France Commits €1.5 Billion to Quantum Computing and Microchips
France's Strategic Investment in Quantum Computing and Microelectronics
By Dominique Patton
Macron's Announcement and Global Context
PARIS, May 22 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron will announce on Friday that France will invest an additional €1 billion ($1.16 billion) in its quantum strategy and €550 million in a support programme for the microelectronics sector, as global powers race to be first to leverage emerging technology.
The announcement will come a day after the Trump administration unveiled plans to take $2 billion in equity stakes across nine quantum-computing companies to push to secure U.S. leadership in the technology that is set to become the next frontier after AI.
Investor Interest and Technological Breakthroughs
• Technological breakthroughs have deepened investor interest in quantum computing's potential to speed up tasks from drug discovery to financial modelling and cryptography.
Importance of Computing Infrastructure
• A "massive" increase in investment has been driven by the realisation that computing infrastructure is "more and more crucial in our economies", Theau Peronnin, CEO of quantum computing firm Alice & Bob, told Reuters.
Alice & Bob: French Quantum Computing Innovator
• The company is among those to receive support from the new French funding, and said on Friday it has also won funding from Nvidia's venture capital arm NVentures to develop hardware to make quantum computing less error-prone.
Focus on Cat Qubits
• Alice & Bob focuses on "cat qubits", a type of quantum bit designed to be more resistant to errors than normal qubits, addressing one of quantum computing's biggest problems.
Recent Funding and Collaborations
• The new investment, which adds to a €100 million Series B round raised last year, follows collaboration between Alice & Bob and Nvidia on several projects recently.
France's PROQCIMA Programme and Future Goals
• The company is participating in France's PROQCIMA programme led by the Ministry of the Armed Forces, which aims to have two French-designed prototypes of universal quantum computers ready for industrialisation by 2032.
Additional Information
($1 = 0.8618 euros)
(Reporting by Dominique Patton; additional reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Sonali Paul and Jan Harvey)
