Event Round-Up: The role of investment in scaling the UK’s quantum ecosystem

The UK has spent a decade building world-class quantum foundations. The next challenge is turning that foundation into a globally competitive quantum sector, and that means getting investment right. With up to £2 billion recently announced by the government for quantum technologies, the scale of public commitment is clear. But as speakers and panellists made plain throughout the day, money alone is not enough. The right investment, deployed strategically, is what will determine whether the UK's most promising quantum companies can scale here rather than elsewhere. To explore that challenge, techUK brought together investors, founders and policymakers for a candid conversation about what it really takes to secure the UK's quantum future.

We were proudly joined by:

Lauren Thomas, Policy Lead, Office for Quantum

Faiyaz Amin, Policy Lead, Office for Quantum

Costantino Mariella, Senior Investment Manager (Deep Tech), British Business Bank

Stuart Nicol, Chief Investment Officer, Quantum Exponential

Dr Jack Brennan, Co-Founder and CEO, Quantcore

Max Beverton-Palmer, Head of Public Policy (UK), NVIDIA

Katy Alexander, CCO, Delta.g

Wenmiao Yu, Co-Founder and Business Development Director, Quantum Dice

Emil Mahjoub, Partner, Planet First Partners

Professor Rachel Oliver, Professor of Materials Science, Cambridge University & Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Adviser, Porotech

Maria Maragkou, VP Business Development, Nu Quantum

Dr Kris Naudts, Founding and Managing Partner, Firgun Ventures

You can watch the full recording here, or read our summary of the key insights below:

Please note that the below is a summary of the event, and readers are encouraged to watch the webinar to understand the full details of the discussion.

Summary

Summary

Keynote from the Office for Quantum

The event opened with a keynote from the Office for Quantum at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, setting out the strategic context for the UK's quantum ambitions. Framed within the Industrial Strategy, which identified quantum as one of six priority technologies, the presentation reaffirmed the government's commitment to quantum as a driver of economic growth, defence capability and productivity across the breadth of the UK economy.

The scale of that commitment is substantial. The billion-pound quantum programme announced for the next four years is the second largest spending settlement after AI, representing more than double the previous annual run rate of government quantum spend. Planned allocations include £500 million for quantum computing, £200 million for sensing and positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), £120 million for quantum networks, and around £200 million for cross-cutting enablers including skills, international collaboration and infrastructure.

Alongside this sits a world-first procurement commitment: up to a further billion pounds earmarked to procure several large-scale quantum computers post-2030, alongside a long-term funding commitment for the National Quantum Computing Centre. The message was clear. Quantum is no longer a niche research bet. It is a strategic national priority, and government intends to act as an early customer, understanding the role of public money in paving the way for private finance.

Keynote from the British Business Bank

A second keynote from the British Business Bank set out its direct role in the ecosystem. Investing typically at Series B as a deep tech investor, its mission is to crowd in private capital rather than replace it. The bank signalled appetite to expand beyond its current hardware investments into software, applications, networking and sensing, including dual-use defence applications. For companies raising rounds of £20 million or more, it made clear it is open for business, and highlighted its ability to help portfolio companies navigate government procurement. The race to reach utility scale, it noted, is still very much on, with multiple hardware modalities still in contention, and continued investment will be needed to support the homegrown companies best placed to win it.

Getting in early: The case for backing UK quantum startups

Hype vs reality

Founders were candid about the pressure investors can place on companies to overstate near-term progress. Excitement about headline announcements can obscure the longer-term engineering journey that quantum commercialisation genuinely requires. The sector is best served by collaboration and clear-eyed communication, and no single company can push an entire ecosystem forward alone.

The role of public funding in early journeys

Innovate UK has played a meaningful role in helping startups develop products alongside real customers and de-risk initial fundraising. The combination of grant funding and co-investment mechanisms was seen as particularly effective at the pre-seed stage, giving university spinouts a structured pathway to commercialisation that venture funding alone does not always provide. Having an early customer, even a government one, also forces companies to think like product businesses from the start rather than remaining in a lab mindset.

The scale capital gap

Understanding of quantum among the VC community has improved markedly, even within the past year or two. But a persistent gap remains. The UK excels at generating early-stage funding and world-class startups, yet consistently struggles to provide the scale capital needed to grow those companies into global leaders. Too often that gap is filled by overseas investors, or not filled at all. The government's recent procurement commitments were welcomed as a tangible confidence signal, with founders noting that having government as a credible early customer changes the conversation with private investors at a stage when commercial profits are still a long way off.

