Convening Quantum Conversations
Overview
In this episode of The Quantum Spin by HKA, host Veronica Combs talks with Karina Robinson, CEO at Redcliffe Advisory and founder of the City Quantum and AI Summit. The discussion explores Karina’s journey into the quantum industry, the inspiration behind the City Quantum Summit and the intricacies of advising CEOs on emerging technologies. The episode also covers the broader implications of quantum advancements on global growth and security.
00:00 Introduction to Quantum Spin Podcast
00:34 Meet Karina Robinson: From Politics to Quantum
02:06 The City Quantum Summit: Origins and Evolution
05:02 Geopolitics and Quantum Technology
09:09 Multiverse Computing and AI Integration
16:42 NATO’s Quantum Strategy and Future Outlook
20:28 Conclusion and Invitation to the Summit
22:38 Closing Remarks and Podcast Information
Karina Robinson is CEO of Redcliffe Advisory Ltd., Senior Advisor to Multiverse Computing, Europe’s largest Quantum/AI firm, and a non-executive director on the board of Atlanti, an Anglo-Swiss Fund Management firm. Karina is the Founder of The City Quantum & AI Summit, celebrating its Fifth Anniversary at Mansion House, the heart of the City of London. She is an Advisor to MissionLink, which brings together Defence and Deep Tech. In the City, she spent seven years as Founder and Chair of the Lord Mayor’s Appeal Advisory Board and was Master of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Veronica: Hello, and welcome to the quantum spin by HKA. I’m Veronica Combs. I’m a writer and an editor here at the agency. I get to talk every day with really smart people working on really fascinating subjects, everything in the Quantum industry, from hardware to software. On our podcast, we focus in on quantum communication, and by that I don’t mean making networks safe from hacking or entangling photons over long distance, but talking about the technology.
[00:00:26] How do you explain these complicated concepts to people who don’t have a background in science and engineering but want to understand all the same?
[00:00:34] Today I am talking with Karina Robinson. She is the CEO at Redcliffe Advisory and the founder of the Citi Quantum and AI Summit, which is coming up in October. So thank you for joining us today, Karina.
[00:00:46] Karina: Pleasure, Veronica.
[00:00:48] Veronica: So your background is politics and finance and journalism. How did you end up in quantum?
[00:00:55] Well, I owe it all. It has to be said to Ilyas Khan. I started a little business where I advised CEOs and chairs and somebody introduced me to Ilyas, who, as you know at the time, was the CEO of startup, Cambridge Quantum.
[00:01:12] Now, of course it was merged with Honeywell Quantum and its WQuantinuum, and I started working for him and he gave me a book that was not quite Quantum for Idiots, but something similar. I got to chapter two and I said Ilyas, I’ve had it. I can’t make it past chapter two, but Veronica, as you know, because HKA has been involved in the quantum space for a long time, when an industry is growing, there are incredible opportunities.
[00:01:41] So I ended up remaining in the industry. Then I started working as senior advisor to Multiverse Computing, and then I started the Summit to try and help the sector grow a bit more. But I believe we’ll be talking about that later.
[00:01:56] Yes. Is definitely a force to be reckoned with and that’s good to know your connection to him.
[00:02:01] We, HKA, represented his original company before they merged with Honeywell, as you mentioned. So tell me about the City Quantum Summit. I know this is, its third or fourth year I think.
[00:02:11] Karina: Fifth, Fifth.
[00:02:12] Veronica: Fifth. I’m behind the times.
[00:02:14] Karina: It’s very important to get it right because it takes a lot of effort.
[00:02:17] Now we’re celebrating our fifth anniversary this year, and it came about when I was starting with Ilyas, which I found, so this was six years ago. All these quantum companies talked to each other in horrible basements of hotels. Those sort of conference spaces. And I thought, you are never ever gonna get your end user there, and it’s really important.
[00:02:39] Now, the other reason you’re not gonna get an end user to quantum conference is because you use all this lingo and jargon. Nobody needs to understand entanglement. Who’s gonna be an end user? That’s a very important point. So with the Lord Mayor of the City of London, who is like an ambassador for the financial sector of the whole of the UK, it’s a ceremonial role.
