are important you know private private Capital as well as public um we're starting our a now and we're targeting a raise of about $50 million yeah and that's going to be an A or that's an a round and and it may sound a little high for an a round uh we're actually trying
(18:58) to keep it as low as possible but Quantum is hardware and Hardware is hard and it has Capital expenditures which are high and that's why that number is 50 not say so for the investors in the room There's an opportunity all right right um what about um uh C uranium um uh what's your been your fundraising journey and where do you think the investors are in this space so for us it has been uh a little opposite right so we started in January last year and uh what we are trying to build uh like we said is a quantum secure infrastructure
(19:30) right so the first question when we sit in a room with an investor would be is quantum even here why should we invest in a Quantum secure infrastructure so that's how the conversation started initially so uh we have seen that entire Journey now coming around and uh by end of last year there have been a heavy push towards oh Quantum is already here and now we want to talk to you because we have been building for a year our technology is ready we are launching our main in next two weeks so uh the kind of investment Journey that we saw we raised
(19:54) a seed round early last year uh which came from hn uh and and uh because they are like these individuals who have seen the journey who believe in the future they take the bet uh and now we are uh raising our series a which is going to be a substantial round uh we are discussing with family officers and VCS uh we have our friends retto and Barbara in the room uh who are helping us uh put together some tier one investors next week in Geneva so the conversations have really matured over the last 365 days and uh I really uh find it optimistic of
(20:27) course the journey initially has been a lot of of hustle and that's what the entrepreneur life is but it allows you the opportunity to also see where the curve bends and what actually matters so the you know the people on this panel they have seen the journey towards building a quantum computer and its application since years now right so when we discuss with them that okay what we are building uh can also have uh a threat to the current encryption they immediately get it but that's a that's a con that has been a concentrated section
(20:56) of academics uh and Industry lead leaders in one part of the world in the last two months two or 3 months I'm seeing it going really Global so for Uranium as well we are now present in more than 12 countries uh with our legal presence in more than three countries so it's it's going fairly well uh and the ecosystem is now really taking a much aggressive turn and um have you gone public yet on uh what stage you at how much you've raised who from so uh we raised uh we not gone public with it yet uh and that is because of my personal
(21:26) philosophy that I don't like to celebrate fundraise um uh I see it as a big PR uh that okay we ra so much I think what should be celebrated is Milestones of what is done with that money uh so we have raised fairly well we are doing good we are 120 people company uh and now we are raising a much larger amount it's we are going to double up in strength this year and we're going globally with our road shows uh but what we celebrate uh in the media is what we have delivered with that money so our technolog is ready we are
(21:52) building a huge brand uh around creating un crackability uh that's what we focus on and I think CU Pharmaceuticals tell us about your uh Journey so far in terms of the you know the the investment side we've been funded in uh 2021 so started uh with a preed round we raised our seed round in 2022 in the summer was 16 million EUR then we leverage the European non-dilutive funding ecosystem as we invest lot into Quantum was about the same amount bit more and uh and now we are raising the series a similar we we all know that that will be the the
(22:30) ballpark we don't build Hardware but we discover drugs and uh you need to invest into wet lab facilities not internally but externally that's why the numbers are are yeah certainly sort of pharmer space biotech is you start to get into big numbers uh bigger numbers certainly they're better more bigger than Enterprise SAS or whatever um that you know we all need another accounting package don't we um what um so that I mean that's really interesting so um so the investment angle then we've got and then I think also I think the
(23:03) interesting thing is you mentioned governments earlier is like the Strategic aspect to this so um Pharmaceuticals you've got weather predictions Supply chains there's really a big opportunity here in for strategic investors isn't there there must be um all sorts of interesting things going on at that level maybe some personal story I mean personal at the at the largest space uh during covid and France has a long history of pH pharmaceutical research uh discovered quite a lot of drugs and we were the only the only country
(23:38) pasturization I think was useful depend how you prefer your cheese but um but um no drug came from the French research nor from the French Farmers for covid I think that was a a major issue because I mean we have a lot of capabilities we have a lot of strength now we see that we don't even uh we can't even afford to continue um producing the drugs in France and it's a more it's a larger issue at the European level Quantum will have a major impact on on discovering and generating novel IP for drug Discovery so if we leave it
(24:13) to other regions of the world to gain that uh that Competitive Edge and we know that for sure we will completely Depend and Healthcare um access to food access to energy these are the key elements for a European perspective that government needs to keep of course with defense yeah and you mentioned that the the supply chain um aspect to this and Quantum obviously optimization and and dig digital twinning aspect to be able to weather prediction I mean I mean and of course with climate uh change uh uh I mean I call it the climate crisis
