QAI Ventures invests in Swiss AI solution provider

QAI Ventures and Phoenix Technologies entered into a strategic partnership to drive technological Innovation out of Switzerland, by providing entrepreneurs and innovators access to latest cloud technology and AI capabilities, as well as expert guidance, and tailored mentorship. The partnership includes a strategic investment of QAI Ventures in Phoenix Technologies.

In March Phoenix Technologies and IBM announced that new and existing Phoenix clients will have access to IBM’s advanced AI hardware and software, including IBM watsonx, powered by OpenShift AI, through a new AI innovation center in Switzerland. Focusing on healthcare and life sciences, financial services, and government institutions, businesses will be able to use Phoenix’s kvant AI solution powered by IBM's AI applications and infrastructure, integrated with the “Swiss Sovereign Cloud” of Phoenix.

The Phoenix kvant AI solution will serve the rising demand to build, tune, and deploy advanced AI models on a sovereign cloud in Switzerland with exceptional availability, scalability, and security on every layer of the technology stack. The collaboration of Phoenix, IBM and Red Hat offers kvant AI users a complete end-to-end AI solution, based on state-of-the-art AI-centric computing capabilities, to foster AI foundation model development and research. 

“Artificial Intelligence is already but also will be one of the biggest innovation drivers within the next years. However, organizations, as well as Start- and Scale-Ups, need a secure cloud environment to work with specific data sets, especially when considering use cases focused on sensitive or critical data. The partnership with QAI Ventures and the location of the Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area will enable a whole Swiss-based ecosystem and function as an accelerator and orchestrated environment for anybody eager to drive Innovation in Switzerland”, said Thomas Taroni, Chairman and CEO Phoenix Technologies. 

Phoenix customers can already use kvant AI today. “kvant AI includes consulting services. The path to an AI application or solution is often unclear. This is where we come in with our kvant cloud and consulting solutions and help with preparing the data or selecting the right foundation model”, explains Nicolas Rau, Head of Marketing at Phoenix Systems. The Sovereign AI Cluster with computing capacities in Switzerland will be available in Basel from June. Interested organizations and parties can already meet the involved partners at the AI Innovation Center Basel Pre-Opening Event on May 15th. 

Phoenix Systems AG, founded in 2008 and headquartered in Zürich, is a Swiss Hyperscaler with the mission to build the most modern and cost-effective cloud for a sovereign Switzerland. Phoenix Systems is one of the three subsidiaries of Phoenix Technologies. The group also includes KORE Technologies and Arpia. The group currently employs around 60 people and has ambitious growth plans.

(Press release / SK)