France has agreed to acquire a quantum computer built by the French startup Alice & Bob, in what is being described as a world first for the technology behind it.
According to HPCwire, France selected Alice & Bob's cat-qubit quantum computer for GENCI, the country's national high-performance computing organization that operates its largest supercomputing facilities. The Quantum Computing Report says the deal was finalized under France's HQI initiative and amounts to the first acquisition of a quantum computer based on cat-qubit technology anywhere in the world.
The agreement was confirmed publicly by the company itself. In an interview with Bloomberg's Tom Mackenzie, Alice & Bob COO Chloé Poisbeau discussed the arrangement with France and characterized it as the world's first acquisition of a quantum computer built on cat-qubit technology.
Cat qubits are Alice & Bob's signature approach. The name refers to the way the technology is engineered, and the company has positioned it as a distinct path within the broader race to build practical quantum machines. By placing one of these systems inside a national supercomputing center rather than a private lab, France is signaling that it wants the hardware available to researchers and integrated alongside its existing computing resources.
Why it matters: governments and companies worldwide are competing to turn quantum computing from a laboratory promise into usable infrastructure, and France putting public money behind a homegrown, first-of-its-kind machine is a concrete bet on which technical approach might get there.