(24:51) but I'm not sure if I'm out of fashion now um but or certainly Global weirding I think we we gradually settled on at some point um the prediction aspect of this is huge isn't it I mean I I wrote a story the other day about a company that was um trying to basically create much more sort of resilient Supply chains based on organic farming uh because the traditional farming methods with tons of chemicals and stuff was actually basically starting to fail and the crops were just not coming out of the ground so there a lot of people going back to
(25:25) organic farming in order to be able to produce resilient CL climate change resilient farming so and that's based on weather obviously so um there must be huge opportunities here no the the the opportunities are gigantic and especially from a investment perspective I mean I'm a bit of polymath and come from the investment space anyways and I can just say on The Late seed swap serus a level you have very interesting opportunities now because they've done already a lot of work and you can tab into it with Quantum right if you take
(25:57) for example supply chain optim ization with regards to um switching quickly into other Supply chains if possible if the weather isn't playing right for certain you know kind of companies I mean the computation of that is super complex but it is at the end possible now because we have the possibilities with the emulation to create to solve real world problems at scale so that's what we're doing you have that also we're building an earth monitor which will be the monitor for regeneration which is with Mark Buckley and we're
(26:29) doing that with the Alois Foundation to help them actually create a monitor to tab into the billions of dollars that are de deployed to Regeneration but only if you prove regeneration so you have to somehow simulate what you can do with it and we're in the process of doing that so these are real world will yeah sure um you know there there's a lot of Hope for Quantum Computing and algorithms and what are we going to be able to do with this and you know the honest answer is we don't exactly know everything that's going to be possible
(27:01) what we do know is simulation that's solid when we can build a large quantum computer we will be able to simulate uh things such as pharmaceutical drugs Etc um optimization I think there's a play there and many of the other applications too um but the there is this of course National Security aspect but I think the economic security of the future is far more important you know what is going to be the tax base of your country in 50 or 75 years I you know we talked about it in the previous session if I can bring
(27:28) it up again you know Jensen's pronouncement of 15 to 20 or 25 years or Mark Zuckerberg saying hey you know it's still years off I don't take that as a negative I get I really take it as a positive because 10 years ago these guys would be saying yeah Quantum computer's never going to happen and now it's 15 to 25 years away I think that that's actually good I think it's actually quite accurate these guys are technologists they know I agree with him you know the fact is you go back to the 1950s and you ask people what are we
(27:56) going to do with classical computers even wats at IBM was saying yeah I can only foresee really a business for maybe 10 or 15 of these totally wrong right but it didn't happen in five years you know I often ask people when did we have the first Quantum or first classical computer right I don't know the answer right because it evolved over time and the same thing's going to happen with Quantum but the people who are making classical computers today and making a lot of money off it they didn't start doing that three years ago they've been
(28:24) in it for decades right the opportunity is there which one of us doesn't wish we had invested in a classical computer in the 1950s just think about how much money you would have made yes I know it's like people bought Apple stock in the 80s and '90s right um um go ahead yeah going back to Nvidia 10 years ago I think the stock was mean the company was worth about 10 billion so it took indeed uh these 10 10 years to go to trillion because they found a use case that goes almost everywhere and I think that's how
(28:52) we should uh take the that sentence it's you will find a use case well there will be Quantum everywhere in about something there's a pretty immediate business case isn't there in being able to project um uh things like uh crypto basically isn't there so if I mean certainly I don't think we'd all want our Bitcoin hacked immediately would we so U tell us about that so uh the way we look at it is uh Mike uh what is a quantum computer very simply put it is massive computational strength and what can we do with that massive
(29:26) computational strength is what we are discussing about here the possibilities of that that are yet being defined we have identified some use cases of what we can do with that massive computational strength whether it is in the health care space Automotive space Financial Services sector that is going to keep redefining itself but one thing uh which is established is that this massive computational strength that is going to become a threat for the current encryptions why because all the current encryptions are a complex calculation
(29:55) that the current computers are not designed to solve they don't have enough computation tend to do our entire digital economy is based on these encryptions whether it is the blockchain industry or the non-blockchain traditional industry they are secured by these encryptions which are nothing but a super complex calculation that our classical computers don't have enough strength to solve when quantum computers come into picture and I always say it's not just about quantum computers quantum computers are the peak of it even today
