Executive Summary
France’s quantum sector closed 2025 with a shift toward standard-setting, industrial integration and post-quantum security, reinforcing its role as both a European coordinator and a manufacturing anchor. December activity reinforced France’s position as a maturing ecosystem increasingly focused on interoperability, sovereign infrastructure and scalable deployment rather than isolated technical milestones.
Policy momentum centered on the inaugural meeting of ETSI’s new Quantum Technologies Technical Committee in Sophia-Antipolis, bringing together more than 90 participants from Europe, North America and Asia. The formation of TC QT — alongside the election of a leadership group spanning industry, policy, and telecoms — signaled a move from exploratory coordination to formal governance of global quantum standards. That shift was reinforced by a joint EPO–OECD study showing a fivefold increase in quantum-related inventions over the past decade, highlighting Europe’s growing emphasis on patents, skills, and supply chains as strategic assets.
French companies remained active across cloud, defense and semiconductor manufacturing. Pasqal expanded access to neutral-atom quantum computing by making its QPU available through Scaleway’s Quantum-as-a-Service platform, strengthening Europe’s sovereign cloud stack. Alice & Bob deepened links between quantum and high-performance computing through a new partnership with TERATEC, embedding fault-tolerant systems into France’s broader simulation and HPC ecosystem. In post-quantum security, collaborations accelerated: SEALSQ and Airmod targeted quantum-safe electronics for aerospace and defense platforms, while Thales and CEA advanced joint testing of post-quantum cryptographic schemes aligned with emerging NIST standards.
At the hardware and manufacturing layer, Quobly reached a milestone toward industrialization as its custom 28Si FD-SOI wafers entered STMicroelectronics’ 300-millimeter production line, marking a rare end-to-end integration from materials to quantum circuits within Europe.
Research activity continued to support near-term application readiness. Quandela demonstrated progress toward secure delegated quantum computing using semi-classical light, while Qubit Pharmaceuticals and Sorbonne University reported results challenging established assumptions about quantum advantage.
Education and diplomacy closed the month with the Paris–Munich Quantum Workshop, reinforcing cross-border researcher mobility and signaling sustained Franco-German alignment as quantum technologies move from labs to infrastructure.
Policy
ETSI’s Quantum Committee First Meeting: a Key Milestone for Global Quantum Standards
The kick-off meeting of the Quantum Technologies Technical Committee (TC QT), held last week at ETSI’s headquarters in Sophia-Antipolis marked a major milestone in quantum standards development. The event attracted over 90 participants from Europe, Canada, Singapore, Japan and other countries.
This intensive day of discussions set the pace for future meetings, laid the foundation of the committee’s activities, and included the election of a dynamic, expert, and well-connected leadership team. Mark Pecen from EigenQ Europe was elected as Chair of TC QT. Axel Ferrazzini (GovStrat), Federico Grasselli (Leonardo S.p.A), Martin Ward (Toshiba), and Momtchil Peev (Huawei) were elected as Vice Chairs.
Inventions in quantum technologies surge five-fold in last decade
Quantum technologies are set to reshape the economy, as quantum computers unlock unprecedented computational power, quantum sensing drives advances in areas ranging from medical imaging to seismic detection, and quantum communication transforms data security.
The study, produced jointly by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), captures the richness and complexity of the quantum ecosystem from a variety of data sources. Its holistic approach analyses innovation, firm activity, investment trends, skills demand, and trade in relevant equipment and materials, as well as reviewing government efforts to advance quantum technologies.
Business
5 top Quantum Computing companies and startups in France in December 2025
We’re tracking Alice & Bob, Quobly and more Quantum Computing companies in France from the F6S community. Quantum Computing is the 57th most popular industry and market group. If you’re interested in the Quantum Computing market, also check out the top Deep Tech, Quantum Technology or Materials Discovery companies.
Pasqal Makes Its Neutral-Atom Quantum Processing Unit Available on Scaleway’s Cloud
Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, today announced its integration into Scaleway’s Quantum-as-a-Service (QaaS) platform, unveiled at ai-PULSE 2025. This collaboration makes Pasqal’s advanced quantum processing units more accessible to European researchers and developers, reinforcing the company’s commitment to democratizing quantum computing through sovereign cloud infrastructure.
