Biting Tails
In an article a while back, 15 Expert Quantum Algorithms Specialists Working In Our Industry, I highlighted how important such people are in designing the algorithms that will fuel the quantum industry towards greater success, building on the groundwork already established by those hardware and full-stack enterprises.
Companies with reputations like 1QBit and ClassiQ are leaders here, with plenty more equal to the task or biting at their tails.
Quantagonia, a German startup founded last year in Bad Homburg, is leveraging “quantum algorithms on today’s computers while future-proofing development to take advantage of quantum computers without having to rewrite models”.
Co-Founders Dirk Zechiel, Sabina Jeschke, Sebastian Pokutta, and Philipp Hannemann — working across the fields of AI, Simulation, and optimization models — have come up with groundbreaking algorithms, both existing and in-development, that allow businesses to address complex problems that in the past could not be addressed algorithmically, and time-sensitive problems where current methods are slower than desired.
Quantagonia
Uniquely positioned to assist enterprises to take advantage of Quantum advances today, Quantagonia’s Quantum Virtual Platform — a hardware-agnostic approach that leverages the optimum mix of hardware — lets customers run a single model on both classical as well as quantum hardware (gate-based quantum computers as well as NISQ-devices/quantum annealing systems) and Quantagonia’s APIs
allow for seamless integration into your existing tech stacks, thereby accelerating adoption while minimizing integration risk. The performance improvements through Quantagonia’s approach can be directly compared to the results of your existing simulation environments
This holistic approach, which begins by getting to the bottom of each customer’s status quo, makes use of quantum technologies that produce instant benefits while, at the same time, assessing the company’s future.
The first of four co-founders, Dirk Zechiel is Quantagonia’s CEO. An expert in AI, optimization, simulation, and data analysis, he is a former Managing Director and Co-Founder of Gurobi GmbH, as well as the Co-Founder of Ligalytics, a sports scheduling solutions company.
With expertise in AI, data analytics, IoT, robotics, automation, and human-machine interaction, Professor Dr. Sabina Jeschke has more than a decade as a full professor at the TU Berlin, the University of Stuttgart, and the RWTH Aachen. She is a Former board member of Deutsche Bahn AG.
Professor Dr. Sebastian Pokutta is the Vice President of the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) and a Professor of Mathematics at TU Berlin with a research focus on Artificial Intelligence and Optimization.
Having received both his diploma and Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, Pokutta was a postdoctoral researcher and visiting lecturer at MIT, worked for IBM ILOG, and Krall Demmel Baumgarten. Prior to joining ZIB and TU Berlin, he was the David M. McKenney Family Associate Professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and an Associate Director of the Machine Learning @ GT Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology as well as a Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. Sebastian received the David M. McKenney Family Early Career Professorship in 2016, an NSF CAREER Award in 2015, the Coca-Cola Early Career Professorship in 2014, the outstanding thesis award of the University of Duisburg-Essen in 2006, as well as various Best Paper awards.
Pokutta’s research is situated at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Optimization and more recently Quantum Computing, leveraging data in the context of pressing industrial and financial challenges. These areas include Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing, Cyber-Physical Systems (incl. Industrial Internet, Industry 4.0, Internet of Things), and Finance. Examples of Pokutta’s applied work include stowage optimization problems for inland vessels, oil production problems, clearing of electricity markets, order fulfillment problems, warehouse location problems, simulation of autonomous vehicle fleets, portfolio optimization problems, optimal liquidity management strategies, and predictive pregnancy diagnostics. Several of Pokutta’s algorithms and approaches have been commercialized in industrial settings.
Philipp Hannemann is Director of Sales and Business Development. An expert for large optimization problems, building business development and sales organizations, prior to Quantagonia Hannemann was Head of Business Development at Ligalytics.
In February, the startup closed a Pre-seed funding round with investment from FTTF — Fraunhofer Technology Transfer Fund and Voima Ventures.
On the funding, Quantagonia’s CEO Dirk Zechiel said:
“The entire founding team at Quantagonia is excited to have the support of such established funding partners in helping to bring our technology to market. We already have the ability to help companies start to take advantage of the benefits of quantum computing, and are excited about the product roadmap we have in front of us.”
Quantagonia’s future is its own. With a bright team making the important decisions, its Quantum Virtual Platform is definitely going places.
If you found this article to be informative, you can explore more current quantum news here, exclusives, interviews, and podcasts.
