Groove Quantum, a spin-out from Delft University of Technology’s QuTech institute, has raised €10 million in equity and secured €6 million in grants to accelerate its work on what it claims is the world’s largest semiconductor spin-qubit processor – an 18-qubit chip made of germanium. The announcement, made on April 29, 2025, marks a milestone for European deeptech and positions the continent as a serious contender in the race for practical quantum computers.

Why scalability matters

Quantum computing’s biggest hurdle is scaling qubits while maintaining coherence. Most current approaches – like superconducting circuits used by IBM and Google – require extreme cooling and complex wiring, limiting them to a few dozen qubits. Groove’s technology uses semiconductor spin qubits, which are essentially quantum dots that trap single electrons. Spin qubits are smaller, more stable, and crucially, can be fabricated using existing CMOS manufacturing processes – the same technology used to make today’s computer chips. “Our goal from the start was to build a processor that can be produced in standard fabs,” said Groove CEO and co-founder Cécile Legrand in a press release. “We’ve shown that 18 qubits can be made reliably, and the architecture is designed to scale to hundreds.”

The company’s “unit cell” approach – a repeating pattern of qubits and control electronics – mimics the logic of classical chip design. Each cell contains two germanium qubits surrounded by local gates, and multiple cells can be stitched together. Groove’s 18-qubit chip comprises 17 such cells, a proof of concept that the design works. The team includes veterans from Intel and imec, and the company holds several patents on the integration of germanium heterostructures with CMOS.

European ecosystem pays off

The funding round was led by Innovation Industries, with participation from 55 North (formerly Northzone) and Verve Ventures. Grants came from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator and the EU Chips Act. This blend of private and public support is typical of the European deeptech ecosystem, which prioritizes long-term foundational research. Unlike their US counterparts, European startups often emerge from university labs with strong patent portfolios but require patient capital. “Groove is a perfect example of the QuTech pipeline converting world-class research into a commercial venture,” said QuTech director Ronald Hanson in a statement.

Europe has been steadily building quantum leadership. French startup Pasqal uses neutral atoms to achieve quantum advantage, and Quandela, also French, offers photonic quantum computing. Germany’s IQM Quantum Computers is building superconducting systems. But Groove’s spin-qubit approach is the most compatible with existing semiconductor infrastructure, offering a path to mass production that others lack.

Historical context: from lab curiosity to industrial reality

Spin qubits were first demonstrated in 1998 by Daniel Loss and David DiVincenzo, who proposed using electron spins in quantum dots. For years, the field was confined to academic experiments with one or two qubits. It was only in the 2020s that groups at Princeton, TU Delft, and RIKEN pushed the count to double digits. Groove’s rapid progress – from its founding in 2023 to an 18-qubit processor in 2025 – echoes the trajectory of classical microprocessors: Moore’s Law wasn’t born overnight but accelerated once manufacturing standards were set. A similar historical leap occurred when Intel introduced the 4004 in 1971 – a single-chip CPU that scaled to billions of transistors. Groove’s unit cell could play a comparable role in quantum computing.

Earlier attempts at scaling spin qubits faced noise from the silicon-germanium interface, but advances in material purity – particularly the use of isotopically enriched germanium and improved gate stacks – have dramatically improved coherence times. In 2023, TU Delft researchers achieved record fidelities in a two-qubit gate, paving the way for Groove’s commercial push. The European Union has funded quantum research with over €1 billion since the Quantum Flagship launched in 2018, creating a fertile ground for startups like Groove.

The implications for European tech sovereignty are significant. Quantum computers promise breakthroughs in drug design, materials science, and cryptography. By owning the scalable hardware, Europe can reduce reliance on US and Asian suppliers. Yet competition is fierce: Google recently demonstrated “quantum supremacy” on a superconducting 53-qubit system, and IBM plans a 1,000-qubit chip by 2026. Groove’s bet is that when the industry focuses on manufacturability, CMOS-compatible spin qubits will win. As Legrand put it: “The future isn’t about the biggest number of qubits – it’s about the most reliable ones that you can produce at scale.”