Quantum News Nexus

IQM Quantum Computers started trading on Nasdaq today (NSDQ: IQMX), making the Finnish firm the first European pure-play quantum computing company to trade on a US stock exchange. Around early afternoon, the stock traded at just above $12, and had ranged between $11.62 and $13.78.

The public debut follows the completion of IQM’s merger with special purpose acquisition company Real Asset Acquisition Corp. IQM now claims to have a pro forma cash position of €337 million (more than $385 million USD). The Espoo, Finland, company also claims to have sold 23 quantum computers worldwide.

IQM has been inching toward this day for months after first announcing its merger plans last February, and recently took a step forward with a general meeting to approve the acquisition occurring in late June.

Qolab, widely known for having an in-house Nobel Laureate in the form of co-founder and CTO John M. Martinis, announced the closing of $54.2 million in financing. This includes Series B Preferred Stock financing, along with “the conversion of an aggregate of $12.6 million in convertible securities and a commitment for an aggregate of $10 million in future convertible securities,” according to a press release. 

The announcement comes after Qolab last December said it had gained memory and storage maven Western Digital as an investor. This round was led by UC Investments (the University of California Office of the Chief Investment Officer). The Series B Preferred Stock financing and prior convertible financing included participation from existing financial and strategic semiconductor investors including Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), Octave Ventures, and Phoenix Venture Partners, the company said.

The announcement was made during the 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, where Martinis, recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics, joined fellow Nobel Laureates and other scientists and emerging researchers from around the world. 

Qolab said the new financing will feed its ongoing development of scalable superconducting quantum computing technologies, expansion of strategic semiconductor collaborations, and acceleration of the company’s target toward fault-tolerant quantum computing.

CCRAFT, a thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) foundry in Switzerland, announced funding of $7.8 million (CHF 6.3 million) to further fuel its manufacturing of photonic chips for quantum computing. TFLN is key to photonic integrated circuits used in many different ways in quantum.

From the press release: “The proceeds will support CCRAFT’s ambitious technical roadmap towards an industrialized production line, unlocking additional manufacturing capacity to serve key Tier-1 customers. In addition, CCRAFT has already secured more than USD 3.5 million (CHF 3 million) in public funding and cantonal support. With USD 11.3 million fresh capital, CCRAFT is accelerating its path towards establishing industrial-scale photonic chip manufacturing in Switzerland. The financing was led by QBIT Capital, with participation from Zürcher Kantonalbank, Apprecia Capital, Spacewalk, Blue Wonder Ventures, and a leading European AI infrastructure operator.”

CCRAFT, a spin off of Swiss technology innovation center CSEM, is one of a few companies that has established TFLN foundries in the last couple of years, another being Quantum Computing, Inc., which has a TFLN foundry in Tempe, Arizona.

Pasqal, yet another quantum company with plans to go public, announced a new partnership with longtime collaborator Crédit Agricole CIB, the financing and investment banking arm of Crédit Agricole Group. The next phase in the relationship between these two French firms is aimed at accelerating “the transition from quantum research to operational deployment in capital markets activities,” according to a press release. “Building on a collaboration initiated in 2019, the partnership enters a new phase focused on the industrialization of quantum computing applications, with initial production use cases targeted as early as 2028.”

Image source: IQM

Quantum News Nexus is a site from freelance writer and editor Dan O’Shea that covers quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum networking, quantum-safe security, and more. You can find him on X @QuantumNewsGuy and doshea14@gmail.com.