Aneli Capital manager Daiva Rakauskaitė [pictured] has warned that while Quantum regulation needs to be a thing, it would be wiser for the EU to be ploughing money into development.
In the second quarter, Brussels is expected to publish a first draft of the Quantum Act, meant to clear a path for Europe to lead in quantum technology. To take on the US and China, the bloc needs fewer regulatory barriers, much more private money, and a faster commercial rollout.
Aneli Capital manager Daiva Rakauskaitė said, “Europe already lags behind many US companies and universities, which are already advanced in the quantum field. If Europe does not want to lose the quantum race to the US and China, as it does in AI, it must first give startups the freedom to move fast and avoid burdening them with regulation on a market that is still taking shape. Any regulation now would only slow the growth of the quantum sector.”
VCs are already sniffing around quantum computing, hoping to get in early. Paris-based Quantonation has just launched an oversubscribed €220 million fund, while Danish fund 55North last year announced a record €300 million pot for quantum startups.
Finnish company IQM, which became a unicorn only six months ago, has announced plans to go public via a special purpose acquisition company merger in the US. If it lands, it would put one of Europe’s quantum names on a public market scoreboard.
But the gap in private funding remains grim. European Commission data shows only five per cent of private capital is going to European quantum computing companies, while the US pulls in 50 per cent.
That shortfall, plus fragmentation, is exactly what the Quantum Act is supposed to tackle. The problem is that Europe has a habit of confusing regulation with progress.
A recent McKinsey report estimated that the three core pillars of quantum technologies, quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum sensing, could generate up to $97 billion (€89 billion) in global revenue by 2035. Quantum computing is pitched as a game-changer for everything from new materials to finance, with cybersecurity right in the blast radius.
The same machines that promise breakthroughs could, in the long run, punch holes in today’s encryption. Rakauskaitė argues that Europe needs to push for post-quantum security now, while it still has time, and focus hard on commercial use cases rather than lab trophies.
“While it is impossible to predict when scientists will make the next major quantum breakthrough, Europe’s biggest mistake would be to wait passively for it. Companies working in sectors like pharmacy, finance, and logistics should already be running pilots and testing practical use cases to understand where quantum can create value,” she said.
She says Europe is not starting from zero, with strong universities, technical talent, public support programmes and an industrial base that can build things. The trick is turning that into companies that move from papers and prototypes to products and revenue.
More than anything, she wants private capital to show up properly. One option is to channel more long-term institutional money, including pensions and endowments, into venture capital, which still accounts for only a small slice of Europe’s roughly €3 trillion in pension assets.
Public funding will still matter, she notes, because it keeps the pipeline flowing. The hope is that public backing creates startups good enough that private investors stop treating quantum like a science project and start treating it like a business.
