Britain risks losing its remaining homegrown quantum computing companies to overseas rivals within two years unless ministers step up investment and prioritise British tech, the boss of Universal Quantum has warned.

Sebastian Weidt, chief executive and co-founder of the Sussex-based quantum startup, told City AM that the government’s decisions over the coming months would determine whether his company continued expanding in Britain or shifted more of its operations abroad.

His warning comes just weeks after Universal Quantum raised $100m in the UK’s largest quantum Series A funding round, with the company securing most of its backing from overseas investors.

The company has also unveiled a new quantum processing chip designed to connect enough qubits to build commercially useful quantum computers, aiming to solve one of the industry’s biggest obstacles.

“We would have liked to have taken more UK capital”, Weidt said.

“We found it significantly easier to do that internationally, which is bizarre”.

Despite Britain’s £2bn commitment to quantum technologies, Weidt questioned whether public funding was reaching the right companies, arguing that ministers should prioritise domestic developers over better-funded international competitors.

“I think there is a question around whether that capital that’s being deployed is being deployed in the right way”, he said.

“How much of that capital is actually going to international players? And we’re seeing more of that, which makes no sense in my mind”.

A warning over Britain’s quantum sovereignty The comments come as the government places greater emphasis on tech sovereignty, including plans to strengthen British control over AI infrastructure.

But Weidt warned that Britain risks repeating its mistakes in AI by developing world-leading technology without retaining the companies that commercialise it.

“I think we’ve missed the boat on [AI].

But for quantum, [it’s] one of the last opportunities we have to get a trillion-dollar company in Europe, in the UK”, he said.

“The opportunity, hand on heart, is there.

The tech is here to do that.

If the support and the environment was there, this could be done here”.

Weidt called for the government to take equity stakes in British quantum companies and award more public contracts to domestic developers.