On AI:AM

Michael Förtsch

CEO and Founder, Q.ANT

Michael Förtsch is founder and CEO of Q.ANT, a TRUMPF spin-off in Stuttgart building a photonic processor that computes with light instead of transistors. Its analog thin-film lithium niobate Native Processing Unit ships as a PCIe card and is running at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre and Forschungszentrum Jülich. Rather than chase leading-edge lithography, Q.ANT built its pilot line by refurbishing an obsolete 90-nanometre CMOS line — a bet on European chip sovereignty as much as on optics.