Fresh off a $665 million exit to AMD, serial entrepreneur Peter Sarlin isn't waiting for quantum computing to mature before solving its enterprise adoption problem. His new venture QuTwo is building the infrastructure layer that companies will need when quantum finally arrives at scale, betting that enterprises who start preparing now will dominate when the technology reaches commercial viability. It's a classic pick-and-shovels play in an emerging market that analysts predict will hit $125 billion by 2030.
QuTwo just emerged from stealth with a counterintuitive pitch: get enterprises running on quantum computing infrastructure before quantum computers are actually ready for prime time. Founder Peter Sarlin, who pocketed $665 million when AMD acquired his AI startup last year, is banking on companies wanting to future-proof their systems now rather than scramble when quantum breaks into the mainstream.
The timing looks deliberate. While quantum computing remains largely experimental, major players like IBM, Google, and Microsoft are pouring billions into hardware development. But there's a glaring gap in the stack - the middleware and tooling that enterprises will need to actually integrate quantum processing into existing workflows. That's where QuTwo comes in.
"We saw this pattern in AI," Sarlin told TechCrunch in an interview. "The companies that built infrastructure early captured disproportionate value." His previous venture focused on enterprise AI deployment before selling to AMD in what became one of Finland's largest tech exits. Now he's applying the same playbook to quantum.
The approach mirrors what happened during the cloud migration wave of the 2010s. Companies like HashiCorp and Docker built infrastructure tooling years before cloud became table stakes, then rode the adoption curve as enterprises raced to modernize. QuTwo is positioning itself as the HashiCorp of quantum computing - building the abstraction layers that will let companies write quantum-ready code without needing PhD-level physics expertise.
