Pete Shadbolt
Chief Scientific Officer & Co-Founder, PsiQuantum. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutivescientistacademicLinkedIn ↗peteshadbolt.co.uk ↗
Pete Shadbolt co-founded PsiQuantum in 2016 to build utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers using silicon photonics manufactured in conventional semiconductor foundries. Prior to founding the company, he was an experimental physics researcher at the University of Bristol and Imperial College London.
1shows
2appearances
49statements
13resolved
12supported
1contradicted
92%fully supported
Everything Pete Shadbolt said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Shadbolt: One-million-qubit quantum computer will outperform all global conventional compute
“A single million qubit quantum computer would outperform The net total of conventional computing on the entire planet. So you take all of the supercomputers on the planet, you take every AWS system, every Azure system, you add them all together, and we trash t…”
Shadbolt: Useful quantum computing requires roughly one million qubits
“The general consensus is that you need more like a million qubits to do anything commercially impactful with a quantum computer.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum's million-qubit bet relies entirely on existing semiconductor fabs
“The only reason that we could afford to make that really extreme bet that we're going to go straight to a million qubits. The only reason that we felt that was plausible is that our technology fits into the fabs and the OSATs and the contract contract manufact…”
Shadbolt: Quantum will parallel AI's sudden breakthrough via hardware and architecture
“It was really the convergence of two things to my mind the availability of hardware that was built for another purpose in this case, gaming GPUs, and then also progress on the architecture where I see very strong parallels between what we've done and what has …”
Shadbolt: Quantum computers will solve simulations impossible on classical supercomputers
“Our conventional supercomputers suck at predicting the properties of these microscopic things. And that happens to be exactly the set of problems where a quantum computer is perfectly suited and where we will solve problems that can never be solved by any conv…”
Shadbolt: Semiconductor industry and PsiQuantum use almost no AI in chip design
“We basically don't use AI at all inside the company to design chips. And I think if you go and look at people who are building millions of chips in industry, there's a very small amount of AI, if any, that's being involved in the actual design of those chips t…”
Shadbolt: AI will not dramatically accelerate PsiQuantum's hardware timelines
“So no, I don't think the AI is going to dramatically reduce our timelines. Currently our timelines are mostly determined as far as I can tell by infrastructure, right? We're breaking ground on these sites in Australia and Chicago. These are roughly a hundred m…”
Shadbolt: Australia's chief scientist found PsiQuantum a 'country mile ahead'
“And then at the end of that, I don't know, 18 month process she concludes that we're a country mile ahead of anyone else.”
Shadbolt: Quantum computing companies are far more likely to go to zero
“Yeah, I think that there is a serious prospect that these companies do that, but there is a much greater chance that they go to zero is basically my simple way of putting it.”
Shadbolt: Basic qubit physics is a small part of quantum scale
“That stuff is really important, but it's a small piece of the puzzle of building a data center sized machine.”
Shadbolt: Venture capital pressure for early revenue warps quantum startups
“We get coached that there is a certain way to do a venture backed company. And the coaching is very often you got to get some kind of revenue by any means necessary really early. And that's certainly true if you're a SaaS company, right? Like if I'm building a…”
Shadbolt: Quantum Computing Faces Severe Practical Limits for Optimization
“Our view on optimization is that it's really difficult to do like tremendously impactful optimization with a quantum computer. Conventional computers are already surprisingly good at optimization, and the quantum algorithms that we know of for optimization pro…”
Shadbolt: Quantum commercial adoption will precede cryptographic security risks
“You should get like an economic early warning sign essentially where you should see quantum computing companies Doing commercially impactful things, making money, and then eventually scaling towards systems that are big enough to be cryptographically relevant.”
Shadbolt: Quantum has consumed billions and 100k human-years without useful machines
“Quantum computing has already consumed billions and billions and billions of dollars of capital. It has consumed the entire adult life of tens of thousands of our best scientists and researchers. Some total has got to be nearly a 100,000 years of human life. B…”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum plans to enable its Australian quantum site by end of 2027
“The plan of record that the company marches to is that we want to have that site enabled by end of 20, 27 in Australia.”
Shadbolt: $1B in revenue marks the starting point for useful quantum computing
“When you're making a ton of revenue you're probably doing something that, you know, within reason you could call useful and like a billion dollars of revenue would be a nice starting point for a useful machine like this. Yeah, definitely what is not useful is …”
Pete Shadbolt: Quantum computing has repeatedly failed to deliver on its promises
“Quantum computing is a pain in the ass. And it is, you know, failed promises and endless confusion and all of this competitive jostling and it's a pain in the ass and it's like failed to deliver many, many times.”
Shadbolt: Quantum Founders Cannot Win by Mudslinging Rival Architectures
“In quantum computing, you get all of these founders, they all show up and they all think that their way is the only way to do it and sling mud at everybody else. Everything else is crap. Like, you can't win that game. Like, nobody wins in that game.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum secured $1B AUD Australian deal for Brisbane quantum computer
“Last year we announced these major deals with the Australian government. So that's about a billion dollar Australian deal for us to build a very large scale quantum computer in Brisbane.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum has raised more private capital than any quantum peer
“That's right to my knowledge, yeah.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum allocates zero resources toward small intermediate demo processors
“We've invested in the semiconductor manufacturing, in the networking, in the cooling, in all of the technology that we need to deliver a million qubit machine. And we haven't spent any of our resources On like taking a 20 qubit processor, sticking it online, l…”
Shadbolt: Jensen Huang's 15-to-30-year quantum timeline is likely accurate
“And I think he's probably right on average on that timeline.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Pete's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 SOURCERYLEDGER | Chief Scientific Officer & Co-Founder, PsiQuantum | 2 | 49 | 92% 12/13 | full record on Sourcery → |