Utz Bacher

Utz Bacher is Vice President Software at Q.ANT, where he leads the development of the software ecosystem for Q.ANT’s photonic processors and drives the exploitation of photonic computing technology. After his studies in Information Technology, Utz spent more than 25 years in various business units at IBM. He started as a Linux kernel developer for high speed I/O and networking code, before leading the Linux on Cell/B.E. development team. After designing the hypervisor management for the hybrid mainframe, he became the lead architect for Linux on IBM Z. Utz also drove adoption of container technology and the concept of confidential computing on the platform and was appointed Senior Technical Staff Member. Later, he moved into IBM’s services organization, shaping Cloud solutions and their delivery for client projects. In 2021, Utz joined IBM Quantum where he was the responsible architect for bringing IBM's quantum capabilities to the Cloud. He also designed the integration of client IT environments and HPC clusters from scientific compute centers with IBM Quantum. Utz joined Q.ANT in 2026.