EXCLUSIVE: Thales chief shifts focus to Middle East, accelerates quantum tech as ‘AI is done'
'AI, okay, that's more or less done,' Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Patrice Caine said in an exclusive interview with Arabian Busines s. 'We have our plan. We have already embedded AI in our products. Things are in place. Now I'm really thinking of what will be next.'
Thales shifts focus beyond AI
That next step involves establishing the United Arab Emirates as Thales' third global radar centre of excellence and accelerating quantum sensors — technologies Caine says will deliver performance gains '1,000 times' better than current systems. Quantum sensors derive their performance from the extreme sensitivity of quantum states to any external perturbation. By measuring these 'perturbations', it is possible to build new sensors that are significantly smaller and more sensitive than conventional technologies.
The move comes amid uncertainty over whether European countries will follow through on military spending increases promised after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
'When I look at strong areas of growth for us, the two main engines will be the Middle East in general and the US for different reasons,' Caine said. 'These are the two strong engines for the next decade.'
Thales plans to open the UAE radar centre within two years, joining existing hubs in France and the Netherlands. The facility will support domestic and regional defence markets.
'It's not something that we take a decade to be,' Caine said. 'It's clearly one year typically to have a kind of first opening, and to be fully functioning two years.'
Thales intends to increase its global R&D spending to €5 billion by 2028, up from about €4 billion today. Around 75 per cent of R&D funding comes from government customers.
On quantum sensors, Caine said: 'These quantum sensors will bring an improvement of at least 1,000 times in terms of performance.' He added that similar gains should apply to size, weight and power consumption. 'By comparison, AI typically delivers improvements of 10 to 100 times.'
This represents what experts now call 'the second quantum revolution.' While the first quantum revolution led to applications such as microelectronics, lasers and atomic clocks (enabling GPS), this second revolution uses more advanced quantum phenomena such as state superposition and quantum entanglement.
Unlike quantum computing, whose practical uses remain largely theoretical, Caine expressed confidence in quantum sensing. 'It's 100 per cent sure because it's already working in our labs,' he said. 'It's more a question of years than a question of decades.'
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