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

QuTwoThe Finnish AI lab founded by the former director of AMD Silo AI Peter Sarlin, now has a value of € 325 million (about $ 380 million) after raising an angel of € 25 million ($ 29 million). It is a symbol of the endurance of AI, quantum computing, and technological innovation, especially for European-based companies.

QuTwo’s name is aimed at quantum computing, but it has never gone quantum. Its main product, QuTwo OS, is a call group that leads the work to old architectures, more or more hybrid – with the idea that business applications are often supported by “quantum-inspired” computing, which uses small chips to simulate quantum behavior on highly reliable devices.

Enterprise AI will be QuTwo’s bread and butter. The company has already raised $23 million thanks to a partnership with Zalando, which helped develop AI assistants. “AI is the North Star we’ll keep waiting for. Quantum is a new kind of computing,” said Sarlin, who argues that QuTwo is an AI company.

Momentum has been building AI labs based in Europe, and several of them have become overnight unicorns. Last week, former DeepMind researcher David Silver raised $1.1 billion for his new venture, Ineffable Intelligence. The QuTwo’s specs and overall size are relatively small, but it makes up for the road with ease.

According to Sarlin, who is the executive chairman of QuTwo, this was a decision he made at his former company, Silo AI, itself. AMD bought it for $665 million in 2024. “I had a lot of investors who would have wanted to pour a lot of money to make Silo for European OpenAI, but I didn’t believe in the game,” he told TechCrunch.

The main difference is that QuTwo wants the freedom to think long term, with five to ten years. “We are on a mission to build a world-leading AI company to create the next generation image, because Europe has not succeeded in building an AI company at this time,” said Sarlin.

Sarlin is not only a fan of European AI, he is also a great supporter. And it’s not that he’s against big circles – he’s admitted that he’s also an investor. Yann LeCun’s Ami Labswho raised $1.03 billionand the British-American venture Recursive Superintelligence, which is they are rumored to be following the same path. But they didn’t see a billion-dollar round as worth it for QuTwo — or VC money, at least not yet.

Until recently, QuTwo was only supported by the Sarlin family office, Postscriptumwhich is also incubated Carryinganother company in which he works as the executive chairman. But NestAI earned $115 million in a group of funds led by the independent fund of Finland and Nokia, QuTwo did not want to get foreign capital.

However, when the soft launch of the lab caused a lot of attention earlier this year, Sarlin decided no to checks from VCs and smart investors, but yes to an angel round in part because of the time Europe is moving.

It’s more European looking to favor local alternatives over US technology providersthere are AI tailwinds developed in Finland. But there is also interest in funding for a company that promises to support greater R&D efforts in sectors where the region has strong players, such as the automotive, life sciences and sports sectors.

Conversely, Sarlin hopes that QuTwo’s angels can open doors throughout Europe. There are a number of startups to claim from this group, including Yuri Milner, Xavier Niel, Nico Rosberg, Dieter Schwarz and Niklas Zennström, as well as many startups from Hugging Space, Legora, Miro, Skype, Supercell, Wolt, and others.

This will also support the growth of QuTwo. It recently grew in Sweden, and has been working. According to Sarlin, some 50 quantum and AI scientists have joined the group, which includes two other entrepreneurs: the former co-founder of Silo, Kaj-Mikael Björk; and Kuan Yen Tan, co-founder at IQM, a Finnish quantum company which is set to be public.

QuTwo’s tie-up with IQM is yet another reminder that the company believes we’re about to enter the quantum era – it can’t wait. “The question for startups to repeat like (us) is how we can have a big impact. In the long run, it is important for Europe to build an AI company for the next paradigm from Europe. But, in the short term, we can have very impressive results by driving the moonshot of R & D in Europe,” said Sarlin.