IQM, Europe’s first public quantum company, admits the future of the tech is uncertain

IQM, a full-stack quantum company out of Finland, went public on the Nasdaq Thursday via a SPAC merger at a valuation of about $1.9 billion. But share prices didn’t pop. They spent most the day below the IPO price — a lukewarm welcome.

SPAC mergers are often not immediately popular with retail investors these days. But this fizzle was arguably fueled by IQM’s own admission in its prospectus that “large-scale commercial traction of quantum computing technology may never occur.”

In fairness, this warning applies to all quantum companies. Yet, that hasn’t stopped the industry, including IQM, from acquiring customers, who use the tech as it is today for tasks like simulations and optimizations. IQM, which sells actual physical computers, as well as a cloud service, has customers like VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Germany.

“We sell computers into advanced supercomputing centers and data centers, and we sell computing time through the cloud,” its CEO and co-founder Jan Goetz told TechCrunch.

Having grown from eight customers in 2024 to 22 in 2025 is a fair motive for celebration in IQM’s circles, especially when two recent customers are from the private sector. But it also suggests that demand won’t scale until the “quantum advantage” — when quantum chips start outperforming classical computers for a larger range of complex and lengthy tasks, unlocking use cases from biotech to fintech, while potentially upending encryption.

But no one, not even a company making quantum computers, can say when that might be.

This hasn’t stopped investors from doubling down on quantum companies public and private, further encouraged by President Trump’s recent executive orders to accelerate the timeline for quantum. In response, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has committed to deploying “the world’s first fault-tolerant, scientifically relevant quantum computer” by 2028.

While this follows similar announcements from France, Germany, and the U.K., Trump’s orders carry extra weight for IQM, which has recently established a quantum tech center in Maryland and deployed a computer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is part of the DOE. “We can benefit directly from it,” Goetz said.

Unlike other European unicorns, however, IQM isn’t moving its center of gravity to the other side of the Atlantic. In parallel to its IQMX ticker in the U.S., where most of its quantum peers are listed, it is due to debut tomorrow on Nasdaq Helsinki, where it expects continued support from the likes of Tesi, Finland’s sovereign wealth fund.

IQM’s story is indissociable from Finland. It was founded there in 2018 as a spinout from Aalto University in Espoo, a tech and quantum hub near Helsinki where two-thirds of its staff still work. But another hundred out of its 420-people team are based in Munich, with the remainder split around various locations to help the company in its global deployment roadmap.

In its prospectus, IQM noted that this duality appealed to RAAQ, the blank check company that helped IQM go public via a SPAC. “As evidenced by over €200 million in public support for IQM, European sovereign states and companies have supported IQM’s emergence as a prominent quantum computing company in Europe. IQM also demonstrated its ability to operate outside of Europe,” according to the RAAQ board.

Despite global ambitions, Goetz expressed pride at IQM becoming the first European quantum company to list in the U.S. — within a hair’s breadth, as French competitor Pasqal also announced plans to go public via a SPAC. “It always feels good to be first and to be a pioneer, but ultimately it’s about long-term success,” Goetz said.

The operation will generate new liquidity for IQM — approximately €198 million after costs, or $226 million. But the company had already raised $300 million last September. “It’s a big success raising very shortly after the Series B,” Goetz said. This also reflects that IQM’s main goal was to position itself more prominently in a race still full of unknowns.