Cybersecurity startup Quantropi is boosting its bench strength as it girds for battle against encryption-breaking technologies that are expected to become major threats to the world’s financial and communications systems over the next few years. Poised to soon break out of its pre-revenue phase, the six-year-old Ottawa venture has added veteran tech executive Sacha Gera […]
Cybersecurity startup Quantropi is boosting its bench strength as it girds for battle against encryption-breaking technologies that are expected to become major threats to the world’s financial and communications systems over the next few years.
Poised to soon break out of its pre-revenue phase, the six-year-old Ottawa venture has added veteran tech executive Sacha Gera and former Farm Boy co-CEO Jeff York to its board of directors.
Quantropi co-founder and CEO James Nguyen said Gera and York will provide much-needed scaleup expertise as the firm ramps up its fundraising efforts in anticipation of a surge in demand for its technology, which aims to stop hackers from using ultra-powerful quantum computers to thwart current data-protection safeguards.
Gera, the chief executive of Ottawa-based big-data analytics firm Jatom Systems, previously served as president of IT and cyber solutions at Kanata-based Calian Group. The Carleton University graduate, who co-founded cloud communications startup Kandy.io, also knows what it’s like to build a company from the ground up.
York, meanwhile, is one of the National Capital Region’s best-known retail entrepreneurs.
As president of Giant Tiger in the early 2000s, York oversaw the discount retailer's evolution from a regional chain to a national powerhouse. In 2009, he joined Farm Boy, which expanded to 26 locations in Ontario before being acquired by grocery giant Empire Co. for $800 million in 2018.
Both businessmen are already well acquainted with Quantropi.
York was one of the first angel investors to come on board when Nguyen and co-founder Randy Kuang launched the venture in 2018. Gera was in charge of Calian’s cybersecurity operations when the Kanata firm partnered with Quantropi on a pilot project to test the software with Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, Europe’s largest telecommunications provider.
“Sacha brings that cybersecurity landscape expertise, and Jeff is Jeff,” Nguyen said in an interview with Techopia last Thursday. “He’s been a successful businessman, and his network is not one to not respect. He seems to have the midas touch.”
Gera and York join a who’s-who of Ottawa business leaders who are lending their talents to help Quantropi grow. The group also includes longtime Nortel executive Marco Pagani, who chairs the company’s board of directors, and Calian founder and former Ottawa mayor Larry O’Brien, who serves as a senior adviser.
Ex-Silicon Valley executive joins C-suite
In addition, the young company has attracted notice from Silicon Valley.
Michael Redding, who headed up professional services giant Accenture’s cybersecurity-focused R&D wing before co-founding its billion-dollar incubator, Accenture Ventures, came out of retirement and relocated to Ottawa three years ago to lead Quantropi’s product development efforts as chief technology officer.
That executives and advisers of that stature have hitched themselves to Quantropi’s wagon suggests it could be on to something.
Quantropi’s backers say the 20-person organization is on the cutting edge of a global effort to stop a looming cyberthreat known as “Y2Q” in its tracks.
Y2Q, or “Year to Quantum,” refers to the point when ultra-powerful quantum computers can “break encryption as we know it,” explained Gera, who said he became “enamoured” with Quantropi’s software as soon as he saw it in action during Calian’s pilot project with Deutsche Telekom.
“Everything we do today is secured with a set of encryption algorithms,” Gera noted. “Y2Q is the day that all of our current data basically becomes open season for bad actors. In the years ahead, it’s going to be everybody’s problem.”
Companies around the world are already scrambling to prepare for the moment that has been dubbed “Q-Day.” Last week, for example, Apple announced it was upgrading its iMessage texting platform with state-of-the-art encryption algorithms in an effort to guard against such attacks.
While Quantropi isn’t the only enterprise working on ways to keep the bad guys at bay as Q-Day approaches, Gera believes it has the right people in place to become a global leader in quantum cybersecurity.
“If there’s anybody who’s going to solve it, it’s them,” he said, referring to Nyugen, Redding and Kuang, an expert in quantum theory who previously worked at Nortel and co-founded passwordless authentication firm inBay Technologies.
“It’s early thinking on a problem everybody’s going to have really, really soon – especially when AI and quantum computers become mainstream.”
Eyeing more funding
Still, developing a cybersecurity platform fit to outfox next-generation hackers won’t come cheap.
After raising US$11 million in seed capital so far, Quantropi is looking to more than double its funding haul with another round it expects to close later this year, Nguyen said.
Quantropi’s CEO predicts that will also be about the time that Quantropi starts to generate real income.
To date, most of the startup’s projects have been pilots for big-name customers like Siemens, but Nguyen expects to see signed contracts on the books before 2024 is out as the spectre of a looming “cyber epidemic” suddenly becomes all too real.
“We can’t predict the market fully, but we believe this year is the inflection point – the second half of this year is going to be our launching (point), and then … the sky is the limit,” he added.
Gera agrees, saying Quantropi has the potential to produce a product that will eventually be as ubiquitous as Intel microchips, “where their technology is embedded in basically anything that is communicating across the internet.”
“I’m super excited about what they’re doing,” he added. “There’s a ton of cybersecurity expertise in Ottawa, but this is one of the companies for me that stands out as solving what’s next.
“You’re going to hear a lot about Y2Q soon. I think if (Quantropi) can keep going the way they are, I have no doubt they could be the next big thing here.”