(30:24) with Nvidia we talking about uh Nvidia a lot what do they produce G gpus what do gpus do in AI for processing massive amount of data why are gpus used because they help in processing massive data which is solving massive calculation problems again very simplifying it right so even with the advancements in the computation strengths today with gpus today and with quantum computers tomorrow the existing encryptions are becoming weaker and weaker every day and that is of massive importance because everything we do digitally everything is
(30:55) based on that right so that is the biggest the first and the foremost application I see uh in the quantum age and even while we if if somebody say we are preparing for the quantum age to secure our digital infrastructure because only then anything else we do is going to be secure it's like you're building a big Palace but the foundation is super weak so what are we going to do with that pal some someday is going to fall down right yeah well we will have to think about these Basics don't we now um we're going to have some time for Q&A
(31:23) very shortly so please make some mental notes about any thoughts you would like to raise points or questions um uh we'll have a few minutes for that but uh just to sort of um sort of we talked a bit about the investment and how much is going into the space um into also into sort of various companies um the kinds of obviously the the considerations that some of the companies are going to require significant funding especially given the hardware is involved um and and in fact and we also talked about how some Quantum Computing stocks
(31:57) you know had had some ructions uh Associated stocks had some ructions with various sort of public statements by various CEOs recently uh so there's clearly you know there's clearly a sort of stock market aspect to this are we going to see um is it too early to talk about things like m&a or um or rolling up companies or uh I mean I mean how early up where are we in the kind of cycle um you know have we are we reaching going up to W the hype cycle or we going down or are we going uh into a space where uh people are going to go
(32:35) you know what you're doing the similar thing to me let's wrap up let's roll up together and do you know join forces what's going on tell U um I'd like to hear from um Daniel first if I could it first yeah well so first of all I think Nvidia will not be the only one I mean we do have also huge pressure coming from Asia and the countries that are being um in formed or that are being kind of approached are also towards Africa India Etc where these uh companies will flourish there are huge Partnerships currently already being
(33:10) built uh in bringing other countries in in so other countries into the same position right so there's a lot happening um it's you know we have this kind of thing political stuff that is in my view big question mark why this is necessary but but at the end of the day I do think we will have more competitors coming into the space and they will very quickly attach to it whoever is at the Forefront so you will be if you're in Quantum uh and you're doing this what you're doing for example they will approach very quickly because they need
(33:44) to be faster they need to be more Dynamic logically to create the position they have to be in so we're having now a lot of moving parts and I do also think from the hardware perspective there will be hybrids coming up hybrid interest so I think there will be a lot of movement in the next 24 months actually right Robert you had you had a point and and it started already we saw already some consolidation especially Hardware companies buying uh some small software company for applications because if you only propose an Hardware me it's very
(34:16) hard for clients to use them so and also um Hardware companies buying Network companies quantum network such as Q who did the an acquisition very so it's starting and I think it will only accelerate add to this uh our first startup which was called labber was acquired in 2019 by kyite um our current startup as I mentioned we're raising an A but the um the issue is that it's so expensive right and you know we're competing against let's say the Googles and the Amazon and the ibms with very very deep pockets and so yeah it's
(34:47) possible for a startup company to really you know change change the discussion and and and go for it and and we hope that some of them succeed but I would say the majority of these companies um will attack a specific problem one that these large companies either don't have time or the bandwidth to address you solve a key problem and they're going to acquire you I think that that's that's going to be the norm going forward that's but that that's uh raises an interesting question you mentioned Google Etc Steve do you think that uh
(35:17) investors should be buying you know investing in series a of quantum companies or just buying Google stock I I I guess it depends on your risk appetite I think like you should be mixing between both um and understanding the landscape I I personally actually am doing both uh both an investor there and then looking at the the players I mentioned earlier who I think is winning but not only on the hardware side on the software side on the integration side I think the nearest term application in this whole area is the security part I
(35:48) agree and I think with governments putting out executive orders like the White House put out an executive order that if you want to sell to the White House you have to be pqc compliant by by a certain time and if you want to sell to somebody who sells to the White House you have to be compliant and so I think these are the areas that right now if I'm looking for right now Investments it's really in the pqc area and how are you going to protect people in looking uh on the security side that's what's got people interested right now and and
