Quantum Companies, Quantum People

Former Cadence leader joins quantum chip maker Silicon Quantum Computing

Avatar of Ivy Delaney
September 15, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

Silicon Quantum Computing has appointed Karna Nisewaner as Chief Legal Officer, bringing over 25 years of experience at the intersection of artificial intelligence and semiconductor industries to the quantum computing firm. Nisewaner joins SQC after a 14-year tenure as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Cadence Design Systems, a background SQC explicitly seeks as it scales its atomic-precision manufacturing. “World-class talent and industry leaders have a home at SQC,” says Founder and CEO Michelle Simmons; Nisewaner will be based in Palo Alto, California, signaling a growing US presence for the Sydney-headquartered company.

Cadence Leader Nisewaner Joins Silicon Quantum Computing

Karna Nisewaner will base her work with Silicon Quantum Computing in Palo Alto, California, establishing a key US foothold for the Sydney-headquartered firm. This strategic placement signals SQC’s intent to use expertise from Silicon Valley as it scales its silicon-based quantum computing technology. Nisewaner’s arrival follows recent investments from both Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund Corporation and the venture capital firm Firgun Ventures, supporting the company’s expansion.

This experience is particularly relevant given SQC’s focus on atomic-precision manufacturing, a field demanding rigorous process control and intellectual property management. She previously held in-house legal positions at Intuit and IBM, further solidifying her background in technology law. “I have dedicated my career to helping technology companies scale with the discipline and rigor that complex, global environments demand,” said Nisewaner.

I have dedicated my career to helping technology companies scale with the discipline and rigor that complex, global environments demand.

Karna Nisewaner, Chief Legal Officer at SQC
More like this
Quantum Computing Business NewsZapata Quantum’s CEO joins Boston’s ‘Power 50
Quantum Computing Business NewsPasqal hires product and HR chiefs to scale quantum business
Quantum PeopleRizwan Virk, The MIT Founder Who Asks If Reality Is a Computation
Technology NewsWhat Now For Quantum Stocks?
Stay current

See today’s quantum computing news on Quantum Zeitgeist for the latest breakthroughs in qubits, hardware, algorithms, and industry deals.

Tags:
IBM Quantum Computing semiconductors
Avatar of Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

Latest Posts by Ivy Delaney: