A wafer cycling in Crolles
On 9 December 2025, Soitec published a short announcement on behalf of a Grenoble start-up. It said "the first custom 28Si FD-SOI wafers provided by Soitec" were "now cycling inside STMicroelectronics' 300 mm manufacturing facilities in Crolles (France)". The sentence is easy to read past. It describes a substrate made of isotopically purified silicon, produced on Soitec's industrial lines, entering a high-volume fab that normally makes chips for cars, phones and industrial equipment. The customer was not a carmaker. It was Quobly, a company founded three years earlier to build quantum computers.
Quobly set out to build quantum processors the way the chip industry builds phones and cars: on 300 mm wafers, in a commercial fab. The dated record shows the plan becoming a production line in Crolles, and its job board shows the company's hiring shifting with it. Here is what has moved, what has not, and what the fourteen roles open today actually ask for.
Nine months later, on 16 September 2026, Quobly reported that readout and one- and two-qubit gates had been demonstrated "on a single QSOI® quantum chip", and that "the results were obtained on QSOI® devices fabricated in STMicroelectronics' commercial 300 mm manufacturing facilities in Crolles". Those two sentences are the spine of this piece. A quantum company that started in a public laboratory now depends on a commercial production line, and a production line hires differently from a laboratory.
This is not a ranking of quantum firms, and it does not predict whether Quobly's approach will win. It reads what the company and its partners have printed, with their dates, and sets that record beside the jobs the company is advertising. A reader who wants to work there, or who wants to understand what this kind of company needs, can then judge the bet for themselves.
The dated record
Quobly was founded "en novembre 2022 par Maud Vinet, Tristan Meunier et François Perruchot", according to the regional business paper ESSOR Isère. The trade press knew it before that under another name: eeNews Europe described it as "formerly known as Siquance". Its technology comes out of long-running French public research on silicon spin qubits, and the company's own releases frame everything that follows as industrialisation.
Quobly’s dated record shows the plan moving from a lab collaboration to a commercial fab
Nov 2022
Company founded by Maud Vinet, Tristan Meunier and François Perruchot
ESSOR Isère
11 Dec 2024
Operating temperature of 500 mK to 1 K stated; Series A of €65M expected
eeNews Europe
12 Dec 2024
Collaboration with ST on 28nm FD-SOI; first commercial products "by 2027"; one million qubits "by 2031"
STMicroelectronics
18 Dec 2024
75 staff move into new offices and labs; about 100 expected by end 2025
ESSOR Isère
22 May 2025
€21M Q100T package: €15M Bpifrance grant under France 2030, €6M equity
Quobly
9 Dec 2025
First 28Si FD-SOI wafers from Soitec cycling in ST Crolles
Soitec
3 Jun 2026
€115M Series A; cloud access in 2026, HPC deployment in 2027
Quobly
16 Sep 2026
Readout and one- and two-qubit gates on a single chip made in Crolles; one million qubits "by 2032"
Quobly
6 Nov 2026 (read)
"120+ employees (300 by mid 2028)"
Quobly careers page
Sources 6 L'Essor Isère · 7 eeNews Europe · 1 STMicroelectronics · 2 Quobly · 5 Soitec · 3 Quobly · 4 Quobly · 8 Quobly
The collaboration announced by ST in December 2024 set the industrial frame. "In the first phase of the collaboration, Quobly and ST will adapt ST's 28nm FD-SOI process to match Quobly's requirements, targeting a 100 Qubit Quantum Machine with proof of scalability beyond 100k physical qubits," the release said. FD-SOI, fully depleted silicon-on-insulator, is a transistor technology in which a very thin layer of silicon sits on an insulating film. ST and Soitec have built much of their French business on it. Quobly's wager is that the same platform can hold qubits.
The May 2025 Q100T package put public money behind the first product. The release described "€15 million in Bpifrance grant via France 2030, and €6M in Quobly's shareholder equity", directed at "the industrial production phase of the first quantum chip on silicon with 100 physical qubits", a chip "engineered for production on 300 mm FD-SOI semiconductors". The wafers of December 2025 and the gate results of September 2026 are the next steps in that same line.
