Managing Partner Roberto Della Marina on Quantum investment at the Quantum Computing Summit 2026.

Quantum in Italy has long been about advancing science. Increasingly, it's also about building an industry.
The hashtag#QuantumComputingSummit2026 made that clear, bringing together in one room government institutions, major industrial players, investors, research centres building the country's quantum computing infrastructure, and startups that will either use that infrastructure or try to build it from the ground up.

This shift is already bringing tangible changes: a national strategy (finally), public funding gaining momentum and shared infrastructure beginning to take shape. But one important gap remains: private capital. Europe is good at designing strategies, but it still struggles to write cheques of the size needed to turn ambition into global leadership.

As investors with both scientific and financial backgrounds, this is where the discussion resonated most with us. Our Managing Partner Roberto Della Marina joined the panel on investments and startups, and these are a few thoughts we took away:

→ Quantum is more than quantum computing. Networking, sensing and secure communications account for only a fraction of the $3.9bn VC investments in quantum, yet they are often the technologies that enable computing and where tangible commercial applications are likely to emerge first.

→ Physics is necessary, but not sufficient. In our portfolio, we back technologies with strong scientific foundations and genuine differentiation, but the real bottleneck is still the ability to turn a scientific breakthrough into a team capable of building a company around it.

→ The standard 10-year closed-end fund model was not designed for technologies whose maturation often extends 7–8 years beyond the traditional investment horizon. We invest anyway, knowing that an IPO is unlikely to be the most probable exit, and we build each investment with the next generation of investors already in mind.

→ There is plenty of noise. "Quantum AI" labels with little substance behind them, roadmaps that promise more than today's physics can realistically deliver. Discipline and rigour (both scientific and commercial) remain the only filters we trust to distinguish technology from narrative.

A country's technological sovereignty is built across the entire value chain, not only in the lab and not only on a term sheet.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to such an insightful event and to those who continue to believe, like us, that Italy has what it takes to play a leading role in the future of quantum.