Insights from the Strategic Industry Roadmap 2025
The European quantum sector is a turning point. The European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC) announced the Strategy Industry Roadmap (SIR) 2025: A document to address the technological dominance and the industry competition in a global scenery. This document proposes a shared vision about the quantum technologies development up to 2035.
The roadmap is created by the collaboration of more than 100 industrial organisations and academies; it aims to transform the European scientific potential in economic value and concrete social impact.
Platforms and technologies
The roadmap explores three key areas of the quantum technologies (QT):
- Quantum computing (QC)
- Quantum communication (QComm)
- Quantum sensing & metrology
Each of these areas is analysed in terms of technology readiness, use cases, barriers to scale-up, and short, medium and long-term goals. The roadmap is not only strategic but also actionable, it explores how quantum will integrate with existing infrastructures like high-performance computing (HPC) and cloud technologies.
Quantum computing
The main platforms that are being developed are the superconducting, qpin Qubits, neutral atoms and Nitrogen vacancy centres in diamond. While quantum annealing and quantum simulation are short-term approaches for practical applications, for example in computational chemestry or industrial optimization.
Quantum communication
In the quantum communication field there is the necessity of integration between terrestrial and satelline networks, developing compact components for Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), and standardization of interfaces and protocols.
Pioneering projects such as Micius and SAGA are paving the way for hybrid quantum networks, capable of integrating space components to overcome the physical limits imposed by conventional optical networks.
Quantum sensing
This is one of the sector with the highest application potential in the short term, with GPS-resistan navigation thanks to NV sensors that exploit the Earth’s magnetic field, advanced medical devices (e.g. magnetocardiography or brain-machine interface), exploration of the subsurface and non destructive quality control (NDT) in industrial materials.
The road ahead
The roadmap presents development objectives for each QT sector over short (2025–2027), medium (2028–2029) and long (2030–2035) time horizons.
Quantum Computing goals include increasing the number of qubits (hundreds in the short term, thousands or millions in the long term depending on the technology), improving gate fidelity, reducing system size, and implementing quantum error correction (QEC) codes. The achievement of logical qubits is seen as a milestone towards Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing (FTQC).
Quantum communication goals include smaller and cheaper solutions for QRNGs, faster modules for QKD, standardization of entropy monitoring, and the development of fully operational operational systems (both terrestrial and space-based) by 2025-2029, with the integration of the space component into a quantum information network in the long term.
Lastly, Quantum Sensing goal include achieving high Technology Readiness Level TRLs for different applications (magnetocardiography, RF sensors, atomic clocks) in the short to medium term and the large-scale adoption of all quantum sensors based on solid-state physics and atomic gases in the long term for a wide range of industrial and scientific applications.