Europe’s VCs Move into Quantum Tech Investments

(Sifted.eu) One of the rare investments in quantum computing in Europe was just announced. Finnish startup IQM, which is developing quantum computing hardware, has raised an €11.45m seed round from a group of investors including Maki.vc, MIG Funds, OpenOcean, Tesi (the Finnish industrial investment fund), and Vito Ventures. Most of the big fundraising in this sector has tended to be in the US and Canada, and one promising quantum company, PsiQ recently announced it was moving to Silicon Valley to raise money.
However, IQM could be the start of a wave of investors taking the plunge. “Quantum is now at the stage where it could really start to take off,” says Ilkka Kivimaki, partner at Maki.vc, which has a €80m fund focused mainly on early-stage deeptech investments.
While governments have pledged large sums of money to quantum research (including a €1bn EU project, a $10bn project in China and $1.2bn in the US) venture investors have been slower to get involved.
“For Europe in general, the challenge is to find enough investors interested in the sector, who understand the specificities… it’s about whether within the next 2 or 3 years there’s going to be enough investors who are ready to put significantly more money into the field, that’s going to keep companies on track here,” said Christophe Jurczak, CEO of Quantonation.
This article closes with a listing of the main quantum computing technologies and the companies and private funding supporting startups to date.