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Following the December 2024 unveiling of Google’s Willow chip, the quantum computing sector has shifted from theoretical research toward a critical phase of scaling and consolidation aimed at commercial viability. Leading executives from Europe’s top quantum startups—Nu Quantum, Phasecraft, and Riverlane—indicate that while significant technical hurdles in error correction and networking remain, the industry is on track to deliver material commercial impact by the end of the decade.
Key Points
- Commercial Timeline: Industry leaders forecast real-world commercial applications to materialize in the late 2020s or early 2030s.
- Technical Breakthroughs: 2025 marked a pivotal shift with improved qubits and algorithms achieving million-fold cost reductions.
- Critical Hurdles: Scaling requires moving from thousands of operations to trillions of error-free operations through advanced error correction.
- Security Threat: Experts warn of an impending "encryption shock," urging immediate adoption of NIST-approved quantum-safe standards.
- Market Value: Pharmaceutical and material science sectors stand to gain the most, with the UK government committing £1 billion to support the ecosystem.
From Hype to Hardware Reality
The quantum computing landscape has historically grappled with a gap between promise and deliverability. However, 2025 appears to have been a turning point for the sector, characterized by a transition from experimental physics to engineering scalability. Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, CEO of Nu Quantum, which recently raised $60 million in a Series A round, notes that the industry now possesses robust qubits capable of supporting necessary error correction.
"The main challenge left is scaling them up," Palacios-Berraquero stated. "We have good, robust quantum computers, but they're just small. We need to scale them up so that they're big enough to deliver commercial value. We are entering this new phase where it's all about scaling up, consolidation, and racing towards commercial value."
This sentiment is echoed by Ashley Montinaro, CEO of Phasecraft. The algorithms company, backed by over $50 million in funding and partnerships with Google and IBM, reports that software advancements are keeping pace with hardware evolution.
"There have been breakthroughs on the algorithm side... achieving million-fold reductions in the cost of certain problems compared with what was known previously. It's because of the combination of these two things [hardware and software] that we think we're really on the cusp of this practical quantum advantage."
The Error Correction Barrier
Despite the optimism, the technical leap required for mass adoption remains immense. Current high-performance quantum computers can perform approximately 1,000 operations before errors render the data useless. To solve complex problems in chemistry or finance, systems must execute trillions of operations without failure.
Steve Brierley, CEO of Riverlane, emphasizes that bridging this gap relies entirely on quantum error correction—a process of diagnosing and fixing data faults in real-time. Riverlane, which closed a $75 million Series C round in 2024, is developing the "operating system" for this correction layer.
"We get some data from the quantum computer and then we have to infer what's the most likely error and make a correction," Brierley explained. "This loop defines the clock cycle of the quantum computer."
Strategic Sovereignty and Security Risks
As the technology matures, geopolitical and security implications are moving to the forefront. The UK government has committed £1 billion to the sector, aiming to retain intellectual property and talent within Europe rather than losing it to US acquisitions. The executives argue that Europe is currently generating global leaders in critical niches, such as networking infrastructure and error correction.
However, the rise of fault-tolerant quantum computers poses a severe threat to global cybersecurity. By the early 2030s, these systems are expected to possess the power to break current public key encryption, a scenario described as an "encryption shock."
"At a trillion error-free operations, quantum computers will be able to solve number theory... that could break current public key encryption," Brierley warned. "It is really essential that standards bodies and the industry transition to what's called quantum safe encryption."
Organizations protecting data with longevity requirements exceeding ten years are already considered "late" to the migration process, necessitating an immediate shift to new cryptographic standards established by NIST.
As the sector moves toward 2030, success will depend on the ability to network processors together horizontally—much like modern data centers—to create the computational volume required for drug discovery and advanced materials design.
