Executive Summary
France’s quantum ecosystem continued to expand in July 2026 through a combination of government oversight, industrial scaling, international partnerships and commercial growth, even as policymakers acknowledged intensifying global competition. The French Court of Auditors concluded that the country’s National Quantum Strategy has been well managed but warned that the international landscape has evolved more quickly than France’s current roadmap, with industry consolidation and foreign acquisition pressure creating new challenges for domestic companies. The assessment highlighted the need to transition from early-stage support toward long-term industrial competitiveness.
Quantum technologies also featured prominently in France’s broader strategic agenda. President Emmanuel Macron identified quantum technologies as a priority area for deeper cooperation with Germany alongside artificial intelligence, defense, space and energy, underscoring quantum’s growing role in European industrial and security policy.
Commercial activity remained strong, led by Pasqal, which expanded internationally through partnerships in South Korea, launched a Canadian photonic packaging initiative through Aeponyx, began work on the €50 million Q-PLANET pilot line for neutral-atom quantum chips and strengthened its commercial leadership with the appointment of former HPE executive Mark Armstrong. Elsewhere, Quobly signed a $5 million agreement with SEALSQ to integrate post-quantum security into silicon-based quantum computing platforms, while BTQ subsidiary QPerfect joined France’s first publicly accessible neutral-atom quantum computing project.
French research also continued to produce advances, including new work from CNRS and Université Paris Cité proposing scalable quantum machine-learning architectures designed to overcome longstanding training limitations. Meanwhile, France Quantum 2026 highlighted growing industry attention to supply-chain resilience, export controls and open-source strategies as geopolitical considerations increasingly shape quantum technology development.
This is a non-exhaustive look at some of the developments that affected France’s quantum ecosystem during July 2026.
Policy
Ukraine and European defence: Macron outlines key topics for talks with Merz
French President Emmanuel Macron has said he plans to discuss support for Ukraine, peace and security in Europe, and strengthening defence cooperation during talks with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
France and Germany also plan to deepen cooperation in space, quantum technologies, artificial intelligence and energy, Macron noted.
A Europe that’s losing at tech could still achieve quantum supremacy
Europe lost the race to be a leader in artificial intelligence almost before it had begun. By the time Mistral, the closest thing the continent has to an AI champion, secured its first round of funding in 2023, OpenAI had already raised more than $13bn. London-based DeepMind sold itself to Google nearly a decade earlier. Yet the next race might at least be closer. Several recent deals involved spinouts from public institutions. Oxford Quantum Circuits began in the University of Oxford’s physics department; Quantum Motion was started by researchers at Oxford and University College London; Quobly started in France’s CEA-Leti research institute
France’s audit office takes stock of quantum computing support
Public money was well managed, says the Cour des comptes, but the strategy no longer matches the pace of international competition.
In a report published in July 2026, the French audit office reviews the national quantum strategy. It finds real but fragile successes, and warns that a phase of consolidation, and sometimes predation, of French companies has already begun.
Business
Pasqal Appoints Former HPE Executive Mark Armstrong as Commercial Chief
Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, today announced the appointment of Mark Armstrong as Chief Commercial Officer for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and the Asia-Pacific region (APAC). Armstrong, a former Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) executive who led HPE’s High Performance Computing and AI business across EMEA, aims to drive Pasqal’s commercial strategy, sales execution and customer expansion in those regions across the EMEA and APAC regions.
Q-PLANET Begins Development of European Pilot Line for Neutral Atom Quantum Chips
Q-PLANET, a €50 million European Quantum Chip Stability Pilot Line coordinated by Pasqal, has begun its work to advance industrial-grade components for neutral atom quantum technologies. The €50 million initiative brings together 28 organizations across 11 EU Member States to develop scalable manufacturing processes for quantum components.
Pasqal and MegazoneCloud Partner to Bring Quantum Computing to South Korea
Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, and MegazoneCloud, South Korea’s leading cloud and AI transformation company, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly explore a series of quantum computing initiatives designed to accelerate enterprise adoption, expand commercial deployment capabilities, and strengthen quantum technology development across South Korea – moving enterprises from pilot to production through managed cloud access, targeted use cases development, and on-premises QPU deployment.
Pasqal and Aeponyx Launch Canadian PIC Packaging Center for Quantum Technologies
Pasqal, through its Canadian subsidiary Aeponyx, has launched a Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) Packaging Center of Competency at C2MI to strengthen Canada’s capabilities in quantum and advanced sensing technologies. The initiative brings together Aeponyx, HOP Technologies, Phantom Photonics, and C2MI to develop standardized PIC packaging processes and establish domestic manufacturing capabilities.Backed by $7.9 million in funding, the project aims to scale from low-volume production to manufacturing more than 500,000 PIC modules annually in a future phase.
BTQ’s QPerfect joins France’s first public neutral-atom quantum computing project
BTQ Technologies Corp.’s (Nasdaq: BTQ) quantum computing subsidiary QPerfect is joining France’s push to build the country’s first publicly accessible neutral atom quantum computing platform.
QPerfect, a wholly owned subsidiary of BTQ, has entered a research collaboration with the University of Strasbourg to support aQCess, a platform designed to give researchers and industry open access to advanced neutral atom quantum hardware.
SEALSQ Corp (NASDAQ: LAES) (“SEALSQ” or “Company”), a company that focuses on developing and selling Semiconductors, PKI, and Post-Quantum technology hardware and software products, and Quobly, a pioneer in silicon based quantum computing, today announced the signing of a $5 million commercial agreement under which Quobly will integrate SEALSQ quantum-security technologies, secure semiconductor solutions and related engineering and integration services.
Research
France and the quantum computer
France has invested significantly in the field of quantum information and everything particularly in research aimed at creating a quantum computer (quantum computer, STH). Although the French effort seems modest compared to that of the US or China, France has it from a community of world-class quantum physicists and computer scientists, which makes it possible to play in the leading roles qualitatively. French research has nothing to be ashamed of its positioning in the world, even if purely quantitative bibliometric measurements seem to give it a role secondary.
The five French start-ups, financed on different technologies, are having interesting results globally and employ top scientists. It is still too early to determine which technology will prevail, each having its own difficulties.
Quantum Machine-Learning Design Targets Training And Scaling Barriers
A proposed quantum machine-learning framework could make larger quantum neural networks easier to train while preserving computations that are difficult for conventional computers to reproduce.
The study, posted on the arXiv preprint server, presents two quantum-circuit designs intended to address several problems that have limited efforts to use quantum computers for machine learning. These include vanishing training signals, the high number of quantum-circuit runs needed to adjust a model and the risk that an easily trained quantum model may also be easy to simulate on a classical computer. Iordanis Kerenidis, a researcher at IRIF, CNRS and Université Paris Cité and a co-founder of Quantum Signals SAS, developed what the study describes as an end-to-end framework for scalable quantum deep learning.
Education and Events
France Quantum 2026 – Frédéric Saffroy sheds light on Open Source as export controls tighten
At the international France Quantum 2026 trade show, Frédéric Saffroy delivered the Master Class entitled “Quantum Technologies: Securing the Value Chain” at Station F.
Against the backdrop of the expanding scope of export controls and their use for political purposes, how can quantum industry players protect themselves from extraterritorial effects in order to retain control over their supply chain? To present the applicable constraints and possible solutions, including the use of Open Source, Frédéric Saffroy was joined by Marion Faure, Patent Attorney (BCF), and Benjamin Jean, founder of Inno3 and Open Source specialist.