Ahead of EU Quantum Act, IQM Calls for Dedicated Qubit Foundries and DARPA-Style Procurement
Ahead of the European Commission’s expected presentation of the European Union Quantum Act, Finnish-German hardware developer IQM Quantum Computers (Nasdaq: IQMX) has released an industrial policy manifesto titled Quantum Is Europe’s Second Chance. The position piece argues that while Europe ceded commercial leadership in artificial intelligence to foreign hyperscalers, the continent enters the commercialization phase of quantum computing with structural advantages that risk eroding without coordinated manufacturing capacity, late-stage growth capital, and milestone-driven procurement.
Europe’s Quantum Ecosystem: Current Footprint vs. Policy AsksEcosystem PillarReported Metric / Current BaselineProposed Quantum Act MechanismPublic Investment~$10B across EU Member StatesRanks second globally behind China; leads the U.S. in gross public commitments.HPC Deployments21 on-premises QPU sites (~66% globally)Embeds QPUs directly into national supercomputing hubs (versus two in the U.S.).Growth CapitalEU captured 12% of venture capital (vs. 44% in U.S.)Establishes a Scale-up Europe Fund for mixed primary/secondary late-stage financing.Chip ManufacturingAcademic cleanrooms and R&D pilot linesFunds shared packaging foundries and dedicated commercial qubit fabs by the 2030s.Public ProcurementTraditional grant subsidiesTransitions to milestone-based co-development contracts modeled on DARPA’s QBI.Regulatory SpeedState aid approval cycles exceeding 12 monthsImposes a single-window review capped at four to six months (matching Singapore).
A central vulnerability highlighted in the manifesto is geographic fragmentation: European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) data indicates that 23% of EU quantum funding is dispersed across 34 sub-scale regional clusters, compared to 2% in the U.S. and 1% in China. While EuroHPC initiatives have established European leadership in hybrid quantum-supercomputing installations, hardware developers face persistent barriers scaling beyond the laboratory. When early-stage investors seek liquidity, the absence of deep European institutional growth capital frequently transfers ownership, decision-making, and intellectual property overseas.
To establish domestic commercial resilience, IQM outlines five legislative priorities for the Quantum Act and the companion European Chips Act 2.0. The strategy centers on creating dedicated industrial-grade quantum foundries and packaging facilities by the 2030s to match U.S. CHIPS Act infrastructure programs underway with IBM and GlobalFoundries. To finance large-scale systems, the manifesto urges the EU to model its Quantum Grand Challenges on the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI)—replacing basic research grants with multi-hundred-million-dollar milestone contracts—while designating quantum cleanrooms and supply-chain infrastructure as “first-of-a-kind” facilities eligible for fast-tracked European state aid.
The policy document is accessible on the IQM Perspective Portal here.
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