Europe is about to get what is billed as its most powerful quantum computer. Later this year, Denmark expects to bring Magne online, built by Microsoft and Atom Computing and backed by €80m from the Novo Nordisk Foundation and EIFO. It is a milestone, and it should be welcomed. But the harder question is not whether Europe can build one impressive machine, it’s what happens as quantum computing becomes commercially useful and we need not one, but many. Atom Computing’s platform is based on neutral atoms, and that matters because the next phase of this industry will be decided by energy, space and deployability. While neutral atoms avoid the large-scale dilution refrigeration that superconducting systems require, which is certainly an architectural advantage, they still depend on a substantial stack of vacuum hardware, lasers, optical tweezers, detectors and control electronics. So even when the qubits themselves are elegant, their footprint remains a substantial piece of infrastructure, limiting their scalability. As quantum computing becomes commercially useful, industry will want quantum computing capacity wherever it can solve real problems: in drug discovery, advanced materials, batteries, logistics, power grids, aerospace and manufacturing. We talk a lot about millions of qubits being the threshold to utility. We should also be thinking now about what happens when the market wants millions of quantum computers. Size, weight, power and unit economics will matter as much in quantum computing as they do in AI. BloombergNEF, a research provider, forecasts US data centre power demand reaching 106 gigawatts by 2035, a 36% upward revision from an outlook published just seven months earlier. Most people assume quantum computing is decades away from compounding this problem. It is not. And if it arrives on the trajectory the most heavily funded approaches are currently on, the energy demands from AI will look