NEWS
The European Commission has injected another € 500 million into Horizon Europe, raising its 2026 – 2027 research budget to € 14.8 billion as Brussels intensifies efforts to turn scientific breakthroughs into commercially competitive technologies.
The additional funding targets artificial intelligence, autonomous mobility, advanced research infrastructure and technologies designed to strengthen Europe’ s industrial independence.
Two new funding programmes will distribute almost € 500 million across research and innovation initiatives, with commercial deployment emerging as a central priority.
The € 260 million Bridging Actions 2027 programme will support 16 initiatives connecting laboratory innovation with investment and market adoption.
Projects include an AI-powered European media platform, autonomous driving technologies and advanced frameworks for scaling emerging technologies. A separate € 237 million programme
EU injects € 500 million into Horizon Europe to accelerate AI and deeptech innovation
will finance 11 projects addressing biodiversity, sustainable industries and nature-positive economic development.
The investment comes as Europe confronts mounting competition from the US and China in artificial intelligence, computing infrastructure and emerging technologies.
Commission figures underline the programme’ s economic reach. Since 2021, Horizon Europe has awarded € 61 billion in grants and € 1.3 billion in equity across nearly 23,000 projects involving more than 34,000 organisations.
More than 20,000 companies have participated, while 151,000 early-career researchers have received support.
However, participation remains uneven. Although newcomers account for 55 % of beneficiaries, most secure only one project, highlighting barriers to sustained research funding.
The Commission is positioning the latest investment as a bridge towards Horizon Europe 2028 – 2034, when translating scientific research into European industrial competitiveness will become increasingly critical.
Universal Quantum raises record US $ 100 million to accelerate UK quantum computing
UK quantum computing start-up
Universal Quantum has raised more than US $ 100 million in a record-breaking Series A funding round, securing the largest early-stage investment of its kind in Britain’ s quantum sector as competition intensifies to build commercially viable quantum computers.
The University of Sussex spin-out will use the financing to accelerate development of its modular trapped-ion technology, targeting one of the industry’ s biggest engineering obstacles: scaling quantum processors into reliable, error-corrected machines capable of outperforming conventional supercomputers on commercially significant problems.
The investment also represents the largest funding round secured by a Sussex university spin-out, strengthening Britain’ s ambitions to develop commercially competitive quantum computing infrastructure.
Universal Quantum’ s architecture focuses on modular systems designed to support fault-tolerant operations, addressing the instability and error rates that currently restrict quantum computers to relatively limited applications.
Founded by Sussex researchers Professor Winfried Hensinger and Dr Sebastian Weidt, the company emerged from pioneering research that produced a practical blueprint for large-scale trappedion quantum computing in 2017.
Universal Quantum now employs more than 100 specialists across three continents.
The funding round was co-led by Firgun Ventures and DCVC, with participation from international investors including EDBI, Main Sequence and Hostplus.
Weidt, the company’ s chief executive, said the financing would support its ambition to deliver utility-scale quantum computing.
The investment also reinforces plans to establish Sussex and Brighton as a major quantum technology cluster, attracting international capital, engineering expertise and high-value technology businesses to the region. www. intelligentcio. com
INTELLIGENT CIO EUROPE
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