France bets €500 million that quantum computing is the tech race Europe can finally win
April 14, 2026 - 11:46 am
Europe has watched as American and Chinese companies dominate every major technology trend, from cloud computing to social media and AI. However, quantum computing may present a different story. A cluster of French startups, supported by €500 million in government funding and backed by renowned physics research, positions France as a formidable competitor in a race where traditional advantages are minimal.
At the forefront of this effort is Alice & Bob, a Paris-based startup that has developed "cat qubits" technology, named after Schrödinger's famous thought experiment. This innovative approach tackles a key challenge in quantum computing: error correction. Most quantum computers use thousands of physical qubits to create a single reliable logical qubit due to the fragility of particle states. Alice & Bob's cat qubits, on the other hand, can autonomously correct certain errors at the hardware level, potentially reducing the need for numerous physical qubits significantly.
"It’s not about being faster," explains co-founder and CEO Théau Peronnin, "it’s about being so dramatically faster that you change what is feasible." The company secured €100 million in a Series B round in January 2025, led by Future French Champions, AXA Venture Partners, and Bpifrance, bringing their total funding to €130 million. They are now investing $50 million in a new laboratory north of Paris, featuring a clean room for chip fabrication and a test facility for progressively larger machines.
Five companies, five qubit architectures
Alice & Bob is part of France's PROQCIMA program, a government initiative aiming to deliver a fault-tolerant quantum computer demonstrator with 128 logical qubits by 2030 and a commercial system with 2,048 logical qubits by 2035. This program involves five selected companies:
- Alice & Bob (cat qubits)
- Pasqal (neutral atoms)
- Quandela (photonics)
- Quobly (silicon spin)
- C12 Quantum Electronics (carbon nanotubes)
The program operates on a competitive basis, with three most promising approaches advancing after four years and only two remaining after eight. The diversity of strategies is the key to France's approach, as opposed to the US' focus on superconducting circuits.
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