(36:17) that's the side so I think what you're working on is fantastic um you know we were looking at it and a lot of people when I'm on panels talk to me to say hey Steve what does this mean to my blockchain and and and I told them I'm wor less worried about your blockchain and more worried about your wallet holding the money yes absolutely yeah I like I like the I like the be uncrackable thing that's quite a clever idea Dan briefly yeah very briefly I do think uh I'm very motivated that I think the today's centralistic G gigantic
(36:45) companies will not exist in that format anymore in the next 5 years I think we're going to have other people come up to it and kind of also from other countries I think there will be a little bit of Swap and that the industry has seen that always so I wouldn't go straightforward into what you know are the you know normal lists that you could think are staying like in the centralistic function because I do think there will be a lot of change great well ladies and gentlemen we're going to do some Q&A but let's have a little round
(37:13) of applause for our panel first of all um we have a microphone if you have any questions or points you'd like to raise sir go ahead we we go ahead Jeremy mcain ocean AI um you know on the Quant Quantum uh as a service I'm I'm really curious I mean obviously my head is always in climate change and oceans but you know we've developed some Quantum applications as well and it's very difficult when you're talking about scaling up accurate models that can uh simulate uh nature-based Solutions and so being the fact that you mentioned
(37:46) that you're working with Mark and and some of those observation things I would like to hear more about the specific challenges that you're coming across that we still need to address the challenges are just the bring the team together and making it really such kind of initiatives really flourish but we're also working on Ocean Health with regards to um thinking around simulations real time simulations of coral reef growing um of also flood walls building natural flood walls and Computing actually the different layers
(38:14) of when is seagrass relevant when is when is Stones relevant Etc these are very complex computations but with what we have as a Quantum as a service right now with that together with our you know um d moonshots we make these initiatives happen from our side our Quantum Architects engage literally and try to translate what the people have as technology and we teach constantly the people in a 30-day program online how to convert and make them Quantum ready so that's how we do it so we do the challenge is more getting everybody up
(38:47) to speed but the computation is there great and we have another question up the front here hello Joan from Danish technological Institute a pleasure to be here and thanks for a lot of insights um DTI is an RTO research technology organizations there are 350 of them I inan the board of that we crack problems for companies for for example becoming more sustainable or the next material or sourcing things that you don't have access to there's a complexity of making problems meet the right solvers Quantum to roll out its full potential
(39:28) has to somehow make these complex and very costy resources meet the problems 95% of the ecosystem of companies in Europe is below five employees they don't have it departments so we have some kind of distributed pilots who Crunch and say this is going to be standard um Computing this is going to be GPU with AI this is going to be maybe Quantum this is going to be so there is some kind of distribution the topology of solving and and and harnessing problems it looks a little bit like electricity and water in the
(40:05) past you know so do you have any thoughts on how to get there because times are of rising uncertainty trust is an issue how to get problems to the right solvers as fast as possible and access to resources which also risk to made a divide so so the the I think the question is is um is it is is what solving problems or uh I think I think it's the match of um there's matching the problem with the solvers and I think I mean it's very simple in Europe it will not happen totally because we are not we're we're aging and you have to
(40:45) really get up to speed countries with a lot of young people and you have to educate them so matching the problem is with educational system like also Steve is promoting for the MIT that is what we need to make them match the problem and the more people have the knowledge the better it becomes yeah I think with any emerging technology a lot of people like to lead with the technology and the reality is what we need to do is look at your strategy and say what can Quantum do for your strategy instead of the other way around because doing it the
(41:18) other way around doesn't really work and right now there's not many but there are some things that Quantum can help is focusing on that being disciplined and that's where you can have impact and there's right there's a question at the back I have a question for capil capil do you think that you are a little bit ahead of the game with the quantum computers taking 10 years to catch up with you um uh I I wouldn't say ahead of the game but I would say uh right on time if I may uh because uh I always say that you don't hire a security guard after a
(41:54) theft has happened you hire a security guard before a theft or to protect any theft from happening right so uh the moment we start uh seeing the progress towards uh the quantum age that is exactly the time ideally uh that the security uh protocols around it should be starting to get built uh so I think that's what we are trying to do and uh we are glad that we are getting uh the right amount of support and the ecosystem is now moving in that direction as well if I could just add one thing to that um another aspect to
