BTQ Technologies Appoints Radical Semiconductor Founders to Advance Commercialization of Post-Quantum Semiconductors

• Radical Semiconductor Founders Join BTQ Technologies: Sean Hackett and Zach Belateche, co-founders of Radical Semiconductor, have been appointed as advisors to BTQ Technologies. Anne Reinders, also previously at Radical Semiconductor, will serve as BTQ's Head of Cryptography. These strategic appointments aim to accelerate the company's commercialization of post-quantum semiconductor technologies.
• Reinforcing Leadership in Post-Quantum Innovation: Following its acquisition of Radical Semiconductor, BTQ is leveraging the expertise of the Radical founders and the groundbreaking CASH architecture to deliver scalable, efficient, and secure quantum-era solutions across industries such as IoT, financial services, blockchain and government infrastructure.
• Lionel de Saint-Exupéry Appointed as Senior Advisor: BTQ has appointed Lionel de Saint-Exupéry, Chairman of Saintex Capital Management, as Senior Advisor. He previously served as Vice Chairman of KGI Financial, a leading publicly listed financial holding company in the Asia-Pacific region, with total assets of over US$125 billion. He will provide strategic guidance on capital markets and corporate growth initiatives, bringing extensive experience in global financial leadership and investment strategy.

VANCOUVER, BC, Dec. 16, 2024 /CNW/ - BTQ Technologies Corp. (the "Company") (CBOE CA: BTQ) (FSE: NG3) (OTCQX: BTQQF), a global quantum technology company focused on securing mission-critical networks, is pleased to announce the appointment of Sean Hackett and Zach Belateche—the co-founders of Radical Semiconductor—as advisors to the company. Additionally, Anne Reinders has been appointed as Head of Cryptography.

These appointments follow BTQ's acquisition of Radical Semiconductor, reinforcing its leadership in post-quantum technology and accelerating its commercialization roadmap.

Pioneers in Cryptographic Innovation

• Zach Belateche: An expert in high-performance and secure accelerator architectures, Zach brings a wealth of experience in designing innovative hardware solutions. He co-founded Radical Semiconductor and led the development of its groundbreaking processing-in-memory technology, which achieved state-of-the-art efficiency for post-quantum cryptography on NIST-standard algorithms. Currently leading the silicon team at Normal Computing, he specializes in low-power hardware for probabilistic machine learning. Zach's career also includes contributions to silicon architectures for artificial intelligence at SambaNova Systems and research on emerging ferroelectric memory technologies at Stanford University and GlobalFoundries. He holds both a Master's and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
• Sean Hackett: As the co-founder and former CEO of Radical Semiconductor, Sean has a proven track record of transforming emerging semiconductor technologies into market-ready products. Under his leadership, Radical delivered cutting-edge cryptographic solutions tailored to the defense, automotive, and FinTech sectors. With a strong background in finance and product development, Sean specializes in bridging the gap between laboratory innovation and commercial applications. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Stanford University.
• Anne Reinders: A cryptographic acceleration specialist with over a decade of experience, Anne has a distinguished career in advancing hardware and software for secure systems. At Radical Semiconductor, she played a key role in enhancing the company's processing-in-memory technology, optimizing NIST-standard post-quantum cryptography algorithms, and achieving state-of-the-art cryptographic hash throughput on embedded devices. Anne previously worked on high-performance homomorphic encryption schemes at Intel and Cornami, improving the hardware performance of leading encryption algorithms like BGV, BFV, and CKKS. During her nine years at Intel Labs, she contributed to hardware and software implementations for cryptographic accelerators, including the NIST PQC candidate BIKE and elliptic curve pairing algorithms.

The Importance of Radical Semiconductor to BTQ

BTQ's acquisition of Radical Semiconductor marks a pivotal step in its mission to deliver scalable, efficient, and secure quantum-era solutions. Radical's innovative CASH (Cryptographic Accelerator System Hardware) architecture leverages processing-in-memory technology to address the computational demands of post-quantum cryptographic algorithms.

By integrating Radical's technology, BTQ is positioned to provide next-generation quantum-secure solutions across sectors such as IoT, financial services, blockchain and government infrastructure. The addition of Radical's founders as advisors ensures BTQ will continue to innovate and lead as global cryptography standards evolve.

Olivier Roussy Newton, CEO of BTQ Technologies, commented: "Bringing Sean, Zach, and Anne on board strengthens our ability to accelerate the commercialization of post-quantum technologies. Their expertise in cryptographic hardware and software innovation is unmatched and will help us deliver solutions that meet the urgent security needs of the quantum era. This collaboration is a testament to our commitment to securing mission-critical networks and building a future-proof quantum-secure infrastructure."

