Who's News: Management Changes at Rigetti Computing, Orca Computing, Silicon Quantum Computing, S...

Rigetti Computing has named Dr. Subodh Kulkarni as President and Chief Executive Officer. He succeeds Dr. Chad Rigetti who will be leaving the company. Dr. Kulkarni was previously President and CEO of CyberOptics Corporation, a manufacturer of high precision sensors and inspection systems for the semiconductor and electronics industry, which was acquired by Nordson Corporation in November. Dr. Kulkarni holds a Bachelors of Technology degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT, Bombay and M.S. and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT. Rigetti Computing's announcement of his appointment has been posted on their website here.

Orca Computing has named Per Nyberg as their Chief Commercial Officer. Previously, he was the Vice-President of Strategic Markets and Alliances at Quantum Machines. and before that he has many years of experience in high-performance computing (HPC) with over 16 years at Cray, Inc. and 11 years at NEC. Mr. Nyberg will be responsible for leading Orca's go-to-market efforts and establishing long-term partnerships for the company's photonic technology and unique quantum memory. An announcement from Orca about his joining the company can be found on Orca's website here.

Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC) has named Ian R. Hill as President and CIO with responsibilities for business development, IT, and portfolio management. Mr. Hill is quite familiar with SQC because he had served on their Board of Directors and chaired the Strategy, Nominating, and Remuneration committees until August 2022. Before joining SQC full time Hill was with Standard Chartered Bank, most recently as Global COO of Transformation. He also has previous experience at Microsoft and McKinsey and Company. Mr. Hill holds holds three degrees from Stanford University as well as an M.S. degree in Artificial Intelligence from Georgia Tech.

Strangeworks has hired Idalia Friedson as Vice-President of Strategic Development. She previously was with Rigetti Computing, most recently as Chief of Staff. Before that she was with Publicis Sapient and the Hudson Institute where she multiple articles on quantum technology and co-founded and led mission, messaging, and business development for Quantum Alliance Initiative Policy Center.

IonQ has appointed Rima Alameddine as Chief Revenue Officer and Wendy Thomas as a member of their Board of Directors. Ms. Alameddine most recently was Vice President, Enterprise Sales, Healthcare, Life Science, and Manufacturing, Americas at NVIDIA and also has experience with enterprise sales at Cisco Systems. She will be leading IonQ's sales team and driving the company's commercial strategy to make quantum applications a reality. Ms. Thomas is President and CEO of Secureworks, a cybersecurity company. She has over 25 years of experience in the technology industry and will help support IonQ to build the world's best quantum computers. IonQ has posted a press release on its website announcing these appointments which can be seen here.

PsiQuantum has added Roland Acra as its Chief Business Officer with responsibilities for the company's business strategy, including commercial, global market expansion, quantum applications and software development. He previously was a Senior Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer at Cisco and before that was the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s Data Center Business Group. Mr. Acra has degrees from École Polytechnique, Télécom Paris, and Texas A&M University. A press release from PsiQuantum announcing that he has joined the company is available here.

Arqit has recruited Tracey Pretorius as their Senior Vice President (SVP) of Cyber Security Strategy. She joins Arqit from Google where she was working on Consumer Trust Engineering and prior to that she spent 18 years at Microsoft, most recently as the Senior Director of Global Security Research Strategy, M365 Security and Compliance Management. Her role will be to build out the company's partnership strategies and manage other major initiatives globally. A press release from Arqit announcing that she has joined the company can be accessed here.

December 12, 2022