French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that the government will invest an additional €1 billion (US$1.16 billion) in its quantum strategy and €550 million to support the microelectronics sector, as global powers race to be first to leverage emerging technology.
“I’ll say it out loud. We have the means to be the winners of this race,” Macron said while announcing the funding.
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump’s administration unveiled plans to take US$2 billion in equity stakes across nine quantum-computing companies to secure US leadership in the technology that is set to become the next frontier after AI.
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Technological breakthroughs have deepened investor interest in quantum computing’s potential to speed up tasks from drug discovery to financial modelling and cryptography.
A “massive” increase in investment has been driven by the realisation of the growing economic importance of computing infrastructure, Theau Peronnin, CEO of Paris-headquartered quantum computing firm Alice & Bob, told Reuters.
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