IQM, a Finnish full-stack quantum company, went public on the Nasdaq on Thursday through a SPAC merger at a valuation of about $1.9 billion. But the stock price did not rise. They spent most of the day below their IPO price. This was a lukewarm reception.
SPAC mergers are often not immediately popular with individual investors these days. But the confusion may have been triggered by IQM’s admission in its prospectus that “large-scale commercial traction for quantum computing technologies may never occur.”
To be fair, this warning applies to all quantum companies. But that hasn’t stopped the industry, including IQM, from gaining customers using current technologies for tasks like simulation and optimization. IQM, which sells not only physical computers but also cloud services, has customers such as Finland’s VTT Technology Research Center and Germany’s Leibniz Supercomputing Center.
“We sell computers to high-end supercomputing centers and data centers, and we sell computing time through the cloud,” CEO and co-founder Jan Goetz told TechCrunch.
Growing from eight customers in 2024 to 22 in 2025 is a legitimate cause for celebration within IQM, especially when two of its most recent customers are from the private sector. But this also suggests that demand will not scale until quantum chips begin to outperform classical computers on a wider range of complex and lengthy tasks, unlocking use cases from biotech to fintech while potentially upending cryptography.
But no one, not even the companies making quantum computers, can guarantee when that will be.
This hasn’t stopped investors from doubling down on public and private quantum companies, further encouraged by President Trump’s recent executive order to accelerate quantum timelines. In response, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has pledged to deploy “the world’s first fault-tolerant, scientifically relevant quantum computer” by 2028.
This follows similar announcements in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, but Trump’s order carries greater weight for IQM, which recently established a center for quantum technologies in Maryland and placed computers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, part of the DOE. “We can directly benefit from this,” Goetz said.
But unlike other European unicorns, IQM is not shifting its center of gravity to the other side of the Atlantic. It is scheduled to debut on Nasdaq Helsinki tomorrow, parallel to the IQMX ticker in the US, where most of its quantum peers are listed, and expects continued support from the likes of Tesi, Finland’s sovereign wealth fund.
IQM’s story is inseparable from Finland. It was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from Aalto University in Espoo, a technology and quantum hub near Helsinki, where two-thirds of its staff still work. However, another 100 of the 420-person team are based in Munich, with the remainder spread across multiple locations to support the company’s global deployment roadmap.
IQM noted in its prospectus that this duality appealed to RAAQ, a blank check company that helped take IQM public through a SPAC. “European sovereign states and companies have supported IQM’s emergence as a prominent quantum computing company in Europe, as evidenced by over €200 million of public support for IQM. IQM has also demonstrated its ability to operate outside of Europe,” according to the RAAQ board.
Despite its global ambitions, Goetz expressed pride that IQM has become the first European quantum company to be listed in the United States. That’s because French competitor Pasqal has also announced plans to list via SPAC. “It always feels good to be first and a pioneer, but ultimately it’s about long-term success,” Goetz said.
This work will create new liquidity for IQM. Excluding costs, this amounts to approximately 198 million euros, or $226 million. But the company already raised $300 million last September. “We had great success right after our Series B,” Goetz said. This also reflects that the main goal of IQM is to take a more prominent position in fields that are still unknown.
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