Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain,December 5, 2024 —Multiverse Computing, a quantum and quantum-inspired AI software company, announced an investment from the largest Italian investor in venture capital CDP Venture Capital Sgr, as part of the company’s Series A round.
The investment was carried out through two compartments of the Corporate Partners I fund, ServiceTech and Energytech, a corporate venture capital fund participated by some of the main Italian corporates as limited partners, including Baker Hughes, BNL BNP Paribas, Edison, GPI, Italgas, Snam and Terna Forward. Financial details of the investment were not disclosed.
The new funds will go toward growing Multiverse Computing’s commercial presence in Italy which includes expanding its office in Milan, creating new public and private partnerships and attracting new talent.
Multiverse Computing will use these new funds to expand existing partnerships as well, including a project with EuroHPC and the Leonardo supercomputer, located at the CINECA datacenter in Bologna, a computing consortium in Northeastern Italy that includes 103 public entities. Multiverse Computing was granted GPU node hours to further benchmark and improve CompactifAI’s performance against state-of-the-art models, like LlaMA family models. The project aims to test advanced tensor network compression techniques for LLMs and validate its performance and energy efficiency against the original model.
“We have been working with Italian companies and universities for several years, and now we will be able to build even stronger ties and more innovative collaborations based on our quantum AI software,” said Enrique Lizaso Olmos, CEO and co-founder of Multiverse Computing. “We also plan to use CompactifAI to help industry leaders develop new use cases for large-language models that are smaller and more efficient.”
Multiverse Computing is also working with Leonardo, the Italian multinational company specializing in aerospace, defense and security to develop advanced predictive maintenance algorithms for aircrafts. The multi-year project uses quantum and quantum inspired AI technology to perform secured predictive maintenance for aircraft systems. This work is part of a larger EU project to build technology tools to support digitization and automation for European industry.
CDP Venture Capital invests in companies of significant national interest to Italy and provides capital for the development of organizations in key sectors to promote innovation.
“Investing in Multiverse Computing, a company of excellence in the field of quantum computing and AI, is part of our broader goal to promote innovation and new technologies in Italy supporting visionary companies and fostering collaboration with the Italian corporates”, comments Agostino Scornajenchi, CEO and General Manager of CDP Venture Capital, “This investment represents a strategic step to develop partnerships and high-impact projects in our Country, helping to consolidate Italy’s role as a hub of innovation and technological advancement.
Multiverse Computing has been building fruitful connections with the quantum community in Italy over the last few years, including sponsorships of the Osservatorio Digital Innovation on Quantum Computing from the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano and of the Quantum 2024 Summer School, organized by the Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro. Gianni Del Bimbo, Chief Operations Officer of Multiverse Computing, has participated in several events at the Osservatorio in Milan and shared market reports and trends with participants.
“The quantum research communities at Italian universities like Politecnico di Milano and Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro have demonstrated enormous potential to drive meaningful advancements in quantum AI applications for various industries,” said Del Bimbo. “With the support of CDP Venture Capital, we look forward to collaborating with those communities to boost the Italian quantum ecosystem by developing practical quantum AI use cases.”
