Finland’s IQM Quantum Computers, a manufacturer of quantum computers, went public on the NASDAQ on July 2 under the stock symbol IQMX. It is the first European quantum computer company to go public in the United States.
The company organized its listing via a SPAC deal with The Real Asset Acquisition Corporation, a company that listed on Nasdaq last year. The move valued IQM at $1.8 million in February and raised €337 million for the company upon listing. The valuation made IQM the most valuable quantum business in Europe and the first with a public listing.
Founded in 2018 in Espoo, IQM develops superconducting quantum computers that are sold to customers as a hardware product instead of a cloud solution. The company now employs more than 400 and claims to have sold 23 quantum computers worldwide. It has sold to CINECA in Italy, the Leibniz Supercomputing Center in Germany, and the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Rather than relying only on cloud access, IQM focuses on selling on-premises quantum systems that customers can own and operate themselves. The company is also expanding in the United States with a new quantum technology centre in Maryland.
“Quantum computing is reaching an inflection point. Around the world, organizations are moving from exploration to implementation, investing in quantum infrastructure and building the capabilities that will define the next generation of computing,” said Jan Goetz, CEO.
The decision to offer hardware solutions for buyers is a prescient one. As more governments and militaries look to quantum computing to manage the endless array of variable information produced by the chaos of the battlefield, having a sovereign solution that is not tied to any central server is key.
The parallel rise of IQM competitors like the UK’s Quantum Motion and Ireland’s Equal1 point to a great deal of interest in European quantum computing solutions, and IQM’s NASDAQ listing ups the ante for similarly sized providers.
