French quantum firm Alice & Bob wins new investment from Nvidia venture arm

By Dominique Patton

PARIS, May 22 (Reuters) – French company Alice & Bob has won funding from Nvidia’s venture capital arm NVentures, it said on Friday, supporting its development of ​hardware to make quantum computing less error-prone at a ‌time of surging interest in the technology.

The company did not provide details on the size of the investment, which came just after the Trump administration said it would take $2 billion in equity stakes across nine quantum-computing companies, ‌in ​a major push to secure U.S. ⁠leadership in the emerging technology.

• ⁠Recent technological breakthroughs have deepened investor interest in quantum computing’s potential to speed up tasks ranging from drug discovery to financial modelling and cryptography.

• The “massive” increase in investment is ​being driven by a realisation that “computing infrastructure is becoming more and more crucial in our economies”, Alice & Bob CEO Theau ⁠Peronnin told Reuters.

• Alice & Bob, which ⁠has offices in Paris and Boston, focuses on “cat ​qubits”, a special type of quantum bit designed to be more resistant ​to errors than normal qubits, addressing one of the ‌biggest problems in quantum computing.

• The new investment, which adds to a €100 million Series B round raised last year, follows collaboration between Alice & Bob and Nvidia on several projects recently that allowed ⁠the firm to demonstrate its talent and technology, said Peronnin.

• Alice & Bob’s technology helps build “very compact, very cost-efficient” quantum computers “positioning us really ⁠at the forefront of ‌the race at the moment”, he added.

• ⁠The company is participating in France’s PROQCIMA programme, ​led ‌by the Ministry of the Armed Forces, which ​aims to ⁠have two French-designed prototypes of universal quantum computers ready for industrialisation by 2032.

• “We hope for a strengthening of that public procurement programme,” said Peronnin, adding that public support of strategic areas “forces companies to deliver and it helps create champions”.

(Reporting by Dominique Patton; Editing ​by Sonali Paul)