What Europe needs to survive the quantum wars
Is quantum just another technological leap that will leave Europe on the side of the road?

The race for quantum technology may have turned into a battle of the bucks, but don’t count Europe out just yet. What the region lacks in mega-funding it can make up for with a secret weapon: superbrains.
That’s the thesis, at any rate, of French investor Charles Beigbeder. His investment company Audacia and its fund Quantonation are putting €20m behind the idea that Europe’s scientific expertise can translate into successful European companies.
“The business potential of quantum today is the result of 30 years of scientific research; we can finally start imagining commercial and industrial innovation on the back of a long history of academic efforts,” Beigbeder says. “Europe has a good set of cards to play because it’s had a very strong track record of fundamental research, including in physics and maths.”
This goes against conventional wisdom, which is that Europe is losing the war to dominate quantum technologies.
More than 43% of quantum-technology innovations patented between 2012 and 2017 came from Chinese companies and universities, according to the European Commission, with the rest mostly from the US. The European Union has plans for €1bn of investment in quantum technologies over the next 10 years, far from the $10bn that has been announced by China.

There is growing interest from investors in European quantum technology. In Europe, startups that have recently raised money in this space include the UK’s Riverlane, Austria’s Alpine Quantum Technologies (AQT) and Finland’s IQM.
Atomico’s State of European Tech report for 2019 found that 58% of quantum venture capital funding went to European startups last year, compared to 32% to US and Canadian startups and 5% for companies in Asia.
Beigbeder’s fund Audacia has bought stakes in companies including KETS Quantum Security, started out of the University of Bristol in the UK, and which raised €2.4m about a year ago.
Audacia is looking at opportunities across the board in quantum — startups developing applications from communications to sensing and computing — with an investment horizon of about 10 years.
Beigbeder says that Europe can utilise its intellectual powers to create viable quantum businesses, pointing that the continent has long been a world leader in scientific research.
“After the second world war, Europe needed engineers to rebuild itself,” says Beigbeder. “With quantum, we’ve entered an era that’s just as decisive, and it’s about having the right people who can imagine and create the future.”

https://sifted.eu/articles/europe-quantum-wars/