The archive · Space, Robots, Defence · Product decision · 2020–2026
Alice & Bob bets cat qubits make fault-tolerant quantum practical; $104M B, Helium system
Paris-based Alice & Bob raised a €100M Series B to scale its error-correcting cat-qubit hardware, then shipped its first full quantum system, Helium.
Alice & Bob
What the business is
Designs and sells fault-tolerant quantum computers built on superconducting cat qubits that natively suppress bit-flip errors, starting with research systems for HPC centers.
Starting capital：€100M ($104M) Series B, January 2025, co-led by Future French Champions, AXA Venture Partners and Bpifrance (TechCrunch); valuation reported at $300–400M.
How it started
Founded in 2020 in Paris by physicists Théau Peronnin and Raphaël Lescanne, spun out of ENS and Inria research on Schrödinger-cat states in superconducting circuits; the founders set fault tolerance as the goal from day one.
What happened
Raised a €27M Series A in 2022 (TechCrunch). In January 2025 it closed a €100M Series B; investors said the 'R&D phase is over' as chip architecture headed toward 48 qubits. In June 2026 it unveiled Helium, its first complete on-premise quantum system encoding a logical qubit with 18 cat qubits, and signed GENCI to deliver France's first cat-qubit computer.
How it ended up
Scaling: Helium launched 2026-06-10 and GENCI's 18-cat-qubit system is expected to open to researchers at CEA's TGCC in 2027; the 48-cat-qubit chip with multiple logical qubits is on the roadmap.
Background
Alice & Bob is a Paris- and Boston-based quantum computing company founded in 2020 by physicists Théau Peronnin and Raphaël Lescanne. Its bet from the beginning was that error correction belongs in the hardware: a 'cat qubit' built on Schrödinger-cat states in superconducting circuits natively suppresses bit-flip errors, cutting the number of physical qubits needed for a logical qubit by up to 200x versus competing approaches.
The market followed. In January 2025 the company closed a €100M ($104M) Series B co-led by Future French Champions, AXA Venture Partners and Bpifrance, with TechCrunch reporting a valuation around $300–400M. Investors who had sat out the earlier R&D round said the architecture's path to 48 qubits meant the R&D phase was over.
In June 2026 Alice & Bob unveiled Helium, its first complete on-premise quantum system, which encodes its first logical qubit with just 18 cat qubits and runs on about 40 kW of power. A week later GENCI, France's national HPC agency, signed the world's first acquisition of a cat-qubit quantum computer, to be hosted at CEA's TGCC and integrated with the Joliot-Curie supercomputer from 2027.
The company remains private and pre-revenue at scale, betting that early fault-tolerant machines, not raw qubit counts, are what researchers and HPC centers will pay for.
What has to be true
- Cat qubits fix bit-flip errors natively in hardware, removing one of the two main noise sources before software error correction begins.
- The 18-cat-qubit logical qubit and the 48-qubit roadmap gave investors a concrete transition from research project to product.
- The GENCI procurement is a first commercial validation: a national HPC agency paid for an early fault-tolerant system, not a lab experiment.
- Focusing on error correction as the economic bottleneck — fewer physical qubits per logical qubit — is a differentiated wedge in a crowded quantum field.
What can be applied
When the industry races on incremental qubit counts, a startup can win by changing the physical design so the hard part (error correction) becomes cheap instead of fighting it with more hardware.
Aftermath
As of 02 September 2026, Alice & Bob is scaling: Helium is available for research partners to run experiments, GENCI's 18-cat-qubit machine is slated to open to academic and industrial researchers at the TGCC in 2027 under France's National Quantum Strategy, and the company is building the next 48-cat-qubit chip expected to carry multiple logical qubits. It remains private, with a stated goal of a universal fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2030.
Sources
- Alice & Bob raises $104M, says quantum computers based on cat qubits will be ready by 2030
- Alice & Bob Unveils First Quantum System, Helium
- France Acquires First Quantum Computer Based on Cat-Qubit Technology
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