In contrast, Weidt said the U.K. has failed to move beyond small grants, arguing it needs to become a better customer of its \u201csovereign\u201d companies or risk ceding \u201cthe great quantum computing foundations the U.K. has built over decades … to foreign players.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to see now more ambition, and we need to see more pace,\u201d Gerald Mullally, CEO of Oxford Quantum Circuits, said, stressing that the U.K. must \u201cact at a level of scale that is competitive relative to what we\u2019re seeing in other nations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Less is more<\/p>\n
Quantum computing is precisely the type of \u201ccritical sector where the U.K. has a global competitive edge\u201d that the government should be getting behind, Ed Bussey, CEO of Oxford Science Enterprises, which backs university spin-outs, said.<\/p>\n
The industry now expects the government to put money where its mouth is, the people cited above said, with one suggesting a handful of companies could get up to \u00a350 million each under the initiative.<\/p>\n
Procurement and government investment could also be forthcoming.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, the government committed to \u201cleverage its procurement budgets to drive innovation,\u201d including to \u201cact as an early buyer for the best new technologies to de-risk investment, create demand, and pave the way to market.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of a \u201cstrategic reset,\u201d the U.K.\u2019s research and development funding agency UKRI will also become more \u201cchoiceful\u201d in allocating \u00a37 billion for scale-ups over the next four years to companies in areas where the U.K. has genuine international advantage, its CEO Ian Chapman has said.<\/p>\n
In a new five-year strategy, the British Business Bank also vowed to increase investment and take on greater risk \u201cto support the most strategically important scale-up companies to stay in the U.K.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In contrast, Weidt said the U.K. has failed to move beyond small grants, arguing it needs to become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,2453,420,31507,50,2800,1445,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-316555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-innovation","12":"tag-keir-starmer","13":"tag-liz-kendall","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-quantum","16":"tag-rachel-reeves","17":"tag-technology","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}