EIC-funded quantum projects to watch and the gap between demonstration and market

The European Commission has directed sustained effort into building a domestic quantum technology ecosystem. The 10 year Quantum Technologies Flagship began in 2018 with an expected budget of one billion euros. During its initial ramp-up through 2021 the Commission deployed about €150 million to support 24 consortia joining research labs and industry. Parallel to the Flagship, the European Innovation Council provides targeted support across different funding instruments to push innovations toward commercialisation. Below are three representative projects funded through EIC instruments. Each illustrates a different route for turning quantum science into usable products and services while also showing the limits and practical obstacles that remain.

QuantrolOx: automating qubit control with machine learning

QuantrolOx addresses one of the practical bottlenecks slowing quantum hardware deployment. Contemporary quantum processors require frequent manual tuning and expert intervention to characterise and stabilise qubits. The company develops a machine learning based control layer intended to operate as an autopilot for quantum processing units. The stated goal is to continuously monitor thousands of hardware and control parameters, stabilise operations, accelerate development cycles and increase uptime so scientific teams can focus on applications rather than device maintenance.

QuantrolOx received EIC Accelerator support for project qx and announced a €3.5 million seed round led by Voima Ventures. The company signalled that funding would be used to hire engineering staff and deliver a first commercial release. QuantrolOx scheduled a product launch at the SQA conference in Munich on 29 August 2023 and expected to work with pilot customers to gather feedback. Public materials from the company cite orders of magnitude speedups in routine characterization tasks. Such claims reflect the potential of automation but should be treated cautiously until independent validation and broad interoperability across different quantum hardware stacks are demonstrated.

Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech: a European full-stack hardware and cloud play

Qilimanjaro positions itself as a full-stack quantum computing provider combining analog superconducting qubit hardware, cloud access, and a software framework. The company emphasises architectural choices that aim to deliver long coherence times, flexible qubit interactions and dense connectivity. These are intended to support near-term application testing and to overcome roadblocks that limit hardware progress.

Qilimanjaro won Transition funding for the RoCCQeT project. The Spanish company announced partnerships including Repsol and ICOAxis and was reported to collaborate with GMV to install what is described as the first quantum computer in southern Europe at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center under the Quantum Spain initiative. The company also builds on the Qibo open source framework for quantum programming, control and remote access. Qilimanjaro frames these moves as milestones for regional capability but practical questions remain about long term performance, interoperability with third party software stacks and the supply chain for European superconducting qubit chips.

FastGhost: translating quantum ghost imaging into mid-infrared medical tools

FastGhost is a Pathfinder consortium developing quantum imaging systems for the mid-infrared region that could address niche medical imaging needs. Quantum imaging using non-classically correlated photon pairs can achieve advantages such as higher sensitivity at low light levels and novel contrast mechanisms not available with classical illumination. FastGhost aims to move such concepts from laboratory proof to a microscopy lab demonstrator and ultimately to applications that benefit from low photon exposure to avoid sample alteration.

The consortium has published around ten scientific articles and reported two demonstration approaches. In a wide-field configuration they achieved Quantum Ghost Imaging at 1400 nanometres using a compact setup and a custom SPAD camera developed by partners at FBK. In a scanning configuration they demonstrated imaging at 1670 nanometres using commercially available superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors from SingleQuantum. The project reports an ambition to upgrade systems to enable real-time mid-infrared ghost imaging for characterising delicate samples with low illumination doses.

Challenges, caveats and what success will require

These three projects together show the multi-pronged approach Europe is taking on quantum. There is a focus on automation and software, regional hardware supply chains, and niche applications that may offer earlier routes to value. Still the path to market faces recurring challenges. Scaling qubit counts and reducing error rates require advances in materials, fabrication, control electronics and error correction. Cryogenic and detector technologies are bottlenecks for many quantum modalities. Interoperability, standards and workforce capacity will affect how fast pilots can translate into commercial services. Finally, investor appetite is shifting as quantum timelines have slipped compared with early optimistic projections, so firms must demonstrate near-term customer value to secure follow-on capital.

Outlook

European funding initiatives are building complementary capabilities across research, prototypes and commercialisation. The EIC's mix of Pathfinder, Transition and Accelerator support helps de-risk technical ideas, mature systems, and prepare startups to scale. Still, moving from promising demonstrations to reliable, widely adopted products will require coordinated progress on hardware performance, manufacturing, controls and standards. Claims of large speedups or imminent market readiness should be inspected against independent benchmarks and interoperable deployments. For observers and potential customers the prudent stance is to track technical metrics and pilot outcomes rather than rely on rhetoric.

Disclaimer: this article restructures and expands on publicly available information about EIC-funded projects. It does not represent the official view of the European Commission or other organisations mentioned.