Amid continued 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 announced it would go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), its French rival Pascal does the same.
Accompanied by separate $200M Private Funding RoundPasqal’s SPAC deal will merge it with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp II and then list on the Nasdaq. The merger values Pasqal at $2 billion, pre-money.
Bleichroeder is backed by Michel Combes, a French telecoms veteran who previously headed Vodafone and Alcatel-Lucent, and Andrew Gundlach, an investment adviser.
Pasqal is a full-stack quantum computing company that takes on Big Tech. Generates tens of millions in annual revenue from selling hardware, software and cloud services to labs and industry partners.
The SPAC deal comes as Pasqal’s North American counterparts, which followed a similar path to public markets, saw Their stocks have been rising in recent months. The US markets offer companies like Pasqal the kind of scale and revenues that are harder to find in Europe, not to mention the cash needed for the long journey to fully exploit the potential of quantum computing.
But Pasqal (like IQM) is planning a dual US-Europe listing. The Nasdaq float is planned for this year and the company will prepare to go public Euronext later in 2026 or 2027.
The double import could be a way Pasqal is trying to reassure its French backers. Bpifrance, France’s public investment bank, is major shareholderand will remain active on both Pasqal’s cap table and the company’s board of directors, according to a press release.
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Pasqal said it expects to remain a French legal entity based in Palaiseau, a Paris suburb that is home to a cluster of academic institutions as well as industrial research centers run by Pasqal’s clients, energy giant EDF and defense firm Thales. The quantum computing company also plans to appoint “a new non-executive chairman of French nationality” to its board.
A investor presentation from Bleichroeder indicates that Combes will serve as “Pasqal’s lead independent director” after the deal closes — though that appointment may not go over well in France.
In 2015, the current French president Emmanuel Macron publicly reprimanded Combes for stepping down as CEO of Alcatel-Lucent before Nokia’s takeover of troubled Alcatel closed. Combes’ exit package proved so controversial that it was eventually halved.
Combes’ subsequent moves have restored his reputation in French tech circles. After replacing Marcelo Claure as CEO of Sprinthe headed SoftBank Group International, where he defended French echelons like Swile. But he left that post after just five months amid a wave of departures in 2022.
Pasqal is no stranger to executive reshuffles. Buried in the announcement is the fact that the company The former executive chairman, Wasiq Bokhari, is now its CEO. And Loïc Henriet, who started as its CTO, then rose to a co-CEO role and later it was his sole CEOreturns again as CTO.
Confirming her commitment to France may bring more intangible benefits for Pasqal as well. The company tells taxpayers its expansion will create highly skilled jobs in the country, where it plans to hire 50 people over the next 18 months. Also, not being an American company in the current geopolitical climate has a good chance of opening doors, as French AI lab Mistral AI found.
But no company can last long without a good product. The race is fierce in quantum computing, as competing approaches to the technology promise the same. IQM, for example, is betting on superconducting qubits, while Pasqal is following the neutral atom path championed by its co-founder, a Nobel laureate in physics Alain Aspect.
This technical foundation will play a key role for Pasqal, which plans to continue investing heavily in R&D to develop a fault-tolerant quantum computer through the end of the decade. Such developments will be essential to unlocking applications in areas such as drug discovery, healthcare and cyber security.
The SPAC transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, and Pasqal expects a pro-forma market capitalization of about $2.6 billion, giving the company cash to meet its goal of doubling production capacity within 24 months.
The $200 million private equity round saw investments from Parkway, Quanta Computer, LG Electronics and CMA CGM. The company’s backers include the European Innovation Council Fund, Series B lead investor Temasek, Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Ventures and ISAI.
