French quantum startup Quobly raises massive $133M round

The global race for quantum supremacy is accelerating into a high-stakes funding war. On Wednesday, French quantum computing startup Quobly announced it has raised €115 million ($133.72 million) in a major funding round led by France's state-backed investment bank Bpifrance, European chip giant STMicroelectronics, and Sealsq.

The massive capital injection arrives amid a blitz of geopolitical spending on both sides of the Atlantic. Just last month, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged a €1 billion state investment into quantum technology, arriving mere hours after the Trump administration unveiled a rival $2 billion federal funding package for U.S. quantum initiatives, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.

While quantum computers hold the theoretical power to solve complex chemistry, biotechnology, and cybersecurity problems in minutes—tasks that would paralyze conventional supercomputers for millennia—the current generation of hardware remains notoriously unstable, fragile, and astronomically expensive.

Quobly is attempting to shatter that price barrier by leveraging existing tech infrastructure. Instead of inventing entirely new manufacturing methods, the startup designs quantum chips using modified silicon transistors—the exact same fundamental components that have powered everyday computers for decades.

"We benefit from the economy of scale of this industry," explained Maud Vinet, CEO and co-founder of Quobly. "The cost of producing our chip leads us to design quantum computers that will be a 100 times cheaper than competing technologies."

To pull this off, Quobly has embedded a specialized team of engineers inside STMicroelectronics' commercial factories. Vinet noted that capturing the extreme precision, consistency, and high yield of a massive commercial semiconductor fabrication plant is absolutely vital to making their quantum chips viable.

The Grenoble-based startup isn't keeping its tech under wraps for long. Quobly plans to open up cloud-based remote access to its very first functional systems at its French headquarters later this year. Other notable backers joining the funding round include the European Innovation Council, Blast, Air Liquide Venture Capital, and existing investor Innovacom.

News.Az 

By Aysel Mammadzada