Quantum and AI galore at Corporate Innovation Summit 2025

During Mobile World Congress 2025, we celebrated the 4th edition of Corporate Innovation Summit, an event that we've been organising since 2020.

Corporate Innovation Summit was born of the necessity to bridge the gap between our two communities: corporates and startups. We create a safe space for them to mingle and discuss collaborations, sharing the ins and outs of how to do it properly with lessons learnt, fuckups and successful examples of innovative collaborations between the two sectors.

In previous occasions, we've had the Chief Innovation Officers and other managers and directors of innovation of leading companies like Decathlon, FC Barcelona, Philipp Morris, ASICS, Vueling, Moody's and more. You can check the videos for our 2020 and 2023 editions, respectively.

What's up with AI in 2025

In the first panel, we hosted:
• Asier Arranz (Senior Developer Advocate @ NVIDIA)
• Anthony Waller (Corporate Partner @ CMS)
• Caroline Casey (General Manager of Customer Experience & Innovation @ Moody’s)
• Greg Mount (Head of S&P Global Spark Assist @ S&P)
• Sarah Novotny (CTO & Partner @ GenLab Venture Studio)

With them, we discussed Agentic AI, which is the current trend in the world of artificial intelligence nowadays. Agentic AI has taken the world of tech by storm and it's hard to sum up everything that was discussed. You will have to wait for the videos!

However, here are some of the key ideas that were discussed: first off, Asier Arranz, from NVIDIA, shared his view on NVIDIA NIM (NVIDIA Inference Microservices) - a set of easy-to-use microservices designed to accelerate the deployment of generative AI models across cloud, data center, and workstation environments and how big releases by the hyperscalers are driving the markets up and down, with new models being deployed and made available for the public on a daily basis.

We then moved to discuss the role of the big corporates, zeroing in on financial markets, with both Caroline Casey and Greg Mount. Both shared their vision on what roles should big corporations play in developing new models and technologies, and why they are improving faster than before. Even if startups can develop better models faster, they will never have the sheer amount of data companies like Moody's or S&P have. Also, the challenges big corporations encounter are more mentally stimulating for AI developers and data scientists to work on right off the bat. On the other hand, startups working in these fields have to work with theoretical data to develop models to potentially sell to bigger customers, and that takes time and investment.

We moved on to discuss the role of ethics and legal limits on this kind of projects with both Sarah Novotny (who has experience in working for an with most big hyperscalers) and Anthony Waller, who is an active advisor on this kind of projects, to help companies avoid data leaks, cybersecurity scams and fraud. The part where we discussed how companies are training their own models and agents to defend them from other models and agents was hard to follow - even for me! - but fun.

What's up with Quantum computing in 2025

After a small break, where Moody's showcased a project we have developed for them (which shall remain private until they disclose it!), and Qcentroid presented their product with real use cases of how to solve real-world problems with quantum algorithms, we moved to the second panel.

In this case, we kicked it off with Dorit Dor (CTO @ Check Point software), who announced the creation of a new fund she's cofounded, Qbeat Ventures. Dorit shared how VCs approach quantum projects and how the uncertainty in this market created a favourable position for them: by being the early backers of a lot of projects, they will be regarded as the early believers and build a track record of investing in quantum before it becomes mainstream.

Moving on, we spoke with Sergio Gago (our good friend Sergio!) about the real use cases of quantum and how the big developments in quantum, affected by research and product drops from the likes of Amazon and Microsoft (thinking about topoconductors) are affecting how this technology becomes more and more adopted in the industry.

While we are far from seeing quantum teams being deployed in most companies, certain specific companies in selected industries, like biotech and finance, just to name a couple of them, have been working in quantum for years. Sergio believes this is an industry of winner takes all, even if briefly. The upside of being the first to deploy real use cases at large at reasonable prices will break entire industries.

In the interim, we will have to wait and keep investing in research so we can have quantum computers solve real-world problems.

Last, but not least, Victor Gaspar (CSO @ Multiverse Computing) shared his vision about how companies can innovate from hyper-regulated environments like Spain in particular. In the case of Multiverse Computing, who had just announced their fundraising round of 25 million euro, they see this as an opportunity: if they can build a successful model in unfavourable conditions, what can they do with favourable ones?