quantum-physics
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Janos Perczel
Janos Perczel is a theoretical quantum physicist turned education entrepreneur. After earning a PhD from MIT working on invisibility cloaks and cold-atom quantum systems under Mikhail Lukin at Harvard, he co-founded Polygence in 2019 with Jin Chow. The company pairs high school students with PhD mentors for one-on-one research projects, and now reaches tens of thousands of students worldwide. As CEO he has pushed Polygence into AI, releasing TeachLM, a language model fine-tuned on 100,000 hours of real one-on-one tutoring data.
Filip Auksztol
Filip Auksztol is the CEO and founder of Quantum Boost, a London-based deep-tech startup that uses machine learning to help chemists formulate better products faster. A trained quantum physicist who earned a PhD at Singapore's Centre for Quantum Technologies and studied materials science at Oxford, he turned the math of atomtronic devices toward a more stubborn problem: the slow, trial-and-error grind of laboratory formulation. Quantum Boost's platform applies Bayesian optimization to experimental data, promising to cut formulation development time by 50 to 80 percent across inks, paints, pharmaceuticals and specialty chemicals.
Ophir Gaathon
Ophir Gaathon is the co-founder and CEO of DUST Identity, a Massachusetts deep-tech company that sprinkles microscopic, industrial diamond dust onto physical objects to give them an unclonable fingerprint. A Columbia-trained applied physicist who once chased the quantum properties of diamonds for computing, he turned that research into an identity layer for the physical world, used across defense, aerospace, automotive and luxury supply chains. Backed by Kleiner Perkins, Airbus Ventures, Lockheed Martin and Castle Island Ventures, his company has raised more than $50M and works on problems originally posed by DARPA.
Ari Tuchman
Ari Tuchman is the CEO and Co-Founder of Quantifind, a Palo Alto-based AI risk intelligence company that uses machine learning, entity resolution, and natural language processing to automate financial crime detection and compliance workflows for Tier 1 banks and government agencies. A Harvard-trained physicist with a Yale Ph.D. in atomic physics, Tuchman left a Stanford research career working on DARPA-funded quantum sensors to co-found Quantifind in 2009. His company's Graphyte platform now analyzes millions of entities, reduces false positives by up to 75%, and auto-resolves 90% of risk cases for global financial institutions. He is also a co-founder of Entanglement Technologies, a quantum chemical sensor company.
Shaun Maguire
Shaun Maguire is a partner at Sequoia Capital who bridges the worlds of theoretical physics and venture capital. With a PhD in quantum gravity from Caltech under John Preskill, he co-founded the cybersecurity company Expanse (acquired by Palo Alto Networks for over $1 billion) while completing his doctorate. At Sequoia, he leads investments in deep tech, aerospace, defense, and AI, backing companies like SpaceX, xAI, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. Before Sequoia, he was a partner at Google Ventures, where he led investments in Stripe, IonQ, and Opendoor. His unique background combines rigorous theoretical physics research on multiboundary wormholes with a track record of building and backing billion-dollar companies at the frontier of technology.