For years, the electric vehicle industry’s biggest problem had a name: range anxiety. Now, according to the chief executive of Polestar, the anxiety has moved to the other side of the forecourt. “People are concerned, ‘how much do I pay at the gas station?’” Michael Lohscheller told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe on Wednesday, coining […]

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The name is the tell. Graphon AI, which emerged from stealth on Wednesday with $8.3 million in seed funding, is named after a mathematical object that most people in AI have never heard of and that its two most prominent advisors helped invent. A graphon is the limit of a sequence of dense graphs: a […]

  Nearly every marketer in the world is now using AI to make creative work. Nearly every consumer would still rather that a person had made it. That tension, between the industry’s enthusiasm and the public’s unease, is the central finding of Canva’s State of Marketing and AI report for 2026, and it suggests that […]

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  HM Revenue and Customs has awarded a 175 million pound, ten-year contract to Quantexa, a London-based AI company, to modernise the tax authority’s data infrastructure and deploy artificial intelligence to detect fraud, fix errors, and close the tax gap. The contract is one of the largest AI deals in UK public sector history. It […]

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Europe’s quantum ecosystem is moving from scientific promise to commercial opportunity, and startups are playing a growing role in that shift. For investors, the question is no longer whether quantum will matter, but where the first investable opportunities are already emerging.

It’s a mistake to wait for the quantum moment. The day of massive, fault-tolerant quantum computers running arbitrary workloads is still years away.

The potential is enormous, but the technology has yet to be perfected. In classical computing, information is stored in bits, which are always either 0 or 1. Quantum computers use qubits, which exist simultaneously in a state of both 0 and 1, a strange property called superposition. Superposition, along with the quantum mechanical phenomena of entanglement and interference, gives quantum computers their extraordinary computational power.

This allows quantum machines to tackle certain classes of problems, such as breaking encryption or simulating molecular structures, in ways that are practically impossible for classical computers. The main barrier today is stability: qubits are extremely fragile and error-prone. This engineering challenge will take years of further development.

Yet viewing quantum solely through this distant hardware lens overlooks the transformation already underway.

From hardware race to infrastructure reality

The transition has already started. It’s in the infrastructure that will make quantum practical in our world of hybrid clouds, regulated data, and mission-critical systems. It’s not about chasing more qubits in a lab. The near term lies in software, integration, error mitigation, and security upgrades. This lets enterprises leverage quantum workflows in pilots by plugging into existing cloud/HPC pipelines, without rebuilding their architecture from scratch.

Quantum doesn’t speed up everything; it can fundamentally change the economics of targeted problems like molecular simulations for drug discovery and complex optimisations for supply chains. Google’s 2025 Willow chip delivered verifiable quantum advantage on a physics-style problem. This milestone showed that teams are pushing the frontier, and yet engineering challenges persist. Current systems suffer from high error rates and fragility, and scaling with fidelity remains out of reach today.

The action lies in the ecosystems. These elements will intersect with today’s cloud environments, heterogeneous compute, regulated data requirements, and long-lived security needs. That’s why hundreds of startups are building compilers, runtimes, orchestration tools, verification systems, and cloud/HPC bridges. We’re heading toward composite compute, and the companies that make it usable at scale will define the standard. For investors, that’s an exciting prospect, both urgent and investable now.

Applications will roll out unevenly. Quantum accelerators may expand what AI can do. The near-term win is probably the other way around: using AI to improve quantum systems themselves. That means better calibration, smarter compilation, improved error mitigation, and more efficient job scheduling. On the flip side, quantum’s contribution to AI will likely stay narrow for a while, potentially helping with specific subdomains rather than replacing classical model training or inference.

Security cannot wait

Security is the urgent priority. The worry isn’t “breaking the internet”. The real threat is “harvest now, decrypt later.” Adversaries are stockpiling encrypted data today for future quantum decryption against RSA and ECC. Long-lived assets in defence, infrastructure, healthcare, finance, and IP are exposed right now.

The solution is crypto-agility: inventory cryptography, prioritise high-risk and long-lived assets, adopt NIST-standardised post-quantum cryptography, often via hybrid approaches, and address the nightmare of edge and constrained environments such as IoT, industrial control systems, vehicles, and remote sensors. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has made cryptographic discovery and inventory a cornerstone of its post-quantum migration guidance.

It has vetted a select group of firms capable of helping organisations map their cryptographic assets and assess exposure. These include large systems integrators such as IBM and Capgemini, engineering consultancies like Frazer-Nash, and specialist vendors, most notably Arqit, which stands out as the only dedicated product company in the scheme.

Governments recognise the strategic stakes. The UK’s UKRI has committed over €1.1 billion (£1 billion) to quantum through 2030, and Germany has invested approximately €2 billion since 2020. The UK’s quantum startup scene reached 207 active companies late last year, with major M&A moves such as IonQ’s €855 million-plus ($1 billion-plus) acquisition of Oxford Ionics.

The takeaway for investors is straightforward: quantum is already investable. The winners won’t be the ones waiting for hardware perfection. They’ll be the leaders turning “quantum readiness” into measurable programmes with clear ROI and risk reduction. That work is happening now.

We’re not approaching the quantum era. We’re in it. The question is whether your organisation leads the transition or plays catch-up.

The post The quantum opportunity: Investors should stop waiting for the perfect machine appeared first on EU-Startups.

