00:00Herbert, good morning. Thank you for your time. Talk to us about the importance of this quantum fund.
00:04What is the rationale behind it? Why now? Why commit so much capital to quantum computing?
00:12Thanks and good morning, Tom. So, first of all, I don't think it's so much capital.
00:17While it is the largest quantum technologies focused fund in the world,
00:21if you look into the market caps of the big firms and what's going on in the sector
00:25and how it has been accelerating over the past few years, this is still probably too little.
00:31But it's a very good start and it's a very great team.
00:34And it's also very important that this fund is anchored in Europe and has also a European mandate,
00:40can invest globally. And Europe in particular is the continent and the place on this planet
00:45where a lot of the innovation that has been turned into products actually comes from startup companies,
00:51which is different from what we see in the U.S., for instance, but also in Asia,
00:58where innovation comes from large tech companies.
01:01Okay, interesting. So, Herbert, just on that point around funding,
01:04how big is the funding gap that remains then?
01:08Well, in the end, it really depends about how you look at the industry, right?
01:12And you want to support this industry. And venture capital is good for times
01:16where there's uncertainty and large industrial firms not investing.
01:20And while you see in the U.S., companies like Microsoft or Google or IBM,
01:25they have massive programs, right? So, they do invest a lot of money.
01:29Here in Europe, this is not the case. So, our companies in Semicon or Brody in computing do not invest.
01:35So, I was saying, I think this fund still is too little. We need gross capital, that's clear.
01:40But if you look into the venture market and you come from the bottom to the top,
01:44you see that there is a lot of seed capital, pre-seed capital available in Europe.
01:49And there is the first gap that we need to start closing in Series A, Series B.
01:54So, at the point where you turn technology into products and bring them into markets.
01:58And this is exactly the role of this quantum fund.
02:01Well, and on that point then, Herbert, when do we get – because we get the research stage.
02:05We're seeing quantum initiatives, at least quantum computing, being applied in some areas.
02:10And HSBC most recently coming through with some success there.
02:14When do we see it, though, applied at scale and have a material impact on business outcomes?
02:21When is that – in terms of the timeframe, what is the proposition?
02:23Well, I think those points in time, they differ, right?
02:28People say it's within the next two or three years.
02:31Some say it's five years.
02:33But the common sense is that we don't – you know, this is an engineering roadmap.
02:37So, we know what we can do, what these systems today can achieve, and there are roadmaps.
02:43And we already see that in certain cases, quantum computers are better in the results they can produce
02:48than classical computing in terms of precision, how you, for instance, simulate molecules.
02:54The other thing that you also see, big firms in the financial industry, for instance, but also elsewhere,
03:00they come with ever-new algorithms and innovation, which is not classical in the sense of digital computing,
03:06but really quantum-native.
03:08And from top down, you lower the barrier to where you get really quantum advantage, right?
03:15So, technology is emerging and getting better.
03:18So, bottom-up, you're getting much better.
03:20And the gap is closing very rapidly from bottom-up and also from the top-high,
03:25coming to better algorithms very, very fast.
03:29And two companies that you've invested in already, at least the fund has invested in,
03:34IQM, Series B, and Cayutra as well.
03:36So, you're investing in the quantum computing ecosystem.
03:40Just expand on that.
03:43Yes.
03:43So, that's a very important topic.
03:46Also, the team, how it's set up.
03:47It's really experts from the quantum industry.
03:49And what we see, in particular in Europe, in the quantum industry, is that you have platforms, compute platforms like IQM, which are end-to-end.
03:59But when you look into the engineering roadmaps in order to create much, much better systems, there are bottlenecks.
04:07And one task of the fund is really to get into these bottlenecks in value chains and look at the product companies and innovation that's coming from startups and solve these bottlenecks, right?
04:20In order to accelerate the path to real, meaningful quantum advantage systems much, much faster than if just one company in itself needs to do that.
04:29And that's not one single truth, of course.
04:31There's also experimentation.
04:32And there are different approaches to different problems.
04:34And that's what the quantum computing or technologies fund is trying to facilitate, right, to enable the whole ecosystem and pass the progress overall.
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