Peter Sarlin’s QuTwo reaches $380M valuation in angel round

QuTwothe Finnish AI 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. It’s a sign of continued tailwinds for AI, quantum computing and sovereign technology, especially for European-made companies.

The name QuTwo is a nod to quantum computing, but is not all-in on quantum. The core product, QuTwo OS, is an orchestration layer that pushes tasks to classical, quantum or hybrid architectures – with the idea that business use cases are often best served by ‘quantum-inspired’ computing, where classical chips are used to simulate quantum behavior on more reliable hardware.

Enterprise AI will be QuTwo’s bread and butter. The company has already raked in about $23 million in committed revenue through design partnerships with the likes of retail giant Zalando, for which it has helped develop AI assistants. “AI is the North Star we will continue to strive for. Quantum is just a new type of computer,” says Sarlin, who firmly believes QuTwo is an AI company.

There is momentum around Europe-based AI labs, with several of them becoming unicorns overnight. Just last week, former DeepMind researcher David Silver secured $1.1 billion for his new venture, Ineffable Intelligence. QuTwo’s valuation and round size are somewhat modest in comparison, but allow the company to continue its roadmap under less pressure.

According to Sarlin, executive chairman of QuTwo, this was a decision he also made for his previous company, Silo AI, which Acquired AMD for $665 million in 2024. “I had a lot of investors who would have wanted to put a lot of money into making Silo in the European OpenAI, but I didn’t believe in that game,” he told TechCrunch.

The main difference is that QuTwo wants the freedom to think long term, with a horizon of five to ten years. “We are on a mission to build the world’s leading AI company for the next paradigm, as Europe has failed to build the AI ​​company for this era,” said Sarlin.

It’s not that Sarlin is bearish on European AI, of which he is a strong supporter. Nor is he necessarily critical of extra-grand tours; he reported that he is also an investor in Yann LeCun’s Ami Labs, which raised $1.03 billion, and in British-American company Recursive Superintelligence, which raised $1.03 billion. Rumor has it that they are following the same path. But he didn’t see a multibillion-dollar round as the right choice for QuTwo — nor for venture capital money, at least for now.

Until recently, QuTwo was funded exclusively through Sarlin’s family office, PostScriptumwho also brooded NestAIthe other company where he is executive chairman. But while NestAI raised about $115 million in a funding round led by Finland’s sovereign wealth fund and Nokia, QuTwo wasn’t looking for outside funding.

However, when the lab’s soft launch earlier this year generated significant interest, Sarlin decided he would say no to checks from VCs and strategic investors, but yes to an angel round, in part because of the geopolitical moment Europe is currently in.

With Europe increasingly favoring local alternatives to US technology suppliers, there are tailwinds for AI made in Finland. But there is also investor interest in a company that promises to facilitate more ambitious R&D initiatives in areas where the region already has strong players, such as the automotive, life sciences and gaming sectors.

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

This will also support QuTwo’s growth. It recently expanded to Sweden and has been hiring. According to Sarlin, around fifty quantum and AI scientists have joined the team, including two other secondary entrepreneurs: his former co-founder at Silo, Kaj-Mikael Björk; and Kuan Yen Tan, co-founder of IQM, the Finnish quantum company going public.

QuTwo’s connection with IQM is also a reminder that the company believes we are about to enter the quantum age – it just can’t wait. “The question for returning founders like [us] is how we can have an even greater impact. In the long term, it is important for Europe that we build the AI ​​business for the next paradigm outside Europe. But in the short term, we can have a significant impact in driving ambitious R&D moonshots in Europe,” said Sarlin.