#quantumfuturesecurity

France Quantum

France advances in quantum era mid-2025

In July and August 2025, France strengthened its quantum technology leadership in policy, industry, and research. The quantum age impacts France's ambitious governmental objectives, vast investment plans, scientific discoveries, and foreign relationships. In computers, navigation, sensing, communications, and space, quantum technology is advancing rapidly.

National Strategy: Quantum Future Security

Under President Emmanuel Macron, France is raising its defence goals and commitment to disruptive technologies like AI and quantum in the face of geopolitical uncertainty. France's defence budget is scheduled to rise from €50.5 billion to €67 billion in 2030 to avoid lapses in these important sectors.

Strategic actions like the Franco-British engineering centre with Imperial College and CNRS, which President Macron attended, have backed deeptech. The €54 billion France 2030 investment plan has survived budget cuts, and a new space and quantum technology research program demonstrates continued funding.

Policymakers acknowledge the “quantum decade”'s tremendous growth across Europe. However, even as hardware access increases, Europe may fall behind in the global race for quantum usefulness if it does not spend more in software development. This suggests a future focus for France's quantum strategy.

Industry: Building Capabilities and Partnerships

France quantum enterprises are leading innovation by forming relationships in North America and Europe to build application-ready, scalable, and sovereign solutions. Key players made substantial progress:

Quandela is a European photonic quantum computing leader. To study hybrid AI and quantum computing technologies, the firm is developing innovative quantum machine learning (QML) models with Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute. Quandela supplied quantum computers to European customers and integrates AI with NVIDIA. Quandela is also working with attocube systems GmbH on Lucy, a European quantum computer, demonstrating Franco-German cooperation.

In order to achieve quantum advantage, Pasqal and IBM have created a formal framework for recognising and proving when quantum computers outperform classical systems in relevant tasks.

Quobly, a leading quantum microelectronics business, has strategically collaborated with Inria. This alliance combines silicon-based quantum hardware with cutting-edge control software to produce a fully integrated, fault-tolerant, and scalable quantum computing architecture and a sovereign value chain.

Thales labs in Palaiseau are researching quantum physics-based medical diagnostics to create pen-sized, hundreds-of-fold more precise devices.

HiQuTe Diamond, a French deeptech firm, raised €7.5 million to industrialise the production of high-quality diamonds for next-generation sensors, power electronics, and quantum computing.

SEALSQ Corp, a semiconductor and post-quantum technology business, acquired IC'ALPS with France Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty clearance.

Leading fault-tolerant quantum computing startup Alice & Bob and Inria have submitted a new peer-reviewed publication describing the most hardware-efficient method for establishing “magic states” on superconducting quantum computers, a crucial step towards quantum computation.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang emceed VivaTech 2025, where quantum computing had its “mainstream moment” and gained public and industry attention.

Early Quantum Science Research

France research is breaking new ground and setting international standards:

Researchers from C12 Quantum Electronics and multiple French institutions claimed a record 1.3 microseconds of coherence in a carbon nanotube circuit. This is 100 times better than carbon-based implementations and 10 times better than silicon quantum dot devices. In a carbon nanotube gatemon qubit, a France-led research determined charge noise to be the main driver of decoherence and achieved 200 nanosecond coherence. These findings make carbon nanotubes a promising quantum technology choice.

EPFL researchers developed a Rydberg atom-based numerical method for simulating quantum spin liquids, which has advanced topological quantum systems research.

For developing novel quantum architectures, Christopher Bäuerle received an ERC Advanced Grant 2024, while Igor Ferrier-Barbut received a CNRS Bronze Medal 2025 for storing and modifying quantum information via light. France promotes science.

Alain Aspect, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics winner for his quantum entanglement experiments, was elected to the Académie française, boosting France's scientific status.

Academic Events: Fostering Talent and Collaboration

France, a quantum education and event hub, promotes global cooperation:

The June France Quantum 2025 conference at Station F in Paris drew approximately 1,000 people and 60 foreign experts. An “After Movie” broadcast in July showed how well the conference introduced quantum technologies worldwide.

Professor Anne Broadbent leads a strong Canada-France relationship on nonlocal boxes that is advancing quantum research and giving students life-changing overseas experiences.

Q2B Paris, Europe's premier quantum conference, will bring together worldwide academics, business executives, and parliamentarians in September 2025 to integrate scientific achievements with commercial and policy aims.