Silicon Valley reacts to Nirvanic’s AI consciousness

Quantum consciousness gains support among San Fran's techno-literati and VCs

X.com post by Joscha Bach about Suzanne Gildert at a San Francisco VC event in January 2025

As an introverted CEO, I stepped into an iconic Art Deco tower in downtown San Francisco last week, ready to bring my “A game.” Riding the elevator to the top, I entered a packed presentation room filled with investors and technologists.

It was a Nirvanic event hosted by a global venture capital firm and my first foray into the Bay Area to test my ideas against some very bright Silicon Valley minds. Even though Nirvanic is my third deep-tech startup, I wondered: how will this high-IQ crowd react? Consciousness is my life’s work after all and my heart was racing.

I entered a flow state as I shared Nirvanic’s plans for testing a new model of quantum consciousness for application in AI. If our conjecture is correct, it could have profound consequences for creating conscious, agentic AI systems that are more capable of handling novel, nuanced and complex situations—just like people. Our aim is to build safer AI that is conscious of humanity.

Suzanne Gildert giving a Nirvanic presentation at a San Francisco VC event in January 2025.

But instead of the intense grilling that I expected, I was met with surprising curiosity, encouragement and great questions. One Oxford PhD asked about collaborating further in this new area of quantum AI. And a tattooed executive who engineered a major innovation at Twitter admitted he left an important family matter just to hear our talk. He later sat with us at dinner and offered to introduce us to big-tech jet setters who “go to Burning Man.”

My talk was no doubt emboldened by recent news reports about Google Quantum AI’s Hartmut Neven’s ongoing research into quantum consciousness. Soon after, Quantum Insider also profiled Nirvanic alongside Google as tech firms exploring consciousness as the “The Next Big Quantum Use Case.”

Joscha Bach asks Suzanne Gildert a question at San Francisco VC event in January 2025.

Joscha Bach, a German cognitive scientist and AI strategist, offered encouragement: “Not enough people are working in [AI consciousness], and you’re fully diving into it.” And before I knew it, he posted a photo of me and my “quantum conscious robot dog” (as he called it) to X that quickly went viral. He posted his skepticism, but admitted he’s prepared to give us a chance: “I am ready to be a Suzanne Gildert fan.”

Bach, by the way, is brilliant and known for postulating that only a simulation can be conscious in that we as “selves” simulate our reality in our brains and live inside those same simulations. He asked if the “Two Mysteries” criticism—the twin unexplained properties of quantum mechanics and consciousness—poses a challenge for us. 

In Nirvanic’s view, our consciousness experience fits well with the holy trio of quantum physics: entanglement, superposition, and measurement. How so?

1. Quantum Entanglement provides a powerful integrative property where pieces of information become instantaneously correlated regardless of the distance — at opposite ends of the galaxy or across the vastness of our macroscopic brains. This helps us solve the binding problem in consciousness — the question of how millions of neural signals coming from all over our nervous system get woven together into a single, holistic conscious experience. 

2. Quantum Superposition is the uncanny ability of a quantum system to be in multiple states at the same time. We think this enables our minds to have a feeling of choice. Instead of information being represented as neurons firing or not firing, or zeroes and ones in a digital computer, quantum information can represent binary data simultaneously. Superposition could give our minds the ability to compute many options and consequences within a split second.

3. Quantum measurement aligns closest to our conscious experience of choosing an action. Measurement is the counterintuitive process by which a quantum system, previously in a superposition of states, collapses into one definite state when observed or interacted with.  It was made famous by the “double slit experiment” that showed how particles, like electrons, exhibit wave-like interference when not observed, but behave as particles with definite paths when they are. Our feeling of free will may be our mind making a “measurement” of our brain’s own quantum states, resulting in a definite action outcome.

Our California trip was the proof I needed that Nirvanic is on the right track. Added to this? Hundred of positive messages on X and in our inbox from all over the world from quantum physicists, engineers, philosophers, researchers and podcasters all looking to engage. And just yesterday, we got asked to move to Singapore. Not sure about that one yet.

(Are you following us on Twitter / X? You should! https://x.com/NirvanicAI )

We believe the growing interest in artificial super intelligence (ASI) is driving a deeper curiosity about consciousness and its mysterious physics. Building AI minds that use the same computational principles as life, we think, could lead to systems with greater intuition, empathy, judgment, and morality. The world is demanding safer AI, and that’s exactly what we aim to deliver.

So what’s next for Nirvanic?

Each day, we’re advancing our AI algorithms to experimentally test our theory of quantum consciousness starting with our AI “robot dog” and later, larger systems. I’m assembling a small team of quantum physicists to aid me. Soon, we’ll entertain seed financing. Our moonshot venture has deep philosophical and economic implications. 

We believe we’re the only investment opportunity in the world currently exploring quantum consciousness. You can learn more about quantum consciousness on our new Nirvanic webpage - What is Quantum Consciousness?

Find our mission fascinating?  Tell a friend. Share this Substack. Let’s engineer consciousness.

Suzanne

nirvanic.ai