[00:03:02] We currently are on the 696th Lord Mayor of the City of London. So it’s been around for a while. We decided to put one on at the Mansion House, which is the palace that these ambassadors live in, and we would therefore attract more of the CEOs of financial services firms. And at the time, that seemed one of the most promising areas.
[00:03:23] Now when we began it, it was just a one-off. And the principle, there were two principles behind it. And the most important one to me is no lingo, no jargon, plain English. And the reason for that was obviously so that the quantum people could explain to the CEOs and the chairs and the board members why they needed to become interested in quantum experimenting with it, but in a way that they could understand their bottom line, their revenue would be affected.
[00:03:55] We are now in our fifth year, we’ve brought in AI because I think separating AI and quantum is no longer viable. And then three years ago with Ukraine, we brought in defense because A, we need to defend our democracies. And B, there’s one hell of a lot of money in military investigation now. And actually C, there’s one more point, which is if I think about some of the most amazing inventions in civilian life, they came out of American defense programs like DARPA, Apollo, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:04:30] So this is a great time to come up with new inventions on the back of the rather sad circumstances of our geopolitics.
[00:04:39] Veronica: Yes, for sure. Oh, I also am a former journalist and I got interested in quantum by actually an interview with Ilyas that I did, the last publication that I worked for. And that enthusiasm and vision really is inspiring.
[00:04:51] It does take a journalist to make people move away from the lingo. And obviously you have community building instincts as well. So let’s meet in a nice place not a basement. That’s funny. With the new US administration, obviously politics is influencing everything now.
[00:05:07] Veronica: And you mentioned bringing defense into the Summit because of Ukraine. How do you see geopolitics affecting the quantum industry right now?
[00:05:15] Karina: You know, It’s a very mixed picture. On the one hand, the fact that President Trump, we owe him in Europe, and this may be a surprising statement to make, but he really, he went to all the NATO allies and said, you’re not spending enough money.
[00:05:31] And he was absolutely right. So this has given European economies, the possibility of growth. Now, obviously in a much more unstable world, you also want more armaments. You want more security- security of communication, security of borders. So in a way, this is leading to a new era of invention.
[00:05:53] Now, the US government has always invested a vast amount in defense in the military, but Europeans haven’t been for many years, and this has caused them to reassess that. Given that we’re on the verge of quantum advantage, some people would say we’re already there, but we’re on the verge of it.
[00:06:10] But also there are all sorts of other technologies like quantum communication, quantum sensors, governments are actually spending money now. If I think about the UK, the ecosphere, which is a mixture of government, academia, and the private sector has really forged a great place for entrepreneurs.
[00:06:32] Similar is happening in Europe, but more state led I’d argue. And where we need to go is to have Europe and the UK and other democracies engage more with each other. And this is where I’d say you have a negative from this new geopolitics, which is the difficulties of exchanging knowledge between countries and it’s gotten to the point where there, understandably, there should always be, it should always be difficult to exchange information with your enemies, but with your allies, we need to somehow facilitate it and help make the science advance further.
[00:07:11] Veronica: Yes. That sharing is the sticking point. Just enough, but not too much. I was reading recently about cloud services in Europe and how the the big US tech companies provide most of the cloud services, whether it’s Amazon or Microsoft or the other giants.
[00:07:27] And it really has seemed to have forced a discussion around tech sovereignty. Like, how can we build our own, or how can we build the infrastructure that supports us , that we Europeans have control over, or at least can go to a friendly country to discuss terms.
[00:07:42] Yeah. How do you think about tech sovereignty for the EU in light of this new US administration?
[00:07:48] Karina: It’s become much more important, infinitely more important.
[00:07:52] And AWS, AWS is an American company. Rather like you have Chinese companies, ultimately they report to the state, whatever they may say, they are based in a country and they will report to that state. So in Europe, and I include the UK in that we need to focus much more on our tech sovereignty.
[00:08:14] That’s definitely one of the conclusions from the current geopolitical turmoil.
[00:08:18] Veronica: Yes. And certainly the upside, as you said, is investment and entrepreneurial opportunities and the chance to build something. Different or, I don’t know. I don’t want to say better, but maybe better. Certainly
[00:08:30] with more data protections.
[00:08:31] Karina: I think we should try and be optimistic and say maybe, yes, maybe produce something better.
[00:08:35] And one of the main themes of the summit at the Mansion House on October 8 this year, is about growth. Because all our economies, we need to produce growth. We need to produce a bigger pie. We have aging populations. We need to feed people. We need to ensure that they have more security than they do at the moment, especially given that AI is going to eliminate a vast number of jobs.
[00:09:01] And anybody who says there’ll be so many new ones, it won’t matter, is fooling themselves.
[00:09:07] Veronica: Yes, this is true. You mentioned that you spent some time growing up in Spain and you are also a senior advisor to multiverse computing. So what is that role like?
[00:09:17] Karina: When I stopped working for Ilyas, I talked to a number of people including Denise Ruffner, who’s obviously been in the industry quite a while, and I said who should I go and become involved with now?
[00:09:30] And she and one other who I respect a lot, whose name I won’t mention, they both said Multiverse Computing has some of the best science in the industry. So I got in touch with them and I thought, given that I’m half Spanish, they’re originally Spanish, although they’ve now got offices in Silicon Valley, Munich, London, Paris, and of course Toronto.
[00:09:54] It seemed appropriate. So I met up with them and I was really interested in their angle, which is more about, not the hardware, it’s more about the software. It’s about tensor networks and mixing those with AI and coming up with products you can use now that can already give you some sort of an advantage.
[00:10:15] I thought that was really interesting and that was something that was a much easier sell to people, where you could say, we can do this much for you now, but we can do more in the future, but at least we can demonstrate some sort of an advantage.
[00:10:28] Veronica: Yes. Their chief science officer, I believe is Román Orús, and he was one of the original researchers to focus on the promise of tensor networks. So yes, that’s good to see. I believe the company just raised a series B as well. So did you have a role in that?
[00:10:41] Karina: Yeah, we raised $215 million dollars more than we expected to. What was interesting there was why, and it was much easier than our Series A. Now, sometimes for a company it is, sometimes it isn’t. For us, it was ’cause we were at the AI quantum interface. One of the big products we have at this point is CompactifAI.
[00:11:07] CompactifAI, what it does is, it’s compressor of large language models, and as you well know, large language models use up way too much energy. They’re way too expensive if you have them on the cloud. Huge expense. Because everybody’s using them more and more. So our CompactifAI, it’s not the only one on the market, but in our recent series B, HP Ventures actually invested in our round, and the main reason was because our compressor was better than theirs and
[00:11:40] for a Spanish startup scale-up. That was quite a lot of kudos in there. So we got them to invest through that. And then also what we’ve been doing is developing what we call our Model Zoo. And one should always have a sense of humor in quantum Veronica, ’cause you know, otherwise it becomes all a bit too serious and pompous.
[00:11:59] Veronica: Yep, that’s very true.
[00:12:00] Karina: The Model Zoo is coming up with LLMs that are so squeezed down, that they’re like a fly, a chicken. So the size of a fly’s brain. A chicken’s brain. ’cause you don’t need all the power of an LLM say in an IoT device, but you will need some of it. So we’ve come up with the this model zoo that is become incredibly popular
[00:12:27] and is definitely in advance of a lot of other stuff that’s happening and deals with the environmental concerns.
[00:12:34] Veronica: So is the model,
[00:12:35] is the business model that, like if I’m a company and I need, like you said, I have an IoT device in the oil and gas industry, I would lease or buy access to the shrunken version of the model to deploy as I like?
[00:12:48] Karina: Absolutely. So for example, the I think it’s the chicken brain one is a compression of a, of the latest Llama model. So you are getting, let’s say, the expertise of the big developers of the big companies like AWS Meta, et cetera, but you’re getting it in a very accessible, cheap, on edge form, and that is becoming ever more popular and obviously with the internet of things ever more important.
