Richard Givhan

Richard Givhan is the co-founder and CEO of Haiqu, a quantum software company building a hardware-aware operating system that squeezes useful results out of today's noisy, qubit-starved quantum computers. A Stanford-trained engineering physicist who once chased dark matter at the Kavli Institute, Givhan now bets on the unglamorous middleware layer - circuit optimization, error shielding, and orchestration - to make near-term quantum applications run at roughly 100x lower compute cost. Incubated in 2022 inside Toronto's Creative Destruction Lab Quantum stream, Haiqu has raised about $19 million to date, including an $11 million seed round in January 2026 led by Primary Venture Partners.