IQM sold 23 quantum computers and warned investors the breakthrough may never come

Quantum computers are real enough to buy, install, and run at a national laboratory. IQM Quantum Computers has demonstrated this 23 times, building physical superconducting machines and shipping them to research institutions across Finland, Germany, and the United States. The Finnish startup, founded in 2018 by scientists from Aalto University, is now the first European quantum computing company to trade on a major public stock exchange — listed on Nasdaq under the ticker IQMX and simultaneously on the Helsinki Stock Exchange, at a valuation of approximately $1.9 billion.

The company’s customer list tells the story of where quantum computing actually lives right now. IQM’s roster grew from 8 customers in 2024 to 22 in 2025, a pace that points to genuine demand rather than laboratory interest. Among those customers: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Germany, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory — a US Department of Energy facility where IQM recently installed its first American machine. IQM claims 23 physical units deployed, a figure it describes as more than any other quantum manufacturer.

The listing was structured as a SPAC merger with blank-check company RAAQ, closing with €127 million in PIPE financing and leaving IQM with approximately €337 million in cash after costs. That runway sustains a 420-person team — two-thirds based in Finland, around 100 in Munich — while the company pursues larger and more capable machines. CEO Jan Goetz described the listing as a step toward deploying quantum computers wherever advanced supercomputing runs.

There is a sentence in IQM’s prospectus that stands out. It states, in the flat language that prospectus filings require, that ‘large-scale commercial traction of quantum computing technology may never occur.’ The admission reflects something real about where the field is. Quantum advantage — the point at which a quantum processor solves a problem that classical computers genuinely cannot — has not been achieved at commercial scale by any company. IQM is not unusual in this; it is simply more direct about saying so. The machines it sells are the most sophisticated hardware many of its customers have yet installed, which is not the same thing as being transformatively better than what they already own.

IQM is not moving alone. Pasqal, its French counterpart pursuing a different technical approach to quantum processors, announced its own SPAC deal in the same period. The race to capitalize on quantum computing is clearly accelerating, independent of where the technology sits against the bar that would justify the investment. The Trump administration has set a 2028 target for fault-tolerant quantum computers, a timeline that creates a credible window for government procurement contracts if the hardware advances at the rate the sector expects.

IQM recently established a quantum technology center in Maryland, positioning the company closer to the US federal research infrastructure that represents its most concentrated near-term customer base. The Maryland center, combined with the €337 million raised through the listing, gives the company a longer runway than it has ever had. Whether that runway ends at a machine that changes how a real problem is solved — rather than one that is simply the best physical quantum computer a national laboratory has yet acquired — is the question IQM’s $1.9 billion valuation now asks investors to hold.

Tags: Nasdaq, IQM, IQM Quantum Computers, Jan Goetz, Pasqal, quantum computing