THE DEEP BRIEF WITH JAN GOETZ I IQM QUANTUM COMPUTERS

Jan Goetz ist the CEO & Co-Founder of IQM Quantum Computers, the commercially most successful quantum company in the world 

Let’s start with this milestone moment. What does it mean for IQM — and for Europe — to close the largest quantum financing round to date at $320 million?

This round is the largest Series B outside the U.S. at $320 million and a huge step for us. It reflects both our team’s performance and the confidence of our investors, old and new. For IQM, it marks the beginning of a new growth phase. We’ve already sold and delivered more quantum systems than anyone worldwide, especially in Europe, but now it’s about global expansion: to Asia-Pacific, the U.S., and beyond. And about accelerating our R&D roadmap.

As you just mentioned, IQM leads globally in quantum systems sold and delivered. What’s the thinking behind that go-to-market strategy?

Quantum is still early in its path toward industrialization. For us, it’s about co-developing with customers, and that works best when they have a system on-premise. We launched two products: the IQM Spark, priced around €1M, targeting universities to train the next generation; and the Radiance, a higher-end system for supercomputing centers. Our approach focuses on getting hardware into labs, into institutions, and building the ecosystem around it.

While you lead in systems sold and shipped, IBM leads in deal value. How do you see these two strategies shaping the early quantum market?

We’re still early in the industry, so it’s really about market share. Our customers usually refresh their hardware every two to three years, and the key is getting into those accounts early. If you’re already installed and delivering exceptional technology, that they see works, and which they can feedback on, you’re in a good position for follow-on deals. For us, getting our systems to the customers, building awareness, and showing that we deliver, while commercializing, is the perfect blend of strategies. Again, here we need to differentiate also between the two systems, as the higher-end system comes at a different price point, and will be deployed more, as we progress on our roadmap.

You decided early on to ship physical quantum systems, rather than go cloud-only. What advantage has that created — and how has being in Europe enabled it?

Direct customer feedback is the biggest advantage. It helps us to avoid building in a vacuum. And yes, being European matters. We don’t have hyperscalers like AWS or Azure here, so we’ve taken a different route – on-premise systems and partnerships with supercomputing centers. In fact, there are more quantum systems deployed in European compute centers today than in the U.S. That’s no coincidence. Many still see quantum as “far off,” but you’re already commercializing.

What’s the biggest misconception about where the industry is today?

That value only starts once there’s full commercial advantage, but many use cases already exist today. Our customers already see value, in preparing for even bigger future advances, in educating their teams, and in starting real development now. It’s like with GPUs, which were originally developed for gaming, and are now powering AI. Quantum is following this curve and the foundation has already been built.

What do most investors still get wrong about quantum — and what’s changed in how they evaluate companies like yours?

Investors are far more educated, which is a clear advantage, for serious companies. The time where a founder could only focus on the story is over. Any serious deep tech or quantum investor will have done substantial research, seen dozens of companies, read analyst reports, and have some technical knowledge. The biggest misconception that remains is expecting a multibillion-dollar market to emerge overnight, but even here we have noticed a shift in the kinds of questions they ask. A few years ago, they’d ask when your valuation would really take off. Now it’s more about how you’re doing things, how you scale, how you build, how your roadmap holds up.

We’ve always been honest about our roadmap. There is a market today and an exponential phase on the near horizon, and serious investors now understand that nuance. That shift is helpful. It shows who really understands the tech and who might actually be able to deliver on what they promise.

The U.S. quantum race is dominated by big tech. Europe’s breakthroughs, like IQM, come from startups. What’s different here?

Not having these big brands as direct competitors in the European market actually helps accelerate growth companies – it forces us to find our own path and makes us stronger. On the private sector side Europe is also strong at collaboration. This isn’t a market you can build solo on this continent, you need cross-border collaboration.

What does it take to build sovereign quantum infrastructure in Europe — and what should policymakers understand about that?

Sovereignty doesn’t mean building everything in one country. It means knowing where your risks lie and how to mitigate them, having the freedom to choose your supply chain, with coordination across countries. Finland, Germany, France: each country has different strengths. We need to align and not duplicate efforts. It’s a global industry, but our resilience will come from European coordination. But this needs true European efforts and regulation that empowers this, not bureaucracy hindering it.

Are customer expectations changing? What are they asking for now that they didn’t two years ago?

Absolutely. Supercomputing centers are buying into our roadmap: they want to know about the next upgrade, how we’ll reach error correction, and if we can keep them at the edge of compute performance. On the private sector side, it’s more about integration. It’s gone from R&D teams playing around to business units asking: how do we make this work in our workflow?

Where’s IQM headed next — technologically and geographically?

On the tech side, new processors are coming and we’re expanding our chip fab — construction is already underway. Globally, we’re looking closely at the U.S. Of course, you have to navigate tariffs and uncertainty, but we already have a U.S. entity and local partners like NVIDIA and HPE. If the market pull grows, we can easily expand our presence there and possibly even local assembly. We’re preparing for that now.

What’s one concept from quantum physics that actually makes you a better CEO?

Uncertainty. In quantum, you can’t precisely know both position and momentum at the same time. As a CEO, especially in deep tech, you deal with uncertainty constantly: technology, team dynamics, market. You learn to work with it instead of trying to eliminate it.