Guillaume Verdon

Guillaume Verdon
Born
Guillaume Verdon-Akzam[1]

Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Other nameBasedBeffJezos
CitizenshipCanadian
EducationMcGill University (BS)[2]
University of Waterloo (MMath)[2][3]
Years active2013-present
Known for

Guillaume Verdon-Akzam, also known as Guillaume Verdon or Gill Verdon,[4] is a Canadian mathematical physicist, quantum computing researcher, entrepreneur, and writer who is a key contributor of Google's quantum machine learning software, Tensorflow Quantum.[5]

He is also a co-founder of the effective accelerationism movement and the start-up company Extropic AI which operates at the intersection between physics-based computing and artificial intelligence.[6]

Education and career

Verdon attended McGill University as an undergraduate and graduated with honors with a double major in Mathematics & Physics. He attended University of Waterloo for graduate studies where he completed Master's work in 2017 at the Institute for Quantum Computing and continued with Achim Kempf as his PhD supervisor.[3][1][7] He was also given the IQC Entrance Award at Waterloo.[8] Verdon presented papers as a Guest Speaker at NASA's 2018 Adiabatic Quantum Computing conference.[2]

In 2017, Verdon co-founded Everettian Technologies and served as its chief scientific officer. The company was named after Hugh Everett III, and was an early Canadian start-up focused on quantum machine learning solutions. He also had a side venture into NFTs related to quantum information, which provided capital for his later startup Extropic AI.[9][10]Verdon has worked at Google and had primary responsibility for theoretical work on the team that introduced the TensorFlow Quantum library for quantum machine learning.[5][11][12] During his time at Google X, Verdon introduced and worked on quantum graph neural networks,[13] and quantum Hamiltonian-based models.[14] He has several patents[15] with Google X covering quantum computing, quantum machine learning, and signal processing.

In 2022, Verdon and Trevor Mccourt co-founded Extropic AI, which focuses on building a thermodynamic hardware platform for accelerating AI research[16][17] and announced the next year the completion of a $14.1 million seed round.[18] Extropic AI was initially operating in stealth-mode and said that it was focused on building chips specifically intended for running LLMs.[9][19] In 2025, Wired reported that Verdon was continuing to work through Extropic AI on a new kind of chip that handles probabilistic bits instead of deterministic bits.[20][21]

Effective accelerationism

Verdon wrote under the pseudonym BasedBeffJezos and was a co-founder of the effective accelerationism (e/acc) movement.[9] The origin of the movement can be traced back to a May 2022 newsletter publxished by him and 3 other authors.[22][23][24] In its coverage of the movement, Forbes outed Verdon as the author behind his pseudonymous account.[9][17] Since his naming, he has publicly spoken on podcasts and debated with those who have conflicting views on AI safety (such as Connor Leahy)[25] and other issues of technological progress.[26]

References

  1. 1 2 Verdon-Akzam, Guillaume (2017-01-10). "Probing Quantum Fields: Measurements and Quantum Energy Teleportation".
  2. 1 2 3 "2018 Adiabatic Quantum Computing Conference - Speakers". Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science - Universities Space Research Association. August 21, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2024.
  3. 1 2 "Physics of Information Lab: Former group members". 15 October 2014. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  4. ↑ "Guillaume Verdon". TEDAI San Francisco.
  5. 1 2 Wiggers, Kyle (2021-03-10). "Alphabet is repurposing Google TPUs for quantum computing simulations". VentureBeat.
  6. ↑ "The AI insiders who want the controversial technology to be developed faster". ABC News. 2024-02-17.
  7. ↑ Verdon-Akzam, Guillaume (January 10, 2017). "Probing Quantum Fields: Measurements and Quantum Energy Teleportation". University of Waterloo. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  8. ↑ "Student award recipients | Institute for Quantum Computing | University of Waterloo". uwaterloo.ca. Retrieved 2026-07-29.
  9. 1 2 3 4 "Who Is @BasedBeffJezos, The Leader Of The Tech Elite's 'E/Acc' Movement?". Forbes. December 1, 2023. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  10. ↑ "OpenSea, gverdon".
  11. ↑ Broughton, Michael; Verdon, Guillaume; McCourt, Trevor; Martinez, Antonio J.; Jae Hyeon Yoo; Isakov, Sergei V.; Massey, Philip; Halavati, Ramin; Murphy Yuezhen Niu; Zlokapa, Alexander; Peters, Evan; Lockwood, Owen; Skolik, Andrea; Jerbi, Sofiene; Dunjko, Vedran; Leib, Martin; Streif, Michael; David Von Dollen; Chen, Hongxiang; Cao, Shuxiang; Wiersema, Roeland; Huang, Hsin-Yuan; McClean, Jarrod R.; Babbush, Ryan; Boixo, Sergio; Bacon, Dave; Ho, Alan K.; Neven, Hartmut; Mohseni, Masoud (August 26, 2021). "TensorFlow Quantum: A Software Framework for Quantum Machine Learning". arXiv:2003.02989 [quant-ph].
  12. ↑ Black, Doug (March 9, 2020). "TensorFlow Quantum software combines quantum and classical machine learning". insideHPC. Retrieved April 19, 2024.
  13. ↑ Verdon, Guillaume; McCourt, Trevor; Luzhnica, Enxhell; Singh, Vikash; Leichenauer, Stefan; Hidary, Jack (2019-09-26). "Quantum Graph Neural Networks". arXiv:1909.12264 [quant-ph].
  14. ↑ Verdon, Guillaume; Marks, Jacob; Nanda, Sasha; Leichenauer, Stefan; Hidary, Jack (2019-10-04). "Quantum Hamiltonian-Based Models and the Variational Quantum Thermalizer Algorithm". arXiv:1910.02071 [quant-ph].
  15. ↑ "Google Patents". patents.google.com. Retrieved 2024-01-17.
  16. ↑ "The crypto bros are coming for AI". Business Insider. December 23, 2023. Retrieved January 18, 2023.
  17. 1 2 "The techno-optimists and doomsdayers inside Silicon Valley's most dangerous AI debate". CNBC. December 17, 2023. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  18. ↑ "Extropic Secures $14.1 Million in Seed Funding to Propel Novel Physics-Based Computing Paradigm". Yahoo Finance. December 12, 2023. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  19. ↑ "Eight startups challenging Nvidia in AI chips". The Information. August 24, 2023. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
  20. ↑ Knight, Will (March 24, 2025). "Hot New Thermodynamic Chips Could Trump Classical Computers". Wired. Retrieved March 28, 2025.
  21. ↑ Knight, Will. "Extropic Aims to Disrupt the Data Center Bonanza". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  22. ↑ "Get the lowdown on 'e/acc' — Silicon Valley's favorite obscure theory about progress at all costs, which has been embraced by Marc Andreessen". Business Insider. July 28, 2023. Retrieved January 18, 2023.
  23. ↑ "Effective Accelerationism — e/acc". 31 October 2022. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  24. ↑ Walker, Stephen (July 4, 2023). "Effective Accelerationism (e/acc)". Klu. Retrieved November 20, 2023.
  25. ↑ DeepCast. "Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST): Showdown Between e/acc Leader And Doomer - Connor Leahy + Beff Jezos on DeepCast". DeepCast.
  26. ↑ Lavoipierre, Ange (February 17, 2024). "The AI insiders who want the controversial technology to be developed faster". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved July 12, 2024.
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