[00:13:18] Veronica: Right, right. Always a new opportunity to deploy something small on the edge to collect data or track, track what’s happening. That was very wise of HP Ventures to recognize a superior model out in the community, so I’m glad to hear you got investment from them. What is the common mistake you see
[00:13:35] CEOs making when they’re looking at something new or trying to decide whether or not to work with the new technology?
[00:13:41] Karina: That’s a difficult question. I think in a way, the Summit, I came up with that because I felt a CEO or a board member only gets their information from the CTO and generally the CTOs are superb. In big companies, et cetera,
[00:13:56] they’ve got to be, but they have a mentality that is a mentality of a CTO. You need to have the CEO understand enough about the technology to understand other opportunities that the CTO isn’t seeing and they will look at it differently. Their board members will look at it differently. So I think the whole point of the Summit was to ensure the CEOs and the board members were better informed.
[00:14:21] About what was going to be possible with quantum and now with quantum and AI,
[00:14:26] Veronica: and when you
[00:14:26] take out the jargon and the lingo, they can see that potential much more clearly.
[00:14:31] Karina: Yeah, because we also, there’s another two principles behind the Summit. One is accessibility, we stream it for free. And then the other one is gender balance panels, because I think diversity inclusion
[00:14:45] there is, how should I put it? There is the extreme woke version and then there’s diversity inclusion, which we need to continue supporting because otherwise you just have conventional wisdom and you will have much less invention. And after all, something like quantum depends on having different people look at things differently and come up with different solutions.
[00:15:07] Veronica: Yes. And I would say that the people who have been accustomed to holding the stage and holding the microphone and not being challenged on anything are sometimes hesitant to give up that position and that power and to share. And that is the power of making sure that diversity is actually implemented with panel equity, as you mentioned then, and giving everyone the opportunity, not just the people who’ve always had them.
[00:15:30] So on your LinkedIn page, you describe yourself as a benign disruptor, that caught my eye being a word person. Why did you choose that language?
[00:15:38] Karina: When you’re a senior advisor and senior, Veronica means old. Okay, let’s be clear. It means old. It means wise. It means wise in a way.
[00:15:46] In a way, you are relaxed about whether you are fired or not. So it is about saying, I disagree with this decision you’ve made. I think it’s a terrible decision, or I think this is the strategy that would be followed, not that one. Now, as a senior advisor, you can be listened to and ignored, and I’m very happy.
[00:16:08] Obviously, one would rather be listened to and have one’s wisdom applied, but I think that’s very important part of the role you play. You’re not an employee per se. Your future does not depend on the CEO. So you can disrupt in a benign way. And I say benign because after all you are challenging.
[00:16:28] But if the challenge isn’t taken up, you don’t throw your toys outta the pram in that English phrase and skulk off. What you do is, you accept it and you try and influence in other ways. So I think benign disruptor is a good phrase.
[00:16:42] Veronica: So you were involved in brainstorming NATO’s quantum strategy, and I’m sure that gave many opportunities to challenge thinking or to bring in new ideas. How did that process work?
[00:16:53] Karina: It was a really fascinating, I mean, as
[00:16:56] you know,
[00:16:57] Macron, President Macron of France had said that NATO was brain dead a few years ago.
[00:17:02] Ukraine brought it back to life. And if NATO didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it. Having said that, it’s a bureaucratic organization. Decisions are taken very slowly because there are so many members, but it needs to become ever more involved with quantum because so much of quantum is about bringing those countries, those allied countries together.
[00:17:25] Now on the back of NATO’s quantum strategy, something was created called the Transatlantic Quantum Community, which I’m a part of, which is governments, individuals, private sector, academia, and this was set up about a year ago. How we take it forward and make it a very useful tool, we’re probably not sure about yet, but we’ve had some good meetings where we have a lot of people meeting, and we’re involved with Diana as well, which is the more experimental arm, if you will, of NATO.
[00:18:01] Diana’s gone through a few personnel changes, but they’ve now got a great new director and it looks like they will be quite instrumental in helping that quantum strategy along. In the end, each country will do its own thing, but if we can do some coordinating from within NATO and especially things like quantum sensors, quantum navigation, I think that’s where we can add the most value because you can actually try it out on the field,
[00:18:32] where you have three different armies, three different countries working together and see what might work, how to make it work better. It’s a sort of real life experimentation.
