Former IBM Executive Joins Haiqu to Sell Its Quantum Software Platform

Haiqu has hired former IBM quantum executive Denise Ruffner as vice president of business development and commercial operations worldwide. She is one of the more recognizable commercial figures in quantum computing, having opened the first customer accounts at several of the industry’s better-known companies. The move is a personnel story rather than a technology one.

Denise Ruffner’s track record in quantum

According to the July 16 report, Ruffner built IBM Quantum’s Ambassador and Startup programmes, training more than 350 ambassadors to brief customers on the company’s quantum work. She then became the first chief business officer at Cambridge Quantum Computing, now Quantinuum, where she helped bring in enterprise customers including JPMorgan Chase, and went on to bring the first customers to both IonQ and Atom Computing. She also founded Women in Quantum and co-founded DiviQ, which works on workforce diversity in the sector.

What Haiqu hopes to achieve with the hire

Haiqu develops quantum application software. Its recently launched Agentic OS pairs AI agents with the company’s middleware to guide research teams through building use cases and running experiments, with the aim of getting to usable results faster.

CEO Richard Givhan framed the pitch around timing, saying users should not have to wait for fault-tolerant machines or “until 2030” for commercially useful results. That is the company’s positioning, and its claims about cutting time and cost are not independently verified. The product is currently available to scientific teams as a free beta. As Givhan explained:

“We believe that users should not have to wait for fully fault tolerant quantum computers to run meaningful experiments. (…) To this end, we have developed a semi-autonomous R&D system powered by intelligent agents that works with our proprietary middleware to enable a fundamentally faster path from proof of concept to advantage. Denise has been a long-time mentor for our team, and her expertise as one of the quantum industry’s most accomplished commercial leaders will be critical to helping us reach the right partners and end-users.”

Haiqu did not disclose terms, headcount, or customer numbers. The signal worth noting is where experienced quantum sales leadership is moving: from hardware makers toward software.