It isn’t every day that the Court of Auditors urges policymakers to open the purse. Yet that is its stance in the report dedicated to public support for quantum computing, released this Monday.
Verdict: public money has been “well spent,” but France now finds itself in a global race where the United States and China enjoy vastly greater financial resources. Without a bold response, the institution warns, France’s French champions of quantum computing risk being scooped up by foreign investors.
Launched in 2021, the National Quantum Strategy (SNQ) mobilized €1.8 billion for the 2021-2025 period, of which €1.5 billion came from public funds, largely drawn from the France 2030 plan.
Quantum computing (meaning the machines themselves as opposed to quantum sensors or communications) captured the bulk of the funding with 86% of it, i.e., €597 million committed by December 31, 2025.
The Court praises centralized governance and a balanced strategy that managed to pull together previously scattered funding and cover the entire value chain, from university training to industrialization.
On the higher-education side, the QuanTEdu-France program has led to the creation of 37 master’s programs, of which 13 are specifically dedicated to quantum, for nearly 1,100 students.
In terms of research, the Priority Research Program and Equipment (PEPR) organized cooperation among the CNRS, the CEA, Inria, laboratories and industry. The result: a fabric of dynamic start-ups emerged, propelled by solid scientific results and the creation of skilled jobs.
A first assessment validating five years of investment
The report identifies five young French companies that are actively building quantum computers and participate in the military program PROQCIMA: Pasqal, Alice & Bob, Quobly, Quandela and C12.
These are precisely the firms the Court sees as threatened. The sector is entering a “phase of concentration” where the best-capitalized players buy up the others. French companies, lacking access to enough capital, become natural targets.
The British example underscores the risk. In 2025, Oxford Ionics, a gem from the University of Oxford specializing in trapped-ion computers, was acquired by American firm IonQ for $1.075 billion, largely paid in stock.
London approved the deal only on the condition that strategic activities and skills remain in the United Kingdom. A scenario France would like to avoid repeating, this time without safeguards.
It is easy to illustrate the fragility of European equity markets. Of the eleven quantum computing companies currently listed on stock markets worldwide, none are European.
A small market poised to explode
The global market for quantum computing stood at around €1.1 billion in early 2025.
Projections from the Court envision it rising to between €8.7 billion and €13 billion by 2035, implying a double-digit growth rate potentially exceeding 25% per year over a decade. The applications span—from designing new drugs and materials to optimizing transport and industry, including cryptography…
The threshold at which a quantum computer would surpass classical computing is estimated at around a hundred qubits, while industrial goals target roughly 2,000 qubits, with a maturity horizon between 2030 and 2035.
In other words, the contest is happening now.
But manufacturers of machines, according to the Court, remain heavily dependent on public funds due to a private market that is not yet sufficiently developed.
While France lags on software, enabling technologies (components, cross-cutting building blocks) already constitute a profitable market and a sovereignty issue in and of itself.
Funding deemed too precarious
Another point of vigilance: the nature of the funding.
The bulk of public money comes from the France 2030 credits, overseen by the General Secretariat for Investment. By its nature, these funds are not permanent.
An additional €1 billion envelope was indeed announced by the government in late May 2026 for all quantum technologies through 2030, but its precise allocation—including the share allotted to quantum computing—remains to be defined. The Court also points to uncertainty about funding for university training from the 2028 intake, which undermines the ability to adapt offerings over time.
The Court’s recommendations
Not surprisingly, the Court urges the state to anchor its support in a sustainable trajectory, regularly revised to reflect sector needs.
And it lays out several recommendations:
- mobilize more private capital, French and European, to take over from public money;
- rebalance the financing mix by increasing the share of repayable advances relative to grants;
- strengthen public procurement, particularly through the PROQCIMA program;
- improve consolidated tracking of all public funding spread across the state, regions, taxation and European funds;
- enhance training from the 2027 academic year on critical software building blocks (architecture, error correction, software stack);
- build by 2028 targeted European partnerships based on complementary technological specializations and a balanced sharing of value.
This last point encapsulates the report’s philosophy. If France alone lacks the critical mass to stand up to the United States and China, it nevertheless possesses the scientific and industrial assets to become a cornerstone of European quantum computing.
Provided it knows how to pick its battles and persuade its neighbors to pool rather than scatter their efforts.
