Sebastian Hassinger

Sebastian Hassinger has spent three decades watching emerging technologies make the leap from laboratory curiosity to industrial reality — and the last nine of those years inside the room where quantum computing is doing exactly that. *The New Quantum Era* is his attempt to bring readers into that room.

From 2021 to 2026 he led worldwide business development for quantum technologies at Amazon Web Services, where he drove a tenfold increase in research adoption of Amazon Braket and built partnerships with academic groups, startups, and national quantum initiatives across four continents. Before AWS, he created IBM's quantum computing research and ecosystem partner programs, managing sponsored research with Harvard, ETH Zurich, NYU, Princeton, and the Unitary Foundation, among others. He is now a Fellow of the Unitary Foundation.

His path into quantum was indirect, which is the point. Trained in the liberal arts, he built Apple's first online customer support site in the early 1990s, founded a global mobile applications practice when mobile was still a curiosity, and has co-founded three companies and advised many more. That pattern — translating something strange and new into something a serious person can act on — is the same instinct that drives this book. The New Quantum Era is a no-math guide for readers who want to evaluate quantum claims for themselves: what's real, what's hype, and what actually has to happen for the technology to matter.

Sebastian holds Executive MBAs from Columbia Business School and London Business School, and hosts The New Quantum Era podcast, which keeps him in weekly conversation with the researchers and builders shaping the field. He lives in Austin, Texas.