What moved, and what did not
Quobly’s targets have been revised four times, and each version is printed as published
| Claim | Earlier | Later |
|---|---|---|
| Million-qubit horizon | 2031 (ST, Dec 2024) | 2032 (Quobly, Sep 2026) |
| First commercial product | by 2027 (ST, Dec 2024) | cloud in 2026, HPC in 2027 (Quobly, Jun 2026) |
| Series A | €65M expected (eeNews, Dec 2024) | €115M closed (Quobly, Jun 2026) |
| Headcount | 75, about 100 by end 2025 (ESSOR, Feb 2025) | 120+, 300 targeted by mid-2028 (careers page, read 6 Nov 2026) |
Sources 1 STMicroelectronics · 3 Quobly · 4 Quobly · 6 L'Essor Isère · 7 eeNews Europe · 8 Quobly
A company's timetable is a promise, and promises are revised. We print each version as it was published, with its date, and we do not average them or pick the more flattering one.
The million-qubit horizon moved by a year. In December 2024, ST's release said "Quobly aims to break the 1-million-qubit barrier by 2031". In September 2026, Quobly's own release gave "a target of one million qubits by 2032". Neither is a result. Both are targets, and the later one is the current one.
The first product became two steps. In December 2024, "Quobly and ST envision the first generation of commercial products to be available by 2027". By June 2026, the plan had split: "The system will be accessible through the cloud in 2026, before deployment within HPC infrastructures in 2027". Read together, cloud access arrives earlier than the original date for a product, and installation in computing centres keeps the 2027 date.
The fundraising came in larger than forecast. In December 2024, eeNews Europe reported an expected Series A of €65M.1 That was a forecast. The round that closed in June 2026 was a "€115 million1 Series A", "led by Bpifrance, SEALSQ and STMicroelectronics, with participation from the European Innovation Council (EIC Fund), Blast, ALIAD (Air Liquide Venture Capital) and existing investor Innovacom". ST is therefore both the manufacturing partner and a lead investor. SEALSQ's own announcement the same day gives a different lead list, "ST Microelectronics, SEALSQ, Isalt, and the French Public Investment Bank"; we print both as published.
The headcount kept climbing. ESSOR Isère reported that "les 75 collaborateurs - ils devraient être une centaine d'ici la fin de l'année - ont emménagé le 18 décembre 2024" into about 600 m² of offices and 200 m² of laboratories. Quobly's September 2026 release said "more than 100 employees". Its careers page, read on 6 November 2026, says "120+ employees (300 by mid 2028)". The figure of 300 is a hiring target, not a headcount.
What did not move is the industrial choice. Every document from December 2024 onward names the same platform, ST's 28nm FD-SOI, and the same site, Crolles. That consistency matters more to a candidate than any single date, because it tells you which skills the company will keep needing.
Why a chip line changes the hiring
Most quantum computers that make headlines use superconducting qubits, which need extreme cold. eeNews Europe put the difference plainly: "Semiconductor spin qubits operate at 500mK to 1K7 temperature, a higher temperature than superconducting qubits, which require temperatures down to 10mK". That is still extreme cold, but it is warm enough, by quantum standards, for a company to plan conventional control electronics sitting close to the qubits. Maud Vinet's stated goal in the same report was "by 2026 to have a 100-qubit chip with embedded cryogenic logic".
That changes who the company needs. A laboratory that makes a handful of qubits by hand needs device physicists. A company that makes qubits on a commercial process needs people who can design circuits for that process, people who can make electronics work at cryogenic temperatures, and people who can write the software that calibrates, controls and corrects the machine. It also needs the material. The Soitec release describes a division of labour, word for word: Soitec "for the industrial manufacturing of advanced substrates", STMicroelectronics "for their validation of the technology and process in a high-volume 300mm fab", and Quobly "for the development of quantum devices".
The same release states a goal for that purified silicon: substrates "unlocking single-qubit gate fidelities approaching 99.999%". That is a design target for the material, not a measured result on a Quobly chip, and we print it as a target. The release also set a date: "earliest performance metrics of these prototype devices are expected in the first quarter of 2026". The September 2026 gate demonstration is the result that followed. It reports that the operations worked on one chip; it does not give a fidelity figure, and neither do we.