Anne Reinders, of Radical Semiconductor and Head of Cryptography for BTQ stated: "Quantum computing poses new threats to existing cryptography, and new algorithms offer new avenues for acceleration. The Radical CASH architecture is uniquely well suited to accelerating the new standards for post-quantum cryptography and puts BTQ in an excellent position to deliver high-performance solutions to these emerging needs. I am excited to continue my work on this architecture with the team at BTQ."

Zach Belateche, Cofounder of Radical Semiconductor and Advisor for BTQ added: "With its network of industry and academic partnerships, BTQ is uniquely positioned to commercialize novel hardware and software for post-quantum cryptography. I'm excited to work alongside Anne, Sean, and the BTQ team to help bring Radical's ultra-efficient CASH architecture to market to help secure devices, networks, and infrastructure against future quantum threats.

For more insights on Radical Semiconductor's acquisition by BTQ, you can read Zach's blog post: Novel Cryptography Needs Novel Hardware.

The expertise of Radical Semiconductor's founding team will be instrumental in guiding BTQ's development of scalable, industry-leading solutions. With this strategic partnership, BTQ is poised to set new benchmarks in quantum security, ensuring that its technologies are ready to meet the demands of the post-quantum world.

The company is also pleased to announce the appointment of Lionel de Saint-Exupéry as Senior Advisor. Lionel will provide guidance on business strategy and capital markets. Lionel is the Chairman of Saintex Capital Management, a family-owned platform managing long-term capital across both public and private markets. He previously served as Vice Chairman of KGI Financial, a leading publicly listed financial holding company in the Asia-Pacific region, with total assets of over US$125 billion. He continues to be actively involved with the group as a Board Member and Investment Committee Member. Lionel is also the Co-Founder and former President & CEO of CDIB Capital International. Earlier in his career, he was a senior banker in the investment banking division of Lehman Brothers, where he worked on more than US$45 billion in M&A and capital markets transactions. He began his career at Booz-Allen & Hamilton. Lionel holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a Bachelor's degree in Finance from HEC Paris. He is a Trustee of the Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation and a Member of the Young Presidents' Organization.

About Radical Semiconductor 
Radical Semiconductor is a hardware security company developing the CASH architecture: a secure, agile, and reconfigurable cryptographic accelerator architecture using processing-in-memory technology. Radical's cryptographic cores offer the widest support for emerging cryptographic primitives, including post-quantum algorithms, emerging cipher suites, and privacy enhancing technologies, while still maintaining backwards compatibility with existing algorithms.

About BTQ
BTQ was founded by a group of post-quantum security experts with an interest in addressing the urgent security threat posed by large-scale quantum computers. With the support of leading research institutes and universities, BTQ's extensive technology portfolio and commercialization platform is focused on accelerating quantum advantage.

Connect with BTQ: Website | LinkedIn

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Olivier Roussy Newton
CEO, Chairman

Neither Cboe Canada nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward Looking Information

Certain statements herein contain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Such forward-looking statements or information include but are not limited to statements or information with respect to the business plans of the Company, including with respect to its research partnerships, and anticipated markets in which the Company may be listing its common shares. Forward-looking statements or information often can be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "intend", "expect", "plan" or "may" and the variations of these words are intended to identify forward-looking statements and information.

The Company has made numerous assumptions including among other things, assumptions about general business and economic conditions, the development of post-quantum algorithms and quantum vulnerabilities, and the quantum computing industry generally. The foregoing list of assumptions is not exhaustive.

Although management of the Company believes that the assumptions made and the expectations represented by such statements or information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that forward-looking statements or information herein will prove to be accurate. Forward-looking statements and information are based on assumptions and involve known and unknown risks which may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results, expressed or implied, by such forward-looking statements or information. These factors include risks relating to: the availability of financing for the Company; business and economic conditions in the post-quantum and encryption computing industries generally; the speculative nature of the Company's research and development programs; the supply and demand for labour and technological post-quantum and encryption technology; unanticipated events related to regulatory and licensing matters and environmental matters; changes in general economic conditions or conditions in the financial markets; changes in laws (including regulations respecting blockchains); risks related to the direct and indirect impact of COVID-19 including, but not limited to, its impact on general economic conditions, the ability to obtain financing as required, and causing potential delays to research and development activities; and other risk factors as detailed from time to time. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

SOURCE BTQ Technologies Corp.

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