Good Morning,
I can’t believe it! I knew Classiq was highly likely to be acquired during this period, but I never imagined it would be Intel. Intel's Earnings were less than stellar yesterday, and it comes at an awkward time for the Quantum startups of the last generation.
Intel thinks it can become a full-stack quantum computing company by pairing its silicon spin-qubit hardware and manufacturing strengths with Classiq’s hardware-agnostic quantum software platform according to its Press Release.
It’s a $2.3 Billion deal that is bitter-sweet, and while it’s great news for the industry as a huge exit, it also carries some significant red flags.
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan was a personal angel investor in the Israeli quantum software startup Classiq before Intel announced its acquisition of the company. That is just an egregious conflict of interests. How is that even possible, it’s Sam Altman level trickery and corruption.
Classiq has raised just over $200 million and it’s an exceptional result for the Tel Aviv Quantum community. Lip-Bu Tan built his reputation as one of the tech industry’s most prolific venture capital investors through his firm Walden International (and later Walden Catalyst) and is known for gray area moves like this. In a world with this POTUS, this kind of deal has substantially less backlash.
Intel thinks the combination of Classiq’s synthesis platform with Intel’s spin-qubit manufacturing and existing software would create a “user-friendly full-stack quantum computing platform”, enabling the promising technology to mature into a mainstream computing business. To be honest, Microsoft would have been a better steward, or even Amazon, Google or Anthropic.
I am a little shocked.
