€200k · Other round · Software · Milan, Italy
Milan-based Promethence has secured a €200k investment from Quantum Italia, the quantum-technology vehicle created by Scientifica and Quantonation. The investor announcement says the company was founded in 2025 by professors and researchers from Politecnico di Milano to develop hardware and software for post-quantum cryptography.
Migration is an engineering problem, not an algorithm choice
Post-quantum cryptography replaces vulnerable public-key methods with algorithms designed to resist attacks from future quantum computers. Standards now give organisations a clearer destination, but moving there requires more than selecting a new primitive. Security teams must find where cryptography is embedded, test performance and compatibility, update protocols and devices, and keep systems working while old and new methods coexist.
Promethence’s hardware-software approach targets that implementation layer. Co-founder Simone Perriello’s research profile focuses on quantum algorithms, cryptanalysis and code-based post-quantum systems. Turning that work into deployable tooling can help customers evaluate both security and the computing cost of migration rather than treating standards compliance as a paper exercise.
A policy deadline creates a near-term market
The European Commission says EU member states should begin transitioning to post-quantum cryptography by the end of 2026, with critical infrastructure expected to move first. That timetable creates demand for inventories, testing, acceleration and integration well before a cryptographically relevant quantum computer exists.
The execution challenge is to turn deep technical expertise into a product that works across heterogeneous enterprise systems. Customers will need evidence that new implementations are secure, performant and maintainable on current hardware. The €200k investment is small relative to that market, but it provides focused capital for a research-led team to translate academic capabilities into the practical components organisations need for a staged migration.