Portrait of the board
Quobly's job board, read on 6 November 2026, carried fifteen listings. One internship was posted twice, once in English and once in French, so there were fourteen distinct roles. Twelve were permanent contracts (CDI) and three listings were internships.
Chip design, cryo-electronics and software outnumber physics roles on Quobly’s board
| Family | Listings | Examples as advertised |
|---|---|---|
| Quantum engineering | 5 | Quantum error correction researcher; an M2 internship leading to a CIFRE doctorate |
| Products and technology | 6 | Analog RF and IC design; cryo-CMOS design research engineer; senior quantum software engineer; R&D project manager; generative-AI internship (posted in EN and FR) |
| Corporate | 4 | HR operations; office manager; chief of staff; finance and administration |
Source 8 Quobly
The striking line is the middle one. Six of the fifteen listings sit in products and technology, against five in quantum engineering. The products-and-technology roles include analog and radio-frequency circuit design and a research engineer for cryo-CMOS design, which is exactly the "embedded cryogenic logic" the company described in 2024. A start-up still defining its physics would not advertise that mix. A start-up preparing a product on a commercial process would.
The three families, role by role
Quantum engineering. These are the roles closest to the qubit itself. The quantum error correction researcher works on the methods that let a machine built from imperfect qubits produce reliable answers; it is the field that decides whether a million physical qubits can become a useful computer. The M2 internship that leads to a CIFRE doctorate, a French industrial PhD funded jointly with a company, is the long way in: a student who starts there would finish a doctorate inside the firm. Quobly's careers page says 63% of its staff hold PhDs, so this family sets the company's culture.
Products and technology. This is where the chip line shows. An analog RF and IC designer draws the circuits that send and read the microwave signals that drive qubits. A cryo-CMOS design research engineer makes ordinary transistor circuits behave at temperatures where they were never meant to run. A senior quantum software engineer writes the layer between the hardware and its users, which matters more now that the company plans cloud access in 2026. An R&D project manager keeps schedules across partners. The generative-AI internship is a reminder that tooling work exists here too. The careers page groups the technical work into three families, quantum engineer, cryogenic engineer and software engineer; the board shows the last two growing.
Corporate. HR operations, an office manager, a chief of staff and finance and administration. These are the roles of a company that has raised €115M and plans to more than double its staff by mid-2028. They are also the easiest roles on the board to overlook, and the clearest sign that the company is organising for growth rather than for a single experiment.
What the board does not say
A job board is a snapshot, and this one has limits a candidate should know.
- No pay is printed. We do not estimate it.
- No role is listed in Crolles. The chips are made at ST's site there, but every permanent French role on the board is in Grenoble. Quobly's offices and laboratories are in Grenoble; work on the line appears to be carried out with ST, not by Quobly staff posted to the fab. The board does not say more, and neither do we.
- One role is abroad. Quobly says it is "headquartered in Grenoble, France, with subsidiaries in Singapore and Canada". The board showed one permanent role in Singapore and none in Canada on the day we read it.
- Fifteen listings are not the growth plan. Going from "120+" to 300 by mid-2028 means far more hires than the board shows today, and we do not predict which roles will follow.
The careers page also gives a profile of the current team: 29% women, 20 nationalities and an average age of 35. These are the company's figures, published on a living page; we print the day we read them.
What this means for your career
Quobly's partners are named in its own Series A release: "STMicroelectronics, Air Liquide, Soitec and Orano". The release names them; it does not set out each one's role, so we do not either. Its lead investors include a public bank and its own manufacturer. It has a defence order: ESSOR Isère reported that "Quobly a également reçu une commande pour le ministère de la Défense". And its technical claims so far are claims of operation, not of performance at scale.
For a candidate, the useful reading is narrower than the headlines. The company has bet its product on a commercial chip process, and it is hiring for that bet: circuit design, cryogenic electronics, software and error correction, alongside the physics. Those are skills that keep their value outside quantum computing too. The targets, a million qubits by 2032 and 300 staff by mid-2028, are the company's to meet, and the dates have moved before. The record will show whether they move again.
Read alongside
This piece is a companion to our dossier on the Crolles FD-SOI, photonics and quantum wafer streams, which places Quobly among the other programmes on the same site, and to our CEA-Leti dossiers, which describe the laboratory system the company grew out of.