Insider Brief
- Quantonation argues in a new white paper that quantum computing, fusion, and other physics-based fields are “Perpetual Five-Year Technologies” that generate real economic value long before their ultimate goals are reached.
- The firm says repeated delays reflect the step-by-step physical, manufacturing, safety, and supply-chain constraints unique to hard tech, not failure of the underlying science.
- The paper concludes that venture capital must adapt to longer timelines, blended public-private financing, and partial markets where enabling components create standalone commercial value.
Quantum computing is five years away, “because it’s always five year away” is a favorite punchline for a range of critics stretching from well-meaning tech skeptics to cynical Luddites.
Quantum computing — along with nuclear fusion, advanced energy systems, compact particle accelerators, and extreme-light physics — have, in fact, all worn that label. Quantonation, one of Europe’s best-known quantum-focused venture firms, argues in a new white paper that this pattern is not a warning sign of failure but a defining feature of how the hardest technologies mature and how they create value along the way.
The Quantonation white paper, written by Christophe Jurczak, managing partner of Quantonation, labels these deep tech fields as “Perpetual Five-Year Technologies,” or PFYTs. The firm is not so much introducing a new investment strategy as it is naming a reality the company has been living with since it began backing quantum companies in 2018. This reality is that these technologies are governed by physics, not software, and they therefore scale on a fundamentally different clock. And that different clock does not prevent real economic value from forming long before the ultimate vision is reached, according to the team.
At a time when venture capital is rethinking its dependence on fast-scaling software, the white paper offersa case for why hard tech that is slow, expensive and unfinished can still be valuable, if not indispensable.
Why “Five Years Away” Never Disappears
Rather than a punchline, perpetual five-year technologies should be treated as a structural outcome of how physical systems advance, according to the paper.
Unlike software platforms, which can scale by copying code and adding servers, physics-based technologies must move through a chain of physical constraints. A system must first work in a lab. Then it must be manufactured. Then it must be tested for reliability. Then it must comply with safety rules. Then it must fit into existing industrial supply chains. Each stage introduces limits that are often invisible at the start.
In this view, delay is not a single bottleneck. It is a sequence of bottlenecks that only become clear one after another. As a result, progress tends to happen in plateaus rather than straight lines. Long periods of slow, incremental engineering are followed by sudden shifts when enough layers of the system finally line up.
According to the white paper, earlier examples — ones that are adding trillions to today’s global economy — have followed this arc. Artificial intelligence (AI) progressed unevenly for decades before computing power, data, and new algorithms converged. Reusable rockets moved from an impractical idea to a working launch model after years of failed tests and vertical integration. Robotics and autonomous systems advanced through similar cycles of overpromise, retreat, and renewed progress.
Being stuck in the “five-year” zone does not mean a technology is stalled, according to the paper. It often means it is still climbing the physical stack that separates proof of concept from industrial infrastructure.
The Quantum Template
Quantum computing serves as Quantonation’s primary case study because it illustrates how a Perpetual Five-Year Technology can still evolve into a strategic market. (Important to note that this white paper is positioned as an extension of the thesis developed in quantum, rather than a pivot.)
When the firm began investing in the sector in 2018, quantum hardware was fragile, error-prone and mostly confined to research labs. Commercial uses were speculative and most companies were valued on future promise rather than present revenue.
Today, Quantonation points to a much different landscape. Quantum processors operate in production environments. Hybrid quantum-classical systems are used in early applications across finance, chemistry and energy. Cloud platforms allow developers to access real machines. Public companies now anchor parts of the sector. Governments have embedded quantum into national research and security strategies.
The white paper does not suggest that quantum computing is complete. Large-scale error correction remains unresolved. Costs remain high. Broad industrial use is still limited. But the firm argues that the nature of the risk has shifted. Quantum is no longer defined mainly by whether the physics works. It is now defined by whether the engineering, supply chains, and economics can be scaled.
That distinction is central to the PFYT framework. A technology can remain “five years away” in its most ambitious form while still crossing into real markets, real infrastructure and real capital flows, the paper suggests.
‘Physical AI’ and the Acceleration of Engineering
According to the paper, there is a shift in AI as it moves from a layer of analysis toward its use as an embedded component of machines that interact directly with matter. This includes machine learning models that stabilize quantum devices, guide plasma in fusion experiments, discover new materials for batteries and superconductors, and control advanced laser and optical systems.
In traditional physics and engineering, experimentation is slow and expensive. Each iteration requires building hardware, testing it, modifying it and often starting again. By embedding intelligence directly into these feedback loops, the pace of learning changes, the team argues. Systems can adapt in real time rather than only between experiments.
