.svg){kind=icon}
Insider Brief
- Sparrow Quantum has been selected as one of 13 companies for funding under the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking’s Quantum Grand Challenge, and is the only Danish company selected.
- Its EU-SCALE project will develop a technical and financial roadmap for integrating Sparrow Quantum’s deterministic photon-generating chips into a larger photonic quantum computing system.
- EU-SCALE is set to receive €300,000 in EU funding, with the grant agreement still being prepared.
Press release – Sparrow Quantum has announced that the company is one of 13 selected for funding under the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking’s Quantum Grand Challenge , an EU program created to accelerate the development of market-ready quantum-computing platforms. Sparrow Quantum is the only Danish company selected.
Founded to make high-quality deterministic quantum light — photonic qubits — available outside the laboratory, Sparrow Quantum has spent years on the source itself. As the performance and reliability of that technology improve, the challenge moves downstream: to what happens to photons after they leave the source and are integrated into larger systems.
“Being selected alongside Europe’s leading quantum companies is a proud moment for the team,” said Peter Lodahl, founder and Chief Quantum Officer at Sparrow Quantum . “We founded Sparrow to make the supply of quantum light dependable. EU-SCALE gives us the opportunity to build on that progress and take on the system architecture around the source — the part of the problem I have long wanted Sparrow to tackle.”
Through EU-SCALE, Sparrow Quantum will develop the technical and financial roadmap for integrating its proprietary deterministic photon-generating chips into a larger photonic quantum-computing system. The project will explore a resource-optimized architecture built around those chips and compatible with European high-performance computing infrastructure.
The Quantum Grand Challenge in Detail
The Quantum Grand Challenge is designed to move European quantum startups toward commercial viability: Phase 1 funds the roadmap and commercialization case, and Phase 2 opens a route to venture debt financing from the European Investment Bank.
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking’s Governing Board approved the list of proposals selected for funding on 19 June 2026 ( Decision No. 31/2026 ). Thirty proposals were received by the call deadline. Twenty-seven met the admissibility and eligibility requirements. A panel of independent experts evaluated them, with thirteen retained for funding on the main list and three placed on a reserve list.
EU-SCALE, Sparrow Quantum ’s project under the Grand Challenge, will receive €300,000 in EU funding once the grant agreement — currently in preparation — is signed.