Overview
C12 Quantum Electronics is a Paris-based quantum hardware startup developing qubits from ultra-pure carbon nanotubes — a fundamentally different materials approach from the superconducting metals (IBM, Google, Alice & Bob), photons (Quandela), or neutral atoms (Pasqal) that dominate other French and global quantum computing programs. Founded in 2020 by twin brothers Pierre Desjardins and Matthieu Desjardins as a spin-off from their research at ENS Paris and the Laboratoire Pierre Aigrain, C12 is commercializing a quantum hardware platform that offers unique noise suppression properties derived from carbon nanotube physics.
The company’s name is an explicit reference to carbon-12, the most abundant stable isotope of carbon — used because the nuclear spin of carbon-12 is zero, meaning C12 qubits experience dramatically less magnetic noise from their surrounding lattice than conventional superconducting qubits fabricated from aluminum or niobium. This intrinsic noise suppression is the company’s foundational technical claim: carbon nanotube qubits could achieve longer coherence times (the duration over which quantum information is preserved) than competing approaches, reducing the overhead required for quantum error correction.
France 2030 Funding & Projects
C12 participates in France 2030’s quantum technology investment axis — the €1.8 billion national quantum strategy announced alongside France 2030. The company has received Bpifrance deeptech startup funding and participates in France’s quantum ecosystem programs facilitated through INRIA, ENS Paris, and the Plan Quantique coordination structure. C12 is part of the Paris quantum computing cluster — a deliberate geographic concentration of French quantum hardware startups that includes Alice & Bob, Quandela, and Pasqal — that France 2030 supports as a national quantum hub.
The company’s ENS Paris research origin provides ongoing academic collaboration supported through France 2030’s research-industry bridge programs. CNF (Centre National de Fabrication for Microelectronics) infrastructure and clean room facilities accessible through CEA Saclay and CNRS partnerships enable C12’s nanotube device fabrication — high-specification facilities that France 2030 funds as shared research infrastructure.
Strategic Position
C12 operates in the quantum hardware market’s most early-stage segment: the company is still demonstrating core technology validity and scalability before the commercial application question becomes primary. In this context, the competitive landscape is defined not by market share but by technical credibility: which qubit platform demonstrates the performance characteristics (coherence time, gate fidelity, scalability) that will ultimately determine which architectures scale to fault-tolerant quantum computing.
France 2030’s strategic decision to fund four distinct French quantum hardware approaches simultaneously — C12 (carbon nanotubes), Alice & Bob (cat qubits/superconducting), Quandela (photonic), and Pasqal (neutral atoms) — reflects rational portfolio diversification in a field where expert consensus does not converge on a single winning architecture. C12’s carbon nanotube approach is the most distinctive of the four, with fewer global competitors pursuing the same materials platform.
Key Technology & Innovation
C12’s technical approach involves growing ultra-pure carbon nanotubes directly on a silicon chip substrate and incorporating them as the active element of superconducting resonators — a hybrid architecture that combines carbon’s nuclear spin-zero noise advantage with the established superconducting circuit engineering that IBM and Google have proven at scale. This “best of both worlds” approach attempts to preserve the coherence time advantage of carbon while leveraging the manufacturing know-how of the superconducting circuit ecosystem.
The critical technical challenge is controlling carbon nanotube growth with sufficient precision for device fabrication — nanotubes must be positioned, oriented, and electrically connected at nanometer scale for each qubit. C12 has developed proprietary growth and placement techniques that represent its core manufacturing IP, and has demonstrated individual qubit operations, though scaling to multi-qubit systems remains an ongoing research challenge.
Leadership
Pierre Desjardins serves as CEO and Matthieu Desjardins as CTO — a founding team combination of commercial/organizational and technical leadership that reflects the company’s need to simultaneously pursue fundamental research and commercial development. The ENS Paris background provides access to France’s best physics research community, and the Parisian location places C12 within the dense quantum startup ecosystem that France 2030 has concentrated.
Competitive Landscape
Globally, C12’s closest materials-level competitor is IBM’s investigation of carbon nanotube transistors for classical computing (a different application) and academic quantum computing research groups investigating carbon-based qubits. No significant venture-backed competitor has yet taken the carbon nanotube qubit approach to C12’s stage. This first-mover position is an asset, but also carries the risk of being alone in an approach that may face unforeseen scaling barriers.
Among French quantum hardware companies, C12 is the earliest-stage and highest-risk/highest-reward bet — both in terms of technical distinctiveness and in terms of the distance between current demonstrations and fault-tolerant computing at scale.
Investor Perspective
C12 is an early-stage deep tech company with a multi-year timeline to commercial application. The investment thesis requires conviction that carbon nanotube qubits will demonstrate the coherence time advantages their physics suggests, and that C12’s team can solve the fabrication scalability challenge. France 2030 provides non-dilutive funding that extends the runway for this deep research-to-product journey.
For quantum computing specialist investors and corporate strategic investors (semiconductor companies, cloud providers exploring quantum computing roadmaps), C12 represents the most technically distinctive entry point into French quantum hardware — a company pursuing a physically differentiated approach in a field where architectural diversity may prove essential.