A Europe that’s losing at tech could still achieve quantum supremacy
The UK and EU have committed twice as much money as the US to investments in the computing sector
Europe lost the race to be a leader in artificial intelligence almost before it had begun. By the time Mistral, the closest thing the continent has to an AI champion, secured its first round of funding in 2023, OpenAI had already raised more than $13bn. London-based DeepMind sold itself to Google nearly a decade earlier. Yet the next race might at least be closer.
In the burgeoning quantum computing industry, Europe is attracting a far greater share of venture capital funding than normal. European businesses raised $404mn in the first quarter, according to PitchBook data, just a fraction behind the $417mn raised in North America — mainly the US.
The gap was wider last year, with Europe’s $1.4bn around 60 per cent of the North American total. But that’s still a far better ratio than in the wider start-up world. In venture capital more broadly, European companies raised only 24 per cent of what American groups managed.
In some respects, this relative strength shouldn’t be surprising. The so-called “father of quantum computing” is a British physicist, after all. But then a Briton invented the World Wide Web, and that didn’t turn the UK into a great centre of internet companies.
The UK and the rest of Europe have historically been held back by two related problems: they have fared poorly at commercialising promising research, and — for the few start-ups that did emerge — there was not enough money around to help them scale up.
In recent years, governments have been trying to address both issues. Many emerging UK groups have links to the National Quantum Technologies Programme, presciently set up more than a decade ago to encourage the “development and commercialisation” of quantum tech. Several recent deals involved spinouts from public institutions. Oxford Quantum Circuits began in the University of Oxford’s physics department; Quantum Motion was started by researchers at Oxford and University College London; Quobly started in France’s CEA-Leti research institute.
All three have raised money in the past few months in deals that included a mix of public and private funds — the two UK groups were both backed by the British Business Bank, the state development bank, while Quobly was helped by the EU’s $4bn start-up fund. Between them, the UK and EU have committed twice as much money as the US to quantum computing investments, according to PitchBook.
Contrast this with other emerging areas like nuclear fusion, where Europe seems to be following the classic pattern of strong research but weak commercialisation. Europeans have published more scientific articles on fusion than the US, according to the EU, but private funding to European businesses between 2022 and 2025 was less than 20 per cent of the US total.
Progress in quantum should at least help challenge that narrative, and weaken the common argument that the US has some sort of inherent cultural advantage when it comes to starting companies. With the right encouragement, Europe should be able to compete in other emerging technologies too.
Like a quantum bit — the fundamental building block in a quantum computer — the quantum industry is in a superposition: in other words, all potential outcomes are still possible. That doesn’t guarantee European groups will end up as winners, but at least for once they have a chance.