(ScienceDisrupt) This is an interview with Christophe Jurczak, CEO of Quantonation, a French early-stage venture fund launched in 2018 dedicated to ‘Deep Physics’ startups with a focus on the emerging and disruptive field of quantum technologies. Quantonation recently invested in KETS, a Bristol-based company with the world’s first on-chip quantum encryption technologies, and LightOn, a Paris-based quantum computing startup working on optics-based hardware for acceleration of machine learning algorithms.
The focus at the time of this March 2019 interview was mostly on software: ‘quantum computing as a service’. Researchers – they might be senior scientists or postdocs – are starting to create companies, or at least thinking about creating companies. In Europe, we’re behind the U.S. or Canada in that respect, but there are more researchers who started showing an interest, some toward the hardware side too.
Particular areas of interest are in the U.K., also in France, a little bit in Germany, and the Netherlands. Sweden has announced plans for supporting the quantum industry, along with Finland.
Quantonation CEO Discusses European Early-Stage Investment in Quantum Tech
