Media Releases

Creative Destruction Lab Launches New Quantum Machine Learning Startup Program

May 25, 2017

Toron­to, ON – Today the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab (CDL) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment announced a new pro­gram focused on the cre­ation of quan­tum machine learn­ing star­tups. This builds on the Lab’s five-year track record of assist­ing with the devel­op­ment of seed-stage, sci­ence-based com­pa­nies, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI)-enabled com­pa­nies. To our knowl­edge, the CDL is cur­rent­ly home to the great­est con­cen­tra­tion of AI-enabled com­pa­nies of any pro­gram on Earth.

The mis­sion: By 2022, the CDL’s Quan­tum Machine Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive will have pro­duced more well-cap­i­tal­ized, rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing quan­tum machine learn­ing soft­ware com­pa­nies than the rest of the world com­bined. The major­i­ty of these will be based in Cana­da.

From now until July 24, the CDL is accept­ing appli­ca­tions from inspired indi­vid­u­als any­where in the world who are ful­ly com­mit­ted to build­ing a quan­tum machine learn­ing soft­ware com­pa­ny. The CDL is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in appli­cants with a grad­u­ate-lev­el degree in physics, math, sta­tis­tics, or elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and expe­ri­ence in machine learn­ing, but will con­sid­er com­pelling appli­cants from all back­grounds. Appli­ca­tions will be processed on a rolling basis – spaces will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. The CDL will pro­vide inter­na­tion­al appli­cants with assis­tance in obtain­ing a visa to par­tic­i­pate in this Cana­da-based pro­gram.

Appli­ca­tions are wel­come at www.creativedestructionlab.com/qml-application.

Up to 40 indi­vid­u­als or teams will be select­ed for the year-long pro­gram that begins this Sep­tem­ber in Toron­to with an inten­sive intro­duc­to­ry boot camp led by Dr. Peter Wit­tek, author of the first text­book on quan­tum machine learn­ing, with tuto­ri­als deliv­ered by oth­er experts. Then, all com­pa­nies will go through CDL’s nine-month objec­tive-set­ting pro­gram, coached by care­ful­ly-select­ed entre­pre­neurs and investors with rel­e­vant track records of suc­cess.

Par­tic­i­pants will be allot­ted time on D‑Wave’s 2000Q quan­tum com­put­er, have access to a D‑Wave machine learn­ing sam­pling ser­vice, and receive train­ing and tech­ni­cal sup­port from D‑Wave experts.

Three Sil­i­con Val­ley-based ven­ture cap­i­tal firms, each with a sig­nif­i­cant port­fo­lio of AI-relat­ed invest­ments, Bloomberg Beta, Data Col­lec­tive (DCVC), and Spec­trum 28, will invest pre-seed cap­i­tal in every com­pa­ny admit­ted to, or formed in, the pro­gram that choos­es to take it.

Busi­ness strat­e­gy coach­ing will be pro­vid­ed by William Tun­stall-Pedoe (founder — Evi, sold to Ama­zon), Bar­ney Pell (founder — Pow­er­set, sold to Microsoft; Moon Express; Loco­Mo­bi), Geordie Rose (founder — D‑Wave; Kin­dred), Sal­ly Daub (Founder — ViXS Sys­tems), Antho­ny Lacav­era (Founder — Glob­alive; Wind), Ted Liv­ingston (Founder — Kik), James Cham (Bloomberg Beta), Matt Ocko (DCVC), Lyon Wong (Spec­trum 28), and Steve Jurvet­son (DFJ), among oth­ers. Par­tic­i­pants will also ben­e­fit from busi­ness devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion sup­port from MBA stu­dents at the Rot­man School. This pro­gram is made pos­si­ble with the gen­er­ous sup­port of Mas­ter­card, Com­cast, RBC, and Sco­tia­bank.

The Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab launched in 2012 and employs a unique, objec­tives-set­ting coach­ing process to help founders build mas­sive­ly-scal­able busi­ness­es pred­i­cat­ed on advances in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. Grad­u­ates include Thalmic Labs (Water­loo), Atom­wise (San Fran­cis­co), Deep Genomics (Toron­to), Nymi (Toron­to), Automat (Mon­tre­al), Kyn­di (Palo Alto), and Heuritech (Paris). For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.creativedestructiolab.com.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness and soci­etal chal­lenges.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Tel: 416–946-3818
E‑mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca