Why Europe presents a Quantum investment window for smart capital 2025 - 2026
Summary
Europe’s quantum ecosystem is shifting from scientific excellence to genuine commercial traction. Companies like IQM, Multiverse Computing, and Alice & Bob are advancing credible roadmaps, enterprise deployments, and real industrial engagement. Despite remaining structural challenges, especially fragmented markets and limited growth-stage capital, these conditions create a temporary valuation advantage. Many European quantum start-ups still trade below U.S. peers, even as procurement-driven demand and Europe’s world-class supply chain make the continent an increasingly compelling entry point for investors.
Content
Europe’s research strength, scale-up gap, and valuation opportunity
Europe’s procurement advantage: Public funding that creates real markets
Fragmentation and the push toward a more unified European market
A shift toward execution: Real-world applications over abstract performance races
Europe’s Quantum investment window is open - and it calls for smart capital
Europe’s quantum ecosystem is entering a decisive phase
Europe’s long-standing strength in research is now translating into the first wave of commercial maturity. At the QBC Summit at CERN, leaders from IQM, Multiverse Computing, and Alice & Bob discussed with Alexandra Beckstein how Europe can turn its scientific foundation into global competitiveness. Their message to investors was consistent: the momentum is building, and the commercialisation phase has begun.
Europe’s research strength, scale-up gap, and valuation opportunity
The founders noted that while the U.S. offers faster scaling conditions, Europe’s advantages lie in early stage support, deep technical talent, and research excellence. The gap is not innovation, but the transition to industrial scale.
As IQM’s Jan Goetz put it, “A startup grows where it can scale. Companies only move if they are limited in their growth where they currently are.”
European markets tend to price in less future optimism than their global counterparts. As industrial adoption accelerates, this mismatch between fundamentals and expectations opens early entry points for longterm investors before the market corrects.
Europe’s procurement advantage: public funding that creates real markets
A central theme was the evolution of public funding. Grants remain essential for early research but can divert companies away from disciplined execution. As Alice & Bob’s Cécile Perrault explained, “The biggest risk of grants is dispersion. Scaling requires sticking to a roadmap, not drifting with research incentives.”
The shift toward procurement, governments purchasing systems and services, is creating real markets, accelerating validation, and supporting recurring revenue. This aligns much more closely with investor expectations than research-focused subsidies.
Fragmentation and the push toward a more unified European market
Europe’s complexity, with multiple regulatory and procurement systems, slows scaling relative to the U.S. market. However, initiatives such as the EU-Inc framework aim to ease cross-border operations, simplify governance, and harmonise early-stage financing instruments. If implemented effectively, such reforms could significantly reduce friction and strengthen Europe’s position as a cohesive investment landscape.
Europe’s strategic supply chain: A multi-layered advantage
Europe’s enabling technologies are among the strongest worldwide. Cryogenics, photonics, and advanced control electronics form a robust industrial backbone that supports quantum hardware development and strengthens resilience across the value chain.
This breadth is reflected on the software side as well. Multiverse Computing already serves more than one hundred enterprise customers across finance, energy, and manufacturing, applying quantum-inspired algorithms to optimise portfolios, industrial processes, and resource allocation. These deployments show that demand is emerging at scale, a powerful signal of commercial readiness.
A shift toward execution: real-world applications over abstract performance races
Europe is moving away from research-centric cycles and toward milestone-driven execution. Hardware companies are aligning revenue with system delivery, publishing fault-tolerance roadmaps, and maturing their engineering organisations. Software companies are embedding quantum capabilities in existing enterprise workflows, and integrations with HPC environments are accelerating adoption.
A concrete example discussed at the panel was the integration of Alice & Bob’s technology into the Hartree Centre’s high-performance computing environment, including SLURM, used by more than half of global supercomputing centres. This enables quantum resources to plug directly into established industrial simulation workflows in materials science, chemistry, and energy.
These developments show that quantum in Europe is entering shorter, commercially relevant validation cycles, a crucial shift for investors seeking measurable progress.
Global competition and the importance of scale
As U.S. hyperscalers accelerate acquisitions and strategic alliances, the global quantum landscape is consolidating. This presents both opportunity and pressure for European players. Scale becomes decisive: companies that achieve it are better positioned to remain independent and shape Europe’s technological trajectory.
As Multiverse Computing’s Enrique Lizaso noted, “Money coming from the customer is always much better because for the startup that means revenues and revenues drive valuation.”
This underscores the importance of procurement, enterprise demand, and visible commercial momentum.
Europe’s quantum investment window Is open - and It calls for smart capital
Europe has the scientific foundation, industrial depth, and emerging customer demand to build global quantum champions. What the ecosystem now requires is smart capital that recognises the valuation arbitrage, understands Europe’s strengths, and appreciates the global dynamics of quantum technology.
In this environment, smart capital means working with partners who understand Europe’s strengths and the dynamics of the global quantum race. QAI Ventures brings deep regional insight and global market awareness, helping investors access high-quality deal flow and de-risk early-stage opportunities across the continent.
For investors, the convergence is rare: undervalued assets, procurement-driven market creation, and an ecosystem on the cusp of scale. The insights shared by Europe’s leading founders point to a clear conclusion: the opportunity is here, the momentum is accelerating, and Europe may soon produce the next generation of deep-tech scale-ups, provided investors act while the window remains open.
Explore your QuantumAI investment possibilities with us!
Learn more about our investment thesis and portfolio on our website or reach out for a 1:1 conversation with James Sanders, QAI Ventures' Investment Director