(42:23) this is forward security so there's a lot of information that we all securing right now that's being vacuumed up stored on hard drives we can't read it right now but in 10 or 15 or 20 years when we do have a quantum computer we'll be able to break it and so it's a risk benefit analysis for all of us do we want do we think we'll have a quantum computer in 5 years I don't think so not not at a short capable scale 10 years maybe if we're lucky Jensen now 15 20 years yeah it's starting to look more likely and we need to be changing over
(42:55) to these new postquantum crypto schemes right now because we all have information that we want to retain security over 20 even 50 years in the future yeah 20 years is not really that long is it you think about it um we had should be on the board good good suggestion sounds great I you know the theme is the business opportunity and all they're all going to be doing business with each other any minute now we have another question there yeah hi uh Steve the question about your uh Quantum index is it investable index can you tell us a
(43:34) little bit more about it um yeah no the index is not investable right now but we just kicked it off so we're looking on sponsorship investment and other things right now what we want to do is show how well the industry is doing so if you're in the industry and you're doing well in Quantum you're using patents your team size your Investments all of that we're trying to be uh fair and subjective objective to all the companies and we want to show the industry what they're doing now you get to see how well your competitors are
(44:04) doing when I was at a big Bank you guys me heard what bank I was anytime somebody mentioned another bank so uh a City Bank or other bank was doing then they were like oh well the city bank's doing we got to do it so part of it is what are your competitors doing and we're giving them insight into that um and that's um it's sort of kind of like a media play slightly because I'm going to put a SP on it you think you'll develop it into like a database like crunch base or something we we already have the kind of if you want
(44:34) deeper insights we're only giving you the height if you want deeper insights absolutely that's the intention and remember I'm a consulting company so if you want to move up the ranking and you want help doing that um that's what I do for a living there you go bit of an advert um now uh any other opportunities for final questions do you mind if I add one more thing to previous one and then yeah we'll do that question um another aspect to this postquantum crypto that is important is it's not just software software is easy to change right and
(45:03) then we could just switch tomorrow into this new postquantum crypto scheme the problem is there's a lot of Hardware that's embedded into these systems in particular for defense systems where you didn't want to trust the S trust the software so it's Hardware now now we have to change all of that Hardware in a way that's retroactive to things that are compatible say years ago that's going to take time it's going to take a lot of money and that's also why we need to start right now because it may take us 10 years to switch over to
(45:30) postquantum crypto the software is easy the hardware is hard we have I think we're going to have two short questions left I think there was one there thank you hey it's w from Cranium it's great panel right we we heard a lot about the private sector I just want to take some thoughts and comments from the panel on public sector or government initiatives right uh what what can they potentially explore to really help Drive adoption in a in the compon space sure short answers will have got any thoughts uh yeah sure
(46:00) um just full disclosure I work on the national Quantum initiative advisory committee I just got a new boss yesterday um and the point I think for governments really is to support the entire ecosystem and that includes um Academia National Labs um and don't forget industry that's also very important finding ways to make these groups interact and work together is always a challenge but um if there's anyone who can make an um make it happen I think that governments can facilitate it that's that's a very important role
(46:31) it will help us when these Quantum Winters come and surely they shall but if it's a winter in Hawaii we don't mind so much so let's let's the government smth things out for us I don't think there's a certainly let's say developed country government that isn't looking at Quantum right now um and I'm not going but I'm not going to get into the race between European Quantum companies and us once a whole different ball game we have one final one here thank you um if you were on the board of a retail bank what would you recommend to do around
(47:03) Quantum um number one uh have a strategy so ignoring it so educate your board so focus on your board educate them let them know what's going on work with the sea level to build a strategy and understand where you're going to build both on the on the defense side and then on the opportunity side and then start giving your team muscle memory to start working on those algorithms to help do that on the optimization but you don't have to start expensive you can start small educate and then start getting that muscle memory on on the team well
(47:38) one thing I've been very excited to hear out of the couple of panels I've been running today about Quantum unlike when I run a panel about artificial intelligence is that journalists still have a job which is uh great for me um I'm not about to be replaced by Quantum Computing any time yet um but ladies and gentlemen it's been a fascinating morning talking about Quantum we've had brilliant panels fantastic talented and expert panelists so please um Steve Suarez from Horizon X William Will Oliver from MIT Daniela
(48:14) Herman from DX capil Dean from uranium and Robert Marino from Cubit Pharmaceuticals and for me Mike Butcher from Tech run thank you very much and Round of Applause for our panel thank you thank you Mike the butcher