Launching of the European Quantum Industry Consortium

Building an ecosystem on quantum technologies

The European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC) announced its successful kick-off with its General Assembly event held online on April 14. The event gathered more than 100 members from all sectors of the quantum technologies industry in Europe, representing SMEs, large corporations, venture capitalists as well as research organizations, academic institutions and other industry associations from all over the continent.

The work towards establishing a quantum industry consortium started in early 2020, when the Quantum Community Network, one of the three governing bodies of the Quantum Flagship initiative, expressed the need for a privately owned body with the mission to advocate, promote, and foster the common interests of the European Quantum Industry.

QuIC will join forces with all other European quantum initiatives to overcome any possible quantum winter and make the European digital decade into a quantum decade. 

Tommaso Calarco  / Chair of the Quantum Community Netw ork and Head of the Quantum Control division of the Peter Grünberg Institute at Forschungszentrum Jülich

The European quantum community, led by Tommaso Calarco from the Forschungszentrum Jülich and Thomas Strohmfrom Bosch, laid the foundation of what today has been launched as the reference consortium officially recognised by the European Commission which represents the interests of the quantum technologies industry in Europe.

At the General Assembly, the QuIC officially appointed its governing board, electing Laure Le Bars (SAP) as president, Benno Broer (Qu&Co) and Thomas Strohm (Bosch) as vice presidents, and Enrique Lizaso (Multiverse Computing) as its treasurer. Furthermore, all chairs of the nine working groups presented their objectives, milestones and deliverables, with an outlook on the future tasks.

The establishment of the QUIC consortium comes at a time when Union has ambitious plans for quantum research and technology deployment in Europe, in order to make the digital decade a reality. 

Thomas Skordas / Director of Digital Excellence and Science Infrastructure at DG Connect