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Quobly

Semiconductors · Grenoble, France · Founded 2022

Quobly is a French company focused on developing a fault-tolerant quantum computer by leveraging standard semiconductor manufacturing technology. Founded in 2022 as a spin-off from two prominent French research institutions, the CEA (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission) and CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), the company is built upon 15 years of prior research. The founding team consists of CEO Maud Vinet, CTO Tristan Meunier, and COO François Perruchot, all of whom emerged from these research bodies. Vinet, who holds a Ph.D. in Physics, spent over two decades in the semiconductor industry, including a period at IBM, before heading the quantum computing program at CEA-Leti. Her long-term research into applying semiconductor processes to quantum phenomena formed the foundation for the company. Meunier is an experimental physicist specializing in spin qubits, with a Ph.D. under Nobel Laureate Serge Haroche and postdoctoral work at TU Delft. Perruchot brings extensive experience in marketing strategy for advanced technologies. The company, originally named Siquance, was rebranded to Quobly—a portmanteau of "Quantum" and its home city, "Grenoble"—after securing a landmark €19 million seed funding round in 2023. Quobly's core business is to engineer and commercialize quantum processing units (QPUs). Its approach addresses a primary challenge in quantum computing: scalability. While many quantum systems require exotic materials and manufacturing, Quobly’s method uses silicon spin qubits. This involves trapping single electrons in "quantum dots" on silicon, effectively turning a standard transistor into a qubit. The company utilizes established Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator (FD-SOI) semiconductor technology, which allows it to tap into the existing, highly advanced microelectronics manufacturing infrastructure. By partnering with semiconductor fabs like STMicroelectronics, Quobly plans to mass-produce chips containing the millions of stable qubits necessary for fault-tolerant quantum computers. This strategy aims to make the development of powerful quantum computers more efficient and cost-effective. The company's target market consists of industries with high-performance computing needs that are intractable for classical computers. These include pharmaceuticals for drug discovery, finance, materials science, and complex systems modeling for climate or fluid dynamics. The business model centers on building and selling these quantum computers, or quantum accelerators, to these industrial clients. The company is currently developing demonstrator systems and aims to produce a machine with over 100,000 qubits, with a long-term goal of breaking the one-million-qubit barrier. Keywords: quantum computing, semiconductor qubits, silicon spin qubits, fault-tolerant quantum computer, quantum processor unit, QPU, FD-SOI, CEA, CNRS, Maud Vinet, Tristan Meunier, François Perruchot, high-performance computing, quantum hardware, Grenoble, deep tech, quantum scalability, STMicroelectronics partnership, quantum accelerators, quantum algorithms, cryo-electronics, quantum dot