France is positioning itself as a global quantum computing contender through the PROQCIMA programme, which allocates €500 million to five startups — Alice & Bob, Pasqal, Quandela, Quobly, and C12 Quantum Electronics — each pursuing a different qubit architecture. Alice & Bob's cat qubit approach aims to reduce error correction overhead at the hardware level, potentially requiring far fewer physical qubits than competing designs. The programme is structured as a competitive elimination: after four years, three approaches advance; after eight, two remain, with targets of 128 logical qubits by 2030 and a 2,048-logical-qubit commercial system by 2035. While current machines are not yet commercially useful, France's strong physics talent pipeline and lower energy costs are cited as structural advantages over US incumbents like Google and IBM.
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