Building post-quantum gear is hard. A new partnership aims to make it easier
A new partnership between a European chipmaker and software firm aims to ease the difficult task of creating defense systems with encryption strong enough to withstand attacks by tomorrow’s quantum computers.
SEALSQ, which specializes in “quantum-safe” chips, and Airmod, a French company that specializes in secure electronics for aerospace and drones, say they can help companies produce the larger, more energy-intensive software that meets standards for quantum-safe hardware and software environments, as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST.
Alice & Bob Partners with TERATEC to Support Quantum–HPC Integration
Alice & Bob, a global leader in fault-tolerant quantum computing, today announced a new strategic partnership with TERATEC, a French initiative for high-performance computing and simulation.
As a new member of TERATEC, Alice & Bob joins more than 80 tech and industrial companies, laboratories, research centers, universities and engineering schools working together in the strategic areas of simulation, HPC, AI and early fault-tolerant quantum computing (eFTQC). Members include Airbus, AMD, École Polytechnique, GENCI, L’Oréal and Thales.
Thales and CEA: an unprecedented partnership to strengthen French post-quantum cybersecurity
As the quantum revolution compels us to rethink the foundations of cybersecurity, Thales — a global high-tech leader in Defense, Aerospace, and Cyber & DigItal — and CEA, a public research body serving the State to ensure France’s scientific and technological sovereignty, have collaborated to assess and strengthen the new generation of post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) algorithms.
In 2025, Thales and CEA launched a joint project called GIVERNY, aimed at exploring the resistance to attacks of two post-quantum algorithms: the HAWK signature scheme, which is closely related to the NIST FN-DSA (Digital Signature Standard), and the FAEST signature scheme, which is related to the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard).
Quobly, a pioneer in quantum microelectronics announces a major milestone in building its industrial value chain, with the first custom 28Si FD-SOI wafers provided by Soitec now cycling inside STMicroelectronics’ 300 mm manufacturing facilities in Crolles (France). This is a crucial step in establishing a fully integrated supply chain, from advanced materials to quantum integrated circuits, as part of the strategic collaboration between the companies. This milestone in Quobly’s roadmap towards million-qubit technology marks a global first in the field of FD-SOI with a 28Si-enriched channel and confirms the strong potential for accelerating the industrialization of quantum processor units (QPUs).
New Quantonation White Paper: Investing in the Physics Frontier
The Quantonation White Paper 2025, Investing in “Perpetual Five-Year Technologies” (PFYTs) was released — the company’s framework for understanding, funding, and building the deep-physics technologies that will define the next industrial frontier.
The concept of PFYTs emerged from a familiar paradox: technologies that appear “five years away” for extended periods. Rather than a flaw, this reflects a structural reality of deep-tech hardware, where progress depends on the alignment of physics, engineering, supply chains, and policy. PFYTs are not delays — they are roadmaps, shaped by an ecosystem that must mature in concert.
Research
Towards practical secure delegated quantum computing with semi-classical light
Researchers from Quandela present an SDQC protocol which drastically reduces the technological requirements of both the client and the server while providing information-theoretic composable security. More precisely, the client only manipulates an attenuated laser pulse, while the server only handles interacting quantum emitters with a structure capable of generating spin-photon entanglement. The quantum emitter acts as both a converter from coherent laser pulses to polarisation-encoded qubits and an entanglement generator. Such devices have recently been used to demonstrate the largest entangled photonic state to date, thus hinting at the readiness of our protocol for experimental implementations.
Qubit Pharmaceuticals and Sorbonne University Show Quantum Computers Can Outperform Classical Limits
Qubit Pharmaceuticals, in collaboration with Sorbonne University, has demonstrated that quantum computers can perform certain calculations faster than scientists believed physically possible. The discovery overturns one of the field’s longest-standing theoretical limits and redefines what quantum advantage means.
Education and Events
The Paris-Munich Quantum Workshop
The Paris-Munich Quantum Workshop took place in Paris, France, on December 8 and 9, 2025. The workshop brings together researchers from two quantum hubs, the Paris region and Munich.
The aim is to present the latest advances in quantum science and technology, strengthen existing collaborations and create new ones, and encourage the mobility of PhD students and postdocs between the two communities.
