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EIC Chooses Nine Quantum Tech Start-ups in Latest Funding Round

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Insider Brief

  • The European Innovation Council (EIC) announced the results of its most competitive funding rounds yet, selecting nine quantum technology start-ups and SMEs to receive grants from the Transition and Accelerator programs.
  • Five start-ups were awarded funding under the EIC Transition initiative, each receiving approximately €2.5 million to advance lab-stage quantum technologies toward market readiness.
  • Four quantum technology SMEs secured grants under the EIC Accelerator initiative, including SemiQon (€17.5 million) and eleQtron (€12.5 million), to scale up innovations with higher technology readiness levels.

PRESS RELEASE — The European Innovation Council (EIC) recently announced the results of their Transition and Accelerator calls following the last cut-offs in October 2024, calling them their “most competitive” funding rounds so far after record numbers of submissions were received. Despite this fierce competition, nine European quantum technology start-ups/SMEs were selected to receive grants.

The EIC Transition initiative aims at “accelerating groundbreaking technologies from lab to market readiness”. From a record 413 proposals, the recent announcement revealed 40 projects were chosen to receive roughly €2.5mil each. This included 5 grants for start-ups in the field of quantum technologies, working on the following projects:

  • HQS-NextNMR (HQS Quantum Simulations GmbH, DE)  Next-Gen NMR Prediction and Analysis: A Cutting-Edge Tool for High-Precision Structure Identification
  • SQELETON (Silent Waves, FR) – Scalable Qubit Readout to Resolve Superconducting Quantum Computing’s Skeleton in the Closet
  • Q-SPIN (ThinkQuantum SRL, IT) – Quantum system for polarization-based internet networking
  • InQubate (Delft Networks B.V., NL) – Integrated Quantum Network Node using Chip-based Qubit Devices
  • PAQAAL (CubIQ B.V., NL) – Developing Photonic-Electronic Analog Application-Specific Integrated Circuits for a Quantum Secure Coherent Link

The EIC Accelerator initiative, meanwhile, supports SMEs to develop and scale up high-impact innovations, aiming for higher TRLs. Despite receive the highest ever number of submissions for an EIC Accelerator funding round – a staggering 1211 – amongst the 71 successful companies there are four quantum technology SMEs. The companies SemiQon (Finland) and eleQtron (Germany), for example, have revealed they will receive the considerable sums of €17.5mil and €12.5mil respectively. The winning projects are:

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  • COOL-CHIPS (SemiQon Technologies OY, FI)  Cool-Chips – Cryogenic CMOS chips for quantum, HPC and space industry
  • MCQube (Quobly, FR) – Breaking Barriers in Scalable Quantum Computing
  • MAGICAL (eleQtron GmbH, DE) – All-integrated on-chip ion trap towards fault-tolerant quantum computing
  • Tuxedo (Delft Circuits B.V., NL) – Development of Tuxedo: a superconducting flex-to-pcb interface connection for quantum technologies

As we announced previously, in the first EIC cut-off of 2024 a total of 10 quantum technology projects were chosen under the EIC Pathfinder Open and EIC Accelerator calls.

Matt Swayne

With a several-decades long background in journalism and communications, Matt Swayne has worked as a science communicator for an R1 university for more than 12 years, specializing in translating high tech and deep tech for the general audience. He has served as a writer, editor and analyst at The Quantum Insider since its inception. In addition to his service as a science communicator, Matt also develops courses to improve the media and communications skills of scientists and has taught courses. [email protected]

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