This convergence is referred to as “Physical AI.” The firm sees this not only as a tool that accelerates other Perpetual Five-Year Technologies, but as a PFYT in its own right, a frontier where intelligence and matter increasingly co-evolve.
The point is not that physics suddenly becomes easy. Precision, heat, radiation and materials constraints remain unforgiving. But the time between meaningful advances could shrink, even when the overall system still takes years to mature.
The Role of Partial Markets
Energy technologies illustrate how value can form even when the final system remains distant.
Quantonation groups nuclear fusion, advanced fission and space-based solar power under the PFYT umbrella. All share long development horizons and heavy dependence on public policy. Fusion, in particular, has attracted large private and public investment in recent years, even as commercial power generation remains far off.
This framework, however, focuses less on when full reactors arrive and more on what must be built along the way. Fusion programs require superconducting magnets, cryogenics, radiation-resistant materials, high-precision lasers, plasma diagnostics and real-time control systems. These components serve markets well beyond fusion, including aerospace, defense, medical imaging and semiconductor manufacturing.
Quantonation treats these “enabling” technologies as independent sources of value. They can generate revenue, exits and industrial momentum long before a single fusion plant goes online. In that sense, the PFYT model does not depend on a single future payoff. It depends on a chain of partial markets that form as engineering layers accumulate.
The same logic applies to compact particle accelerators, quantum materials, advanced batteries, and extreme-light systems. Each produces commercially useful tools well before the most ambitious end goal is reached.
Why Hard Tech Forces Venture Capital to Change
A central thesis of the white paper appears to be that Perpetual Five-Year Technologies cannot be financed using the assumptions of the software era.
In software, scale can be fast, capital needs are often modest, and exits can happen within a few years. In PFYTs, timelines stretch, capital intensity rises, and public funding frequently becomes a structural component of scale-up.
Quantonation describes a venture model built around blended finance. Equity is combined with public research grants, industrial partnerships and project-based funding. Capital is staged around engineering milestones rather than user growth. The goal is not to force physics into quarterly reporting cycles, but to align capital with physical reality.
The white paper also describes a shift in how founders choose investors. In PFYTs, founders often seek investors for ecosystem-building capacity rather than for capital alone. Supply chains, regulatory pathways, manufacturing partnerships, and public-private coordination can matter as much as valuation terms.
In this environment, venture capital becomes less about speed and more about institutional reach.
The paper places unusual emphasis on integration, in other words: the ability of a new technology to fit into existing industrial systems.
Many physics-based innovations fail not because they perform poorly in isolation, but because they cannot be manufactured at scale, certified for safety, or inserted into established supply chains. A material can be superior in a laboratory and still fail commercially if it does not align with industrial processes. A sensor can be accurate and still fail if it is too fragile for field use. A control system can be powerful and still fail if it cannot interface with data center infrastructure.
The paper suggests that economic success often depends less on breakthrough performance than on compatibility with inherited systems. For PFYTs, integration becomes the true gate between scientific success and commercial value.
Policy as a Structural Force
Public policy plays a central role in the PFYT framework. Quantum technologies, fusion, and advanced energy systems now sit inside national industrial strategies across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Funding programs, export rules, procurement policies, and standards bodies increasingly shape where these technologies mature and who controls their supply chains.
Quantonation treats public-private coordination as a structural necessity rather than a secondary influence. Regulatory clarity can accelerate markets as decisively as technical breakthroughs. Misalignment can stall commercially viable systems for years.
In this sense, PFYTs are not governed only by science and capital. They are also governed by political and institutional timing.
Why “Five Years Away” Can Still Mean Valuable
The white paper offers an interesting challenge to conventional thinking about investing in hard tech, especialy in its treatment of delay itself.
Being five years away is usually treated as a reason to wait. Quantonation reframes it as a reason value continues to form. Each partial solution — a better material, a tighter control system, a more stable component — may become an asset that can be sold, licensed, manufactured, or deployed elsewhere.
Breaking this PFYT framework down for investors, founders and the market: value is not concentrated only at the finish line. It is distributed along the climb.
For investors, the message may be both cautionary and constructive. The technologies most likely to reshape energy, computing, sensing and manufacturing will not scale like apps. Their economics will unfold over longer horizons, their capital structures will remain hybrid, and their risks will migrate rather than vanish.
For founders, the framework offers a different reading of the familiar frustration of being perpetually close. In the PFYT vocabulary, being five years away is not a verdict on feasibility. It is a description of where a technology sits in the long conversion of physics into infrastructure.
And for markets more broadly, the implication is clear. After decades of digital-first value creation, the next industrial cycle is increasingly being built around matter again — around machines that manipulate light, energy, and information at physical limits.
