Peter Sarlin’s QuTwo raises $380M in angel round

QuTwo, the Finnish AI lab founded by former AMD Silo AI CEO Peter Sarlin, is now worth €325 million (about $380 million) after raising €25 million ($29 million) in angel funding. It is a sign of tolerance for the tailwinds of AI, quantum computing, and sovereign tech, especially for companies built in Europe.

QuTwo’s name is a nod to quantum computing, but it’s not completely quantum. Its main product, QuTwo OS, is an orchestration layer that guides operations on classical, quantum or hybrid architectures – with the idea that business use cases are often better served by “quantum-inspired” computing, which uses ancient chips to simulate quantum behavior on more reliable hardware.

Enterprise AI will be QuTwo’s bread and butter. The company has already received an estimated $23 million in funding thanks to a partnership design with the likes of retail giant Zalando, which is helping to develop AI assistants. “AI is the North Star that we will continue to aim for. Quantum is just a new type of computer,” said Sarlin, who maintains that QuTwo is an AI company.

Momentum has been building in Europe’s AI labs, and several of them have become unicorns overnight. Last week, former DeepMind researcher David Silver received $1.1 billion for his new venture, Ineffable Intelligence. The QuTwo’s dimensions and wheel size are relatively small but will allow it to follow its path under less pressure.

According to Sarlin, who serves as the executive chairman of QuTwo, this was the decision he made with his former company, Silo AI, which AMD acquired for $665 million in 2024. “I had a lot of investors who wanted to pour a lot of money into making Silo in Europe’s 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, which is five to ten years. “We are on a mission to build the world’s leading AI company for the next paradigm, as Europe has not succeeded in building an AI company at this time,” said Sarlin.

It’s not that Sarlin is bearish on European AI, of which he is a big supporter. And he’s not critical of the biggest rounds — he volunteered to be an investor in Yann LeCun’s Ami Labs, which raised $1.03 billion, and in the British-American venture Recursive Superintelligence, which is rumored to be following a similar path. But he didn’t see a billion-dollar round as a good fit for QuTwo — or VC money, at least not yet.

Until recently, QuTwo was solely funded by Sarlin’s family office, PostScriptum, which also included NestAI, another company in which he serves as executive chairman. But while NestAI raised $115 million in a funding round led by a Finnish private equity fund and Nokia, QuTwo was reluctant to raise external funding.

However, when the lab’s soft launch generated a lot of interest earlier this year, Sarlin decided no to checks from VCs and strategic investors, but yes to an angel round in part because of the country Europe is currently navigating.

As Europe continues to look to favor local alternatives to US technology providers, there are AI storms brewing in Finland. But there is also the desire of investors for a company that promises to stimulate the most ambitious R&D programs in sectors where the region already has strong players, such as the automotive industry, life sciences and sports.

Conversely, Sarlin expects that QuTwo’s angel investors can open doors throughout Europe. There are also several presentations to ask 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 the growth of QuTwo. It recently expanded to Sweden, and was hiring. According to Sarlin, about 50 quantum and AI scientists have joined the team, which also includes two other entrepreneurs: his former co-founder at Silo, Kaj-Mikael Björk; and Kuan Yen Tan, founder of IQM, a Finnish quantum company slated to go public.

QuTwo’s connection with IQM is also a reminder that the company believes we are about to enter the quantum era – it can’t wait. “The question of founders who repeat likes [us] how we can have an even greater impact. In the long term, it is important for Europe that we build the next paradigm AI company out of Europe. But, in the short term, we can have a big impact on driving R&D moonshots in Europe,” said Sarlin.