The race for quantum technology may have turned into a battle of the bucks, but don’t count Europe out just yet. What the region lacks in mega-funding it can make up for with a secret weapon: superbrains.

That’s the thesis, at any rate, of French investor Charles Beigbeder. His investment company Audacia and its fund Quantonation are putting €20m behind the idea that Europe’s scientific expertise can translate into successful European companies.

“The business potential of quantum today is the result of 30 years of scientific research; we can finally start imagining commercial and industrial innovation on the back of a long history of academic efforts,” Beigbeder says. “Europe has a good set of cards to play because it’s had a very strong track record of fundamental research, including in physics and maths.”

This goes against conventional wisdom, which is that Europe is losing the war to dominate quantum technologies.

More than 43% of quantum-technology innovations patented between 2012 and 2017 came from Chinese companies and universities, according to the European Commission, with the rest mostly from the US. The European Union has plans for €1bn of investment in quantum technologies over the next 10 years, far from the $10bn that has been announced by China.

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What’s at stake?

Researchers are making progress at turning the abstractions of quantum physics into something concrete. They’ve started imagining how the strange behaviour of tiny particles can be harnessed for a range of applications, from super-fast computing to navigation tools or extremely precise timing devices.

It’s still early days in figuring out exactly which technology will become the standard and which applications will be scrapped. What’s ultimately at stake is the potential for a dramatic leap forward: quantum computing could mean quickly completing tasks that would take thousands of years for an ordinary computer.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has estimated that the quantum industry could be worth between $2bn and $5bn in the next five years and as much as $50bn within a decade.