The quantum computing gold rush has a new kingpin, at least by one measure.
Quantonation, a Paris-based venture firm that has spent the past seven years carving out a niche in quantum technologies, closed its second fund at €220 million on February 18, 2026—cementing what the firm claims is the largest pool of dedicated quantum capital anywhere in the world. With approximately €311 million now under management across two vehicles, the boutique investor has outpaced a growing field of rivals betting that the long-promised quantum revolution is finally moving from lab curiosity to commercial reality.
The close, announced February 18, came after nearly two years of pitching limited partners. Quantonation II overshot its €200 million target, attracting a roster that mixes deep-pocketed corporates with European public money: Toshiba signed on, as did the European Investment Fund (which kicked in €30 million through the InvestEU program), Denmark's Novo Holdings, Spanish infrastructure giant Grupo ACS, and sustainability-focused Planet First Partners. Several backers from the firm's €91 million debut fund returned, including Vertex Holdings—part of Temasek's sprawl of investment platforms—along with Bpifrance's Fonds National d'Amorçage 2 and individual investor Bradley M. Bloom.
It's been a long road. Quantonation first announced a €70 million initial close on April 10, 2024. By January 27, 2025, when Novo came aboard, the fund stood at €112 million. The final stretch added another €108 million—perhaps more than the partners initially expected, given how niche quantum investing still is.
Expanding Beyond Pure Quantum
The fund's mandate has widened since Quantonation's 2017 start. While the firm still targets quantum computing, networking, and sensing startups, it has stretched the definition to include advanced materials, photonics, and what partner Olivier Tonneau describes, somewhat vaguely, as "broader physics-based technologies." In practice, that means the fund now backs companies working on everything from nanomaterials to acoustic imaging to quantum-secure blockchain infrastructure.
Initial checks start around €200,000 for pre-seed rounds and can climb past €10 million for later-stage bets, Tonneau said in a recent interview. The firm reserves the right to deploy up to €20 million into a single company across multiple rounds—a flexibility that reflects both conviction sizing and the reality that quantum hardware startups burn cash at a pace that makes traditional software investors queasy.
Quantonation plans to spread that capital across roughly 25 companies, hunting deals in Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific from offices in Paris and New York.
Already Deployed
The firm hasn't waited to put the new fund to work. It has already backed at least a dozen companies from Quantonation II, including some notable names in the sector's recent funding surge.
There's Diraq, the Australian quantum computing outfit that closed over $100 million in Series A funding earlier this year. Qblox, a Dutch quantum control systems maker, raised a $26 million Series A in mid-2024 with Quantonation participating. Chiral, a Swiss nanomaterials startup, announced a $12 million seed round in February with the fund as a backer. Other new portfolio additions include Project Eleven, which is building quantum-resistant blockchain infrastructure; Resolve Stroke, focused on acoustic imaging for medical applications; Steerlight, working on LiDAR systems; and Pioniq, developing energy storage materials.
The breadth of those bets—spanning continents and technical disciplines—underscores how Quantonation is interpreting its thesis. Not all of these are quantum plays in the strict sense.
Riding a Wave of Capital
The timing, at least, looks favorable. Quantum technologies pulled in roughly $5 billion globally in 2025, according to Dealroom data cited by industry publications. That's more than double the annual average from prior years, a spike driven partly by enthusiasm around quantum computing breakthroughs and partly by governments racing to avoid falling behind geopolitical rivals in what many see as a strategic technology race.
McKinsey's Quantum Technology Monitor, published in October 2025, projects the sector could generate up to $97 billion in annual revenue by 2035—with $72 billion of that coming from quantum computing alone. Those are big numbers, though they come with all the usual caveats about long-term forecasts in nascent industries.
Quantonation's claim to the title of largest dedicated quantum fund appears to hold up, at least for now. But the competitive set is evolving quickly. A rival firm, 55North, announced a €134 million first close toward a €300 million target late last year. Firgun Ventures, another quantum-focused shop, closed its inaugural fund at $70 million in November 2025. More generalist investors—Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and others—have also begun writing quantum checks, though quantum remains a small slice of their overall portfolios.
"We have built a unique position bridging fundamental research and industrial applications," Christophe Jurczak, Quantonation's managing partner, said in the announcement. Jurczak, a physicist by training, co-founded the firm after years spent at the intersection of academic research and entrepreneurship.
Will Zeng, who joined as a partner in 2023 from Goldman Sachs' quantum research group, framed the fund's mission in similarly ambitious terms: "fueling the engine" of physics-based innovation. It's the kind of language that sounds grand but also signals just how early-stage much of this activity remains. Engines need fuel for a long time before they produce much forward motion.
Track Record, With Caveats
Quantonation's first fund backed 27 companies across more than 10 countries. The firm claims top-quartile performance for that vehicle, though it declined to share specific metrics—an omission that's standard practice for young venture firms but leaves outside observers guessing about actual returns. Top-quartile sounds impressive until you consider how small the peer group of dedicated quantum funds actually is.
Still, the firm has secured repeat backing from sophisticated institutional investors, which suggests at least some confidence in the portfolio's trajectory. And in venture capital, getting Fund II closed—especially at more than double the size of Fund I—is its own form of validation.
Whether quantum computing lives up to the hype, of course, remains an open question. The technology has been "five to ten years away" from practical applications for roughly three decades now. Recent progress in error correction and qubit stability has reignited optimism, but commercial quantum advantage for real-world problems remains elusive outside a handful of narrow use cases.
Quantonation is betting that the infrastructure, materials, and enabling technologies around quantum will mature faster—and potentially prove more lucrative—than waiting for fault-tolerant quantum computers to arrive. It's a hedge, of sorts. And with €220 million in fresh capital, the firm has plenty of runway to find out if that bet pays off.