Every SOX audit season, IT teams scramble to collect evidence across dozens of systems, validate user access permissions, and document change management procedures. IT General Controls (ITGCs) cover the foundation of IT operations that auditors examine: access controls, change management, IT operations, and backup and recovery. When these controls are managed through spreadsheets and screenshots, […]

Francis Dufay told Bloomberg TV the African e-commerce company is implementing AI across operations, logistics, finance, and marketing, and intends to be profitable by the end of the year. The 200 jobs disappearing now sit on top of a workforce that has already shrunk by more than half since 2022. Jumia Technologies is preparing to […]

Frontier AI lab for defence and security Twin Prime has raised have $10 million in pre-seed funding led by Expeditions, with additional investment from American and European VCs, Theon, family offices, and angels from within Palantir, Anduril, Quorum, and more. 

Twin Prime is developing AI models that natively reason on data from a large number of sensor modalities in the physical world, notably across the national security landscape, compressing the perception-to-decision layer to enable smart, real-time action against threats. 

The company was founded in 2025 by George Lentzas, Stephane Sezer, Drew Calcagno, and Michael Leite-Garcia, a multinational team of researchers in frontier AI, quantitative finance, and national security. 

Collectively, they have extensive experience at top institutions, including Hudson River Trading, Google Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Columbia University, the White House, the Pentagon, and various branches of both the US and European armed forces. 

Mikolaj Firlej, Co-founder and GP of Expeditions, said: 

“Current AI models are not specialised enough to capture the complexity of modern war and wider security challenges. They usually have limited applicability at the edge and often overlook sensor integration and critical data feeds. 

Twin Prime is developing models purpose-built for high-stakes environments where size, fusion and speed are critical.

At a time when most defence prime contractors struggle to integrate advanced AI models, the Twin Prime team presents a clear commercial value not just by retrofitting legacy systems, but by transforming their operations.”

Twin Prime and Theon, a large European defence prime, also intend to form a Joint Venture to develop, commercialise, and deploy bespoke AI solutions built upon Twin Prime's proprietary models.

The JV will augment Theon’s extensive deployment of sensors and other defence product offerings, particularly as a continuation of its Theon Next initiative.

Iceotope Group, a provider of precision liquid cooling solutions for data centres and edge infrastructure, has raised $26 million in a Series B funding round led by Two Seas Capital and Barclays Climate Ventures, with participation from existing investors Edinv, ABC Impact, Northern Gritstone, and British Patient Capital.

Founded in 2005 as a research-driven green computing venture, Iceotope has evolved into a specialist in precision liquid cooling for AI infrastructure, high-performance computing (HPC), and edge deployments.

The company’s chassis-based liquid cooling approach is designed to replace traditional air cooling with liquid-based thermal management across infrastructure components, helping high-performance systems operate more efficiently while reducing energy consumption and water usage.

Iceotope said its solutions are designed for both core data centre environments and enterprise and edge deployments where cooling constraints can be particularly demanding. The company currently holds more than 200 granted and pending patents related to its liquid cooling systems.

We’ve spent years developing a differentiated IP portfolio and products purpose-built for AI infrastructure, and we’re now focused on scaling alongside growing demand for more advanced and sustainable cooling technologies,

said Simon Jesenko, CEO and CFO of Iceotope.

The new funding will support product and engineering development, expansion of the company’s patent portfolio, and ecosystem partnerships aimed at bringing solutions powered by its technology to market.

  The six largest American banks shed 15,000 employees in the first quarter of 2026 while posting 47 billion dollars in collective profits, up 18 per cent year on year. The chief executives are no longer hedging. Jamie Dimon said artificial intelligence will eliminate jobs and that people should stop sticking their heads in the […]

  Fanuc makes more industrial robots than anyone on the planet. Google makes more software platforms than anyone on the planet. On Wednesday, the two companies announced a partnership that merges those positions: Fanuc will integrate Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise and Google’s Intrinsic robotics platform into its industrial robot systems, giving the 1.1 million Fanuc […]

Ouinex, a Paris-based crypto asset exchange, has raised $3.5 million in a new equity round, bringing its total funding to $9 million, all of it from retail and professional traders using its own platform and with no venture capital participation.

Alongside the funding round, Ouinex introduced Ouinex Launchpad, a token sale platform designed to give users access to early-stage token launches based on platform engagement and loyalty metrics.

Ouinex is a trading platform combining crypto and traditional financial markets within a single environment. The platform offers access to spot crypto, crypto perpetuals, forex, indices, stocks, and commodities derivatives through one account, using crypto assets as collateral.

Founded around a community-funded model, Ouinex positions its users as both traders and shareholders. The company said more than 10,000 retail and professional traders have participated in its funding rounds since launch.

Ouinex operates on a proprietary No-CLOB (No Central Limit Order Book) execution model, designed to prevent the platform from acting as a counterparty to user trades. According to the company, the system aims to reduce practices such as stop-hunting and front-running by limiting market maker visibility into retail order flows.

Ilies Larbi, CEO of Ouinex, said the company’s community-funded structure allows it to approach regulation as part of the product rather than simply a compliance requirement.

Since our shareholders are our users, we aren’t cutting any corners to satisfy distant investors. We’re investing heavily in legal frameworks across five continents to ensure that Ouinex remains a safe, sustainable, and fully licensed platform for the years to come.

The new funding will be used to support regulatory expansion, product development, and the rollout of additional trading and risk management features.