‘Many of the things that we do today will be powered in one way or another by quantum computers.’

Is quantum computing the future? It may be the silver bullet that allows individual organisations to apply powerful ChatGPT-like language models to their own data.

“When we look at large language models (LLMs), which are a big topic here at the conference, how do we hybridize these efficiently,” asked Florian Neukart, chief product officer at Terra Quantum, referring to the hybrid nature of using these large and complex public models but applying them to proprietary data, or LLMs for everyone.

“We found ways to use tensor networks, which can be powered by quantum computers, to compress large language models about 50 percent, so they still keep the accuracy they have,” explained the CPO (pictured above).

For those wondering when quantum computing is going to become a reality, Florian clarified that “all of these things are in active research and many things are being released and coming out, but it’s not done”.

“Often, when you talk to vendors, you will hear it’s not there yet. It’s not ready. But then sometimes that is a very narrow perspective,” added Florian.

When it comes down to gambling on quantum computing as the future, Terra Quantum is playing it safe: “It’s not 100 percent clear which [technology] will prevail. So that’s why we decided to go with all of them”.

“Most of the time an industry customer doesn’t care if it’s a quantum computer or if it’s any other computer that solves your problem, as long as it saves you money.”

Speaking on Collision’s FullStk stage, Florian was asked what challenges quantum computing faced and replied: “What is still required is to have better quality chips, better quality systems”, adding that “the more complex these chips are, the more complex the problems we can solve”.

Summarising the future potential of quantum computing Florian stated: “Many of the things that we do today, many of the complex computational tasks that we work on will be powered in one way or the other by quantum computers”.

Florian’s comments were made as part of a wider discussion on quantum computing at Collision, which is returning to Toronto for its sixth year. Global founders, CEOs, investors and members of the media have come to the city to make deals and experience North America’s thriving tech ecosystem.

More than 1,600 startups are taking part in Collision 2024 – the highest number of startups ever at a Collision event. 44 percent of these are women-founded, and startups have travelled to Toronto from countries including Nigeria, the Republic of Korea, Uruguay, Japan, Italy, Ghana, Pakistan and beyond.

In total, more than 37,800 attendees have gathered at the event, as well as 570 speakers and 1,003 members of the media, to explore business opportunities with an international audience.

739 investors are attending Collision, including Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures; Wesley Chan, co-founder and managing partner of FPV Ventures; and Nigel Morris, co-founder and managing partner of QED Investors, as well as nine companies on the Forbes Midas List, and 12 investors from those firms.

Top speakers at Collision include:

• Geoffrey Hinton, Godfather of AI
• Maria Sharapova, entrepreneur and tennis legend
• Aidan Gomez, founder and CEO of Cohere (an AI for enterprise and large language model company, which raised US$450 million at a US$5 billion valuation in June 2024)
• Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi (a Canadian autonomous trucking company)
• Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password (a cloud-based password management tool)
• Dali Rajic, president and COO of Wiz (a cloud security platform)
• Alex Israel, co-founder and CEO of Metropolis (an AI and computer vision platform)
• Jonathan Ross, founder and CEO of Groq (an AI chip startup)
• Keily Blair, CEO of OnlyFans
• Autumn Peltier, Indigenous rights activist

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Useful links

• Collision website: https://collisionconf.com/ 
• Collision media kit: https://collisionconf.com/media/media-kit  
• Collision images: https://flickr.com/photos/collisionconf 
• About Web Summit: www.about.websummit.com