Alice & Bob: EIC Accelerator Backing for Self-Correcting Cat Qubits

Quantum computers make mistakes, and fixing them is the central problem of the field. The standard approach needs so many physical qubits to encode each reliable "logical" qubit that a useful machine could require millions of them. Alice & Bob, founded in Paris in 2020, builds a different kind of qubit, the "cat qubit", that is designed to suppress one type of error on its own and so needs far fewer qubits for the rest.

The European Innovation Council was an early backer. It granted €2.5 million in 2021 towards a €9.9 million, four-year project, and the EIC later joined the company's €100 million Series B as an investor. By the EIC's own measure this is a success story. The question is how close it has brought Europe to a working quantum computer.

Where Alice & Bob Stands Today

On 28 January 2025 Alice & Bob closed a €100 million Series B led by Future French Champions, AXA Venture Partners and Bpifrance, with the EIC joining as a new institutional investor alongside Elaia, Breega and Supernova Invest. The company said nearly half the money would build a new laboratory and production facility, the rest would fund better error correction and its first error-corrected logical qubit, and that headcount had doubled in a year to more than 110. In May 2026, NVIDIA's venture arm NVentures joined in an extension of the round, according to The Quantum Insider and Tech.eu.

The stated goal is "the world's first useful quantum computer by 2030". There is not yet a commercial Alice & Bob quantum computer; the company's revenue, if any, is not public, because its accounts after 2020 are not disclosed on the registers we checked.

The Technology: Qubits That Correct Half Their Own Errors

Qubits suffer two kinds of error: bit flips, where a 0 becomes a 1, and phase flips, which scramble the quantum relationship between states. A cat qubit, named after Schrödinger's thought experiment, stores information in two opposite states of a microwave field in a superconducting circuit. The bigger the "cat", the rarer bit flips become, exponentially so. A 2023 paper by the team on arXiv reported bit-flip times exceeding ten seconds. With bit flips suppressed in hardware, only phase flips need active correction, which is why the company claims a practical machine would need thousands rather than millions of qubits.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

CatQubit's objective was bold: "build the world's first fault-tolerant commercial quantum computers a decade earlier than our competitors". The project ran from January 2022 to December 2025. The latest periodic report, covering 2023 to mid-2024, describes more cat qubits per chip, high-fidelity preparation and measurement, CNOT gates between neighbouring cat qubits and first error-correction sequences. It claims that "our multi-cat qubit chip is the first chip worldwide that comprises several bosonic qubits", and lists additional cryostats, upgraded control electronics and multiple patent filings.

1. Multi-qubit cat chipsDeliveredChips with several cat qubits and gates between them, per the CORDIS report.
2. Error correction across qubitsIn progressFirst correction sequences reported; the first error-corrected logical qubit is a goal of the 2025 round.
3. A fault-tolerant commercial computerNot yetCompany target is 2030; no such machine has been announced.

What Has Happened Since the Award

The Money

Alice & Bob's latest accounts on Pappers are for 2020, its first year, and show a €517,000 loss. Later accounts are not displayed, so the public view of its finances comes from its funding announcements: €130 million raised by January 2025, and an undisclosed extension in 2026. The register lists 50 to 99 employees for 2023 and repeated capital increases, with no insolvency proceedings.

Why Europe Should Care

Quantum computing is a declared EU strategic technology, and the Commission's Quantum Europe Strategy of July 2025 aims to make the EU a global leader by 2030, the same year Alice & Bob targets. A European company pursuing a distinctive route to error correction, funded by French and EU public investors, is one of Europe's more credible bets in that race. NVIDIA's investment shows it is watched well beyond Europe.

The Verdict

Alice & Bob has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.