Peter Sarlin’s QuTwo Achieves $380 Million Valuation in Angel Round

QuTwo, a Finnish AI research lab founded by former AMD Silo AI CEO Peter Sarlin, is now valued at €325 million (about $380 million) after raising a €25 million ($29 million) angel round. This is a sign of continued tailwinds for AI, quantum computing and sovereignty technologies, especially for European companies.

QuTwo’s name is a nod to quantum computing, but it hasn’t gone all-in on quantum. The core product, QuTwo OS, is an orchestration layer that directs operations to classic, quantum, or hybrid architectures. Enterprise use cases are based on the idea that “quantum-inspired” computing is best served by using classical chips to simulate quantum behavior on more reliable hardware.

Enterprise AI will be QuTwo’s bread and butter. The company has already secured approximately $23 million in committed revenue thanks to a design partnership with retail giant Zalando to help develop its AI assistant. “AI is the North Star we will continue to aim for. Quantum is just a new type of computing,” said Sarlin, who is adamant that QuTwo is an AI company.

Momentum has been built around European-based AI research labs, several of which have become unicorns overnight. Just last week, former DeepMind researcher David Silver secured $1.1 billion for his new endeavor, Ineffable Intelligence. QuTwo’s valuation and round size are somewhat smaller, but allow it to pursue a less burdensome roadmap.

According to Sarlin, who serves as QuTwo’s chairman, this was also the decision made for his previous company, Silo AI, which AMD acquired in 2024 for $665 million. “I had a lot of investors who wanted to pour a lot of money into making Silo the OpenAI of Europe, but I didn’t believe in that play,” he told TechCrunch.

The key difference is that QuTwo wants the freedom to think long-term, with a 5-10 year horizon. “Given that Europe has not been successful in building AI companies for this era, we are on a mission to build the world’s best AI companies for the next paradigm,” Sarlin said.

Sarlin is not pessimistic about European AI. He is a prolific supporter of European AI. He’s also not necessarily critical of extra-large rounds. He also volunteered to be an investor in Recursive Superintelligence, a British-American venture rumored to be following the same path as Yann LeCun’s Ami Labs, which raised $1.03 billion. But he doesn’t see a $1 billion round as a good fit for QuTwo or VC money, at least for now.

Until recently, QuTwo had only received funding through Sarlin’s family office, PostScriptum, which also incubated another company, NestAI, where he serves as chairman. But while NestAI raised about $115 million in a funding round led by Finland’s sovereign wealth fund and Nokia, QuTwo did not seek external funding.

But when the lab’s soft launch generated significant interest earlier this year, Sarlin decided to decline checks from VCs and strategic investors but agreed to an angel round, in part due to the geopolitical moment Europe is currently navigating.

There is a tailwind for Finnish-made AI as Europe increasingly prefers local alternatives to U.S. technology providers. But there is also investor appetite for companies that promise to foster more ambitious R&D initiatives in sectors where there are already strong players in the region, such as the automotive, life sciences and gaming sectors.

Conversely, Sarlin expects QuTwo’s angel investors could open doors across Europe. There are quite a few referrals he could ask for in this group, including Yuri Milner, Xavier Niel, Nico Rosberg, Dieter Schwarz and Niklas Zennström, as well as many startup founders like Hugging Space, Legora, Miro, Skype, Supercell, Wolt and many more.

This will also support QuTwo’s growth. Recently, we have expanded our business to Sweden and are recruiting. According to Sarlin, about 50 quantum and AI scientists have joined the team, including two other second-time entrepreneurs. Kaj-Mikael Björk, former co-founder of Silo; There is also Kuan Yen Tan, co-founder of IQM, a Finnish quantum company scheduled to be listed.

QuTwo’s connection to IQM also serves as a reminder that the company believes we will soon enter the quantum era. “The question for iterative entrepreneurs (like us) is how can we have a bigger impact? In the long term, it is important for Europe that we build AI companies for the next paradigm here. But in the short term, we can have a significant impact in driving ambitious R&D moonshots in Europe,” Sarlin said.