Amid enduring investor appetite for all things quantum, another European company in the space is graduating from the private markets. Just two weeks after Finnish quantum unicorn IQM said it was going public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), its French rival Pasqal is doing the same.
Accompanied by a separate $200 million private funding round, Pasqal’s SPAC deal will see it merging with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp II and subsequently being listed on the Nasdaq. The merger values Pasqal at $2 billion, pre-money.
Bleichroeder is backed by Michel Combes, a French telecom veteran who previously headed Vodafone and Alcatel-Lucent, and Andrew Gundlach, an investment advisor.
Pasqal is a full-stack quantum computing company taking on Big Tech. It generates annual revenue in the tens of millions from selling hardware, software and cloud services to labs and industry partners.
The SPAC deal comes as Pasqal’s North American counterparts, which took a similar route to the public markets, have seen their stocks surge in recent months. U.S. markets offer companies like Pasqal the sort of scale and revenue multiples that are harder to come by at home in Europe, not to mention the cash they need for the long journey to fully realize the potential of quantum computing.
But Pasqal (like IQM) is planning a dual US-European listing. The Nasdaq float is scheduled for this year, and the company will prepare to list on Euronext later in 2026 or 2027.
The dual-listing could be one way Pasqal is trying to reassure its French backers. Bpifrance, France’s public investment bank, is a key shareholder, and will remain active both in Pasqal’s cap table and the company’s board, according to a press release.
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