[00:18:43] Veronica: So, I’ve been talking with my colleagues over the last several weeks about this sort of growing consensus around 2030 as the date as the most commonly agreed on Q-day when quantum computers will be strong enough to break our current encryption methods. And that seems to be coming from industry, from government, from some cybersecurity experts.
[00:19:05] Knowing all you do about the ecosystem, do you have a point of view on that timeline?
[00:19:09] Karina: It’s quite a big question for a non-scientist when most scientists can’t really answer it accurately, but Veronica, I think one’s gotta think more or less, we’re coming to a consensus around that date.
[00:19:24] Whether it’s that date, it’s a few years later. I think the most important thing is having a date is an impulse for companies and governments to get their acts together. NIST has already set some standards.You know, most companies are overwhelmed on a day-to-day basis with stuff they’ve gotta do in their technology. On the technology side, it’s only if you give them a date where something bad might happen that you’re gonna get them to act.
[00:19:54] So I think it’s much more important than whether it is 2030 on the dot, is the fact that there is a consensus around it. And this has woken everybody up. Yeah, quite visibly.
[00:20:05] Veronica: Yes, we were, as I mentioned, we were talking about it within the team. And I said it’s like the whole Y2K issue, except you don’t have that hard deadline, and a friend said that wasn’t really anything after all.
[00:20:19] I said people prepared and made plans and did things so that it wasn’t a big deal. So I think that, that preparation is the lesson that, to take away from that experience.
[00:20:28] Karina: Certainly. Right.
[00:20:28] Veronica: So, this year the theme for the City Quantum and AI Summit is the Race for Growth.
[00:20:36] What is the thinking behind that theme? Certainly it’s very timely and apropos as we, we keep seeing new developments every day across the spectrum of technologies. Networking and communication, sensing, as you mentioned, hardware and software.
[00:20:48] Karina: Yeah.
[00:20:49] I think
[00:20:49] there’s the growth, the race for growth in a quantum advantage in various different fields, from sensors to satellite communication, whatever you’ve got that, you’ve got growth in our economies and I think quantum and AI together should be able to make that happen or to be a big force behind it, I think.
[00:21:09] One of the things I would think with growth is somehow all these siloed sectors need to talk to each other more, and that was originally why I set up the summit. You’ve got to have the defense sector talking more to the financial sector. They have different ways of looking at quantum and AI and coming together means they’ll accomplish much more.
[00:21:33] The best thing you know I found was the first year we held the Summit, an investor came up to me afterwards, a big institutional investor, and he said to me, God, Karina, and this was five years ago. Bear in mind, he said, there’s some amazing opportunities to invest in quantum, and it’s not over hyped and over promoted and overpriced like AI.
[00:21:56] And that’s really, now one could argue, maybe it is now, who knows? But it’s a very important thing to expose people to what’s happening out there and to expose the quantum and AI companies to what’s happening in defense and in other interesting areas of growth. But I mean, do come along. I know it’s far away, but London in October is a delight.
[00:22:19] So if you’d like to come to the City Quantum and AI Summer, we’d be delighted to host you, Veronica, or any of your listeners.
[00:22:26] Veronica: Yes, well,
[00:22:26] Thank you so much for sharing your point of view on the ecosystem and best wishes at the fifth annual City Quantum and AI Summit. Thank you so much for joining me today.
[00:22:36] Karina: Thank you Veronica.
Host Veronica Combs is a quantum tech editor, writer and PR professional. She manages public relations for quantum computing and tech clients as an account manager with HKA Marketing Communications, the #1 agency in quantum tech PR. You can find them on X, formerly known as Twitter, @HKA_PR. Veronica joined HKA from TechRepublic, where she was a senior writer. She has covered technology, healthcare and business strategy for more than 10 years. If you’d like to be on the podcast yourself, you can reach her on LinkedIn, Veronica Combs, or you can go to the HKA website and share your suggestion via the Contact Us page.
September 24, 2025
