Finnish AI lab QuTwo has closed a €25 million ($29 million) angel round at a post-money valuation of €325 million ($380 million). Founder and executive chairman Peter Sarlin previously sold his last startup, Silo AI, to AMD for $665 million in 2024. This time, he turned down multiple larger checks from VCs and strategic investors, opting to take only angel money.
QuTwo's core product, QuTwo OS, is a compute orchestration layer that decides whether to run a task on classical chips, quantum processors, or a hybrid of both. Sarlin believes the near-term sweet spot is quantum-inspired algorithms — simulating quantum behavior on classical hardware — rather than waiting for fault-tolerant quantum computers. The company already has around €20 million in contract revenue, with clients like retailer Zalando and OP Financial Group, Finland's largest financial services firm.
The angel investor list is stacked: DST Global founder Yuri Milner, French telecom magnate Xavier Niel, Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf, former F1 champion Nico Rosberg, plus founders from Supercell, Wolt, Miro, and Legora. The team numbers about 50. The other co-founders are Kaj-Mikael Björk, former head of research at Silo AI, and Kuan Yen Tan, co-founder of quantum computing company IQM.
Sarlin admits Europe didn't produce a leading AI company during the last paradigm shift from CPUs to GPUs. QuTwo is betting on the next shift — from GPUs to QPUs (quantum processing units). By keeping the round small and purely angel, he's buying five to ten years of R&D freedom.