Q-CTRL Names Silicon Valley Tech Veteran to Lead Product Management

SYDNEY, August 23, 2022 – Q-CTRL, a global leader in developing useful quantum technologies through quantum control infrastructure software, today announced the addition of Alex Shih as Head of Product. In his new role, Shih will lead the company’s product management teams to deliver the technology’s value and ROI to customers and end users in new, broader markets.

Shih has spent his career working on products and tools that aim to increase access to information and opportunity, a personal mission of his. Prior to joining Q-CTRL, Shih was a principal of technical products at Slack; director of product & ecosystem at Planet Labs; led emerging market products and initiatives at Twitter; built developer products and integrations at Airbnb and Google, and co-founded a social enterprise called Global Cycle Solutions (later acquired by Sun King).

In his top-tier experiences, Shih honed his expertise in bringing proof-of-concepts to market and expanding to new regions and segments. For example, Shih was instrumental in building products that helped Planet Labs reach $100M+ TCV and scaling Twitter growth beyond Silicon Valley into Southeast Asia, India, Africa, and other emerging markets, which led to extensive adoption and new use cases from millions of new users.

“Moving from large, traditional Silicon Valley corporations to a fast scaling quantum software company brings new challenges and exciting opportunities that I look forward to embracing in this new role,” said Shih. “I am inspired by quantum technology's potential to revolutionize computing and accelerate resource-intensive applications and use cases across industries. My aim is to leverage my experiences building and scaling products from various domains to deliver real value to our customers, from speed of delivery to performance gains to cost savings, which is simply infeasible with alternative technologies.”

Shih continued, “Productizing the user experience for Q-CTRL’s technology will unlock the potential for our customers to solve complex, meaningful challenges, from new drug discovery to logistics optimization to climate change mitigation, and I really hope to inspire others to join the field. Q-CTRL is actively hiring!”

Shih holds a master’s in engineering and management from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from Cornell University.

“Alex’s consumer and enterprise expertise will help us deliver Q-CTRL’s powerful capabilities in quantum computing and quantum sensing to the broadest range of end users, regardless of their experience levels,” said Q-CTRL founder and CEO Professor Michael J. Biercuk. “His addition to the team highlights the true product focus we have at Q-CTRL, where we know that building technology is not enough - we have to truly delight our users as we help them achieve their ambitions.”

Hardware error and instability are holding the industry back from achieving the full potential of the quantum opportunity. Q-CTRL is uniquely focused on delivering hardware-agnostic, error-correcting infrastructure software products that makes quantum computing and sensing useful for organizations around the world. Q-CTRL’s investment in world-leading product management is strategically designed  to support the company’s scaling goals and to ensure that their performance-accelerating technology empowers customers to achieve their greatest ambitions for the quantum era.

About Q-CTRL

Q-CTRL is building the quantum technology industry by overcoming the fundamental challenge in the field – hardware error and instability. Q-CTRL’s quantum control infrastructure software for R&D professionals and quantum computing end users delivers the highest performance error-correcting and suppressing techniques globally, and provides a unique capability accelerating the pathway to the first useful quantum computers. This foundational technology also applies to a new generation of quantum sensors, and enables Q-CTRL to shape and underpin every application of quantum technology. In an effort to bring this transformational capability to as many users as possible, Q-CTRL has built the world’s leading edtech platform for quantum computing, Black Opal, which can help anyone go from zero to programming real quantum computers in minutes a day.

Q-CTRL has assembled the world’s foremost team of expert quantum-control engineers, providing solutions to many of the most advanced quantum computing and sensing teams globally. Q-CTRL has been an inaugural member of the IBM Quantum Startup network since 2018, and recently announced a partnership with Transport for NSW, delivering its enterprise infrastructure software to transport data scientists exploring quantum computing. Q-CTRL is funded by SquarePeg Capital, Sierra Ventures, Sequoia Capital China, Data Collective, Horizons Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Airbus Ventures, and Ridgeline Partners. The company has international headquarters in Sydney, Los Angeles, and Berlin.