Quantum Foundry Copenhagen plans to establish a 5,300m² quantum-chip fabrication facility in Copenhagen, creating a manufacturing operation intended to help quantum hardware developers move from laboratory-scale devices towards repeatable wafer production. The facility is expected to open in 2027.
The site will combine nanofabrication laboratories, advanced material characterisation, device testing, chip assembly and packaging, and ultra-high-vacuum manufacturing. Quantum Foundry Copenhagen intends to offer wafer fabrication to quantum-technology companies globally on commercial terms, giving external developers access to specialist manufacturing capability without having to establish equivalent facilities themselves.
The foundry is owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and was established in 2023 to develop tools, materials, and processes for next-generation quantum chips. Its work uses ultra-high-vacuum techniques and bottom-up engineering intended to provide tight control over purity, material interfaces, and device structures.
Those manufacturing details matter because quantum processors are exceptionally sensitive to material and process variation. Small differences in composition, contamination, interfaces, or device geometry can affect performance, making production control a central engineering challenge rather than simply a later step once the underlying physics has been demonstrated.
Quantum research laboratories can manufacture experimental devices in small numbers, but commercial production requires a different discipline. Equipment has to deliver repeatable processes, metrology must identify where variation enters the wafer, test systems need to characterise devices consistently, and packaging has to preserve performance once the chip leaves the fabrication stage.
The Copenhagen facility is intended to put those activities into one industrial environment. Combining fabrication, characterisation, testing, assembly, and packaging should allow process engineers to trace device performance back through manufacturing steps rather than treating each stage as a separate research activity.
Quantum Foundry Copenhagen says it is developing proprietary manufacturing tools as well as processes and materials. That reflects the relative immaturity of the sector: unlike conventional semiconductor production, where mature equipment ecosystems already exist for many process steps, parts of the quantum manufacturing chain are still being developed alongside the devices themselves.
Several competing quantum-computing architectures are also being pursued internationally, which limits the usefulness of treating “quantum chips” as a single standard product category. The Copenhagen foundry is working with quantum materials and devices using ultra-high-vacuum manufacturing, including approaches that can support superconducting, semiconductor, and photonic technologies.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has committed more than DKK 2.9 billion, equivalent to approximately €390 million, to quantum technology. That includes its Quantum Computing Programme at the Niels Bohr Institute, which has an objective of developing Denmark’s first fully functional fault-tolerant quantum computer before 2034.
The foundry will work closely with that programme while also serving commercial customers. The combination is intended to shorten the path between experimental research and manufacturing, allowing process capability developed for advanced quantum devices to be tested against requirements beyond a single university programme.
Europe’s wider challenge is similar. The region has substantial quantum-science capability, but maintaining a position in commercial hardware depends on manufacturing, packaging, equipment, materials, and supply chains developing alongside research. The European Chips Act and Quantum Europe Strategy have both increased policy attention on that industrial gap.
A specialist foundry model could be particularly useful for smaller hardware businesses. Building nanofabrication, ultra-high-vacuum equipment, materials analysis, test, and packaging capability requires significant capital before a company has reached meaningful production volume. External manufacturing allows some of that fixed cost to be shared across several customers.
There are limits to the analogy with established semiconductor foundries. Quantum hardware has not converged on common architectures or manufacturing rules, volumes remain low, and many devices are still evolving rapidly. A commercially accessible fab can provide process discipline and equipment access, but it cannot remove those underlying technology uncertainties.
Its value will instead be measured in repeatability. If engineers can manufacture comparable devices across wafers, characterise where performance changes, and feed that information back into process development, quantum hardware begins to acquire the statistical and manufacturing discipline needed for scale.
The 2027 opening therefore represents the start of the harder industrial phase rather than the completion of it. Copenhagen is preparing the building, tools, and process environment needed to manufacture quantum devices repeatedly. Whether the resulting processors reach large commercial markets remains uncertain, but quantum computing will not scale at all if every useful chip remains an artisanal laboratory achievement.