Skills and talent

Visa processes for international hires remain complex and costly for young companies. Panellists also made a strong case for introducing quantum concepts earlier in the education pipeline, arguing that quantum is now fundamentally an engineering challenge and the UK needs to produce more quantum engineers, not just physicists. Secondment schemes between large enterprises and quantum startups were highlighted as a practical near-term mechanism worth scaling.

The importance of near-term use cases

The UK is a small market and will never compete with the US or China on funding volume alone. What it can do is lead on demonstrating real-world use cases, particularly in quantum sensing, networking and communications, which are closer to commercial deployment than quantum computing. Proving value in these areas would strengthen the entire ecosystem and send a clear signal to investors at home and abroad that the UK is commercialising first.

The quantum scale-up challenge: Growth-stage capital in an evolving global landscape

The UK's position: stronger than the narrative suggests

For most of the past five years, the UK has ranked second globally in both quantum startup numbers and VC funding, with the UK and US together accounting for around half to sixty percent of all quantum investment worldwide. But the gap has widened. A surge in US public funding has pushed total global quantum investment to nearly $13 billion in the last year, with most of it flowing to American companies.

The lead investor problem

One of the most candid discussions of the day centred on the challenge of finding investors willing to write a lead ticket at the growth stage. A common pattern was described: companies can assemble roughly half a round relatively straightforwardly, then spend up to twelve months searching for a lead investor. The reasons are structural. Quantum requires deep technical due diligence across hardware modalities that rarely talk to each other, specialist in-house quantum expertise within investment funds remains rare, and without a substantial pipeline of major exits, many investors have yet to build the pattern recognition needed to lead confidently. One panellist noted that within six weeks of a new quantum-focused fund launching, around fifty high-quality companies had approached it, a striking illustration of just how real the demand for informed, specialist capital has become.

The role of sovereign capital

Sovereign and semi-sovereign capital was discussed as one way to ease the lead investor bottleneck, not by replacing private capital but by reducing the size of lead check needed to anchor a round. Overseas public funders participating in UK quantum rounds was presented not as a cause for concern but as a reflection of quantum's inherently global nature. UK companies need access to international markets, talent and customers, and overseas public investment can open doors that domestic funding alone cannot.

A warning from the semiconductor world

A perspective from the semiconductor sector carried a pointed message for quantum companies to heed early. One panellist described how, without access to capital for even modest manufacturing capability at the pre-seed stage, production moved offshore almost immediately, with a trajectory that proved impossible to reverse by the time later-stage patient capital became available. The quantum sector needs to think about its route to manufacturing much earlier than feels instinctively necessary, and government thinking on infrastructure may need to extend beyond pilot lines to facilities capable of genuine volume production.

The global competitive picture

The UK was seen as genuinely well-placed but unable to afford complacency. The US and China are investing at a different scale, and strong pockets of excellence are emerging rapidly across Europe and beyond, with countries including Australia, Canada and Israel accelerating their quantum ambitions. The valuation gap between the UK and US markets was identified as one of the most difficult structural challenges to address, with US investors often applying less favourable pricing to UK companies than they would for equivalent businesses based in the States.

Key Takeaways

Public investment is a signal, not a substitute. The government's recent commitments were broadly welcomed, but their real value lies in de-risking decisions that the private sector can then build on. Public money works best when it crowds in private capital, not when it replaces it.

The growth stage gap needs urgent attention. The UK pipeline of quantum startups is strong, but the infrastructure to scale them into global leaders is not yet where it needs to be. Closing the gap requires more informed growth capital, greater sovereign co-investment, earlier thinking about manufacturing capability and stronger export pathways to priority markets.

Near-term use cases matter now. Quantum sensing, networking and communications are already demonstrating real-world value. Proving these applications builds trust across the ecosystem, from enterprise customers to investors still finding their feet in the sector.

Quantum is a global endeavour. The UK's bilateral partnerships and openness to global talent and capital are strengths, not vulnerabilities. Speakers also cautioned that regulatory and export control uncertainty could have a fundamental effect on the market if left unaddressed.

Large UK enterprises need to engage. The near-total absence of FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies from quantum cap tables was raised as a significant concern. Encouraging corporates to participate earlier, through pilots, procurement or investment, remains an important and largely unaddressed gap.

Skills need attention upstream. This means introducing quantum concepts earlier in education, simplifying visa processes for specialist hires, and creating more structured pathways between academia, large enterprises and quantum startups.

Ambition must be matched by care. Pushing companies to commercialise before their products are ready, over-localising an inherently global sector, and applying the wrong kind of investment pressure can all do real damage. Getting quantum investment right means knowing not just where to accelerate, but where to exercise patience.

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For more information or to get involved in future events, please contact Sara Duodu. 

Sara Duodu

Programme Manager ‑ Quantum and Digital Twins, techUK

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