How a teenage habit of building everything himself became a company's infrastructure policy – Interview with Mark Nicholas Jones, co-founder of MQS

Quantum is often talked about alongside AI as the next big thing, and most of the attention is on the hardware. The quantum computer that will break encryption, design a drug, or train, fine-tune and deploy AI models more efficiently. Denmark has committed to this technology leap, with ambitious initiatives such as the Magne system, the QuNorth programme and the Copenhagen Quantum Foundry.  

Within this space, Molecular Quantum Solutions (MQS) plays a very specific role. The Copenhagen company uses quantum chemistry, the physics of how molecules behave, to calculate the properties of molecules on a computer before testing them in a lab. Those calculations run on high-performance computers today, and MQS holds patents on methods to run them on quantum computers once those machines are good enough and affordable enough to use.

We spoke with Mark Nicholas Jones, co-founder of MQS, about starting a company in a shared flat kitchen weeks before the world shut down, why the company runs on European infrastructure down to the internal tools, and what European quantum still needs.

You studied chemical engineering in Karlsruhe and Copenhagen and were heading toward a research career. What made you leave that path?

As a teenager, I actually never thought that I would become a long-term researcher. I just love cutting-edge science and engineering while integrating it for people, companies and institutions to help them. So that's what I decided to pursue, and to be honest, developing a company is not that much different than setting up a research group or centre. I don't care about a career, but more about helping out, and that path has never changed.

MQS started at the end of 2019, weeks before the world shut down. What was that first year actually like?

Sitting in a shared flat kitchen using all sorts of quantum chemistry codes, further re-implementing and developing our own code (without AI agents at that time), doing online Hackathons, applying for grants and accelerators… Just all the fun and exciting hustle in the beginning when starting something new!

When everything shut down in March 2020 in Denmark, it was actually a very effective time period for coding and organising online meetings with Skype and Zoom. One can become distracted by unnecessary events and things as a first time founder because some invitations seem important when they’re actually not (still hard to figure out sometimes). The stay-at-home period kept us focused. Things opened up quite quickly again for small businesses in Denmark which was also nice for us to sit together with other start-ups in a shared office space while the events circus was defunct.

At MQS, you develop quantum computing methods alongside the classical pipeline. What are you preparing for that isn't possible yet?

We have several patents and keep building a stack of connected patents which can utilise quantum computers for quantum chemistry calculations, while we are also making a lot of things better with CPUs and GPUs. With MQS we are moving now into a phase where we are tackling very interesting life science biomolecules such as peptides and proteins with bound metals, to calculate properties at higher accuracy and then fine-tune AI/ML models trained on less accurate data.

And one day MQS will also buy QPUs to put them into a server rack with different CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs. In the cellar of Quantum Denmark at the Niels Bohr Institute, we already have a very nice server rack with Intel, AMD and Nvidia processing units. And if our algorithms don't benchmark faster, then we will just make sure to develop further until they win the benchmark tests. 

What occupies you outside MQS at the moment?

My relationship with my other half and her son. Friends and family. Renovating my flat which is another endless project. Sometimes producing some snippets of a short music composition with my Roland and Korg synthesizers together with a Roland Groovebox or an Akai MPC2000. Or just playing/mixing records. I actually recently played a seven hour vinyl set at bird bar Copenhagen. 

I’m also picking up Nintendo video games again (after 26 years of no video gaming at all) because the history of technology development, soundtracks and game play designs are quite interesting. I love doing sports as well (running, swimming, basketball). So yeah, there’s thankfully a lot of things to keep me busy, happy and energised.

Denmark committed to Magne and the QuNorth programme a year ago. Has that changed anything practical for a company like yours yet?

We actually applied together with the Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme (NQCP) and our own project proposals for the QuNorth Quantum Flagship Challenge. It's of course great news for Denmark that so much is happening with QuNorth, Quantum Foundry Copenhagen and Gefion. But most important for us is to keep developing independently with simulators and real QPUs from all kinds of providers. And fault-tolerant quantum computing algorithms you cannot run on simulators or current QPUs, so that work is mostly a mathematical discipline in itself.

You have previously said MQS runs entirely on European infrastructure, right down to the internal tools. How did that decision come about?

Yes, our self-hosted infrastructure runs solely on European infrastructure apart from some non-customer-facing things (for example git) which we are currently making more production ready to run ourselves. Our platform can also be self-deployed by our customers on any provider infrastructure they choose, that is the choice of our customer.

As a teenager, when video games became less interesting for me and I was focusing mostly on basketball and computer programming, I was also learning the Linux operating system. I just spiralled into this idealism of doing everything yourself, with only free and open-source software, and not depending on anyone else's systems. I took it as far as flashing for example a Lemote Yeelong machine with libreboot or a router with LibreCMC. And I believe society could learn a lot from DIY culture. 

Europe is now facing a challenge which could have been prevented more than 20 years ago if we had not drunk too much of the Silicon Valley Kool Aid. And it was not that difficult to already see back then that Putin was developing a hybrid war against the US and Europe. Sometimes I think of where we would be today if Al Gore had won the 2000 elections with his agenda to fight global warming. All of this connects to European infrastructure.

Europe is continuing to build a serious research base in quantum. As you see it, where does European quantum stand globally right now, and what is still needed more than anything?

There has always been a very strong research base in Europe for all kinds of disciplines and we should celebrate this more in our European society.

I think Denmark is doing great work and so is Europe when it comes to quantum. And we should stay critical and informed about history, especially with all of the right-wing parties continuing to win ground across Europe. Science can help to make the next generations think critically and be more reflective. European quantum should foster this.

European deep tech venture capital firms and their LPs have both an opportunity and an obligation in how they deploy their funds. Invest into European quantum computing infrastructure, sustainable European AI infrastructure, European automation, and sadly, more defence tech to correct some things we missed doing in the past. It's not about isolating nations or becoming fully independent from the US, China and so on, but about healthy economic and trade relationships with a moral compass that serves all our different societies. I find that more important to recognise than claiming technology will fix things. The sorts of tech bros like Elon Musk, Alex Karp, Sam Altman and co have shown themselves not to be good role models for founders and company builders pursuing a common equal good.