IQM's Nasdaq listing and the start of Europe's Quantum Power Play

On 2nd July 2026, IQM Quantum Computers (IQM) began trading on Nasdaq under [IQMX], becoming Europe's first listed quantum company and World Fund's first public listing. The bell-ringing ceremony followed in August, when World Fund Managing Partner Daria Saharova joined the IQM team in New York, a moment she has described as the most special in World Fund's history and in her own career.

World Fund led IQM's €128 million Series A2 in 2022 because our thesis was clear then, and is even clearer now: Europe can build global leaders in frontier tech. It was our biggest single ticket at the time, and as Daria has admitted since, her internal pitch took some extra convincing. At listing, IQM hit a market cap north of $3 billion.

Europe regains its power by dominating emerging sectors like quantum. This is the core tenet of our Power Play thesis, of which IQM is our most prominent case study. IQM is now the most commercially viable quantum firm on the planet, having sold more quantum computers than any other company, including IBM. Founded in Finland in 2018 by Jan Goetz, Mikko Möttönen, Kuan Yen Tan and Juha Vartiainen, IQM has grown from a university spinout into a quantum market leader with global enterprise customers. 

The company has built full-stack, open-architecture quantum systems for on-premises or cloud deployment, and enterprises already love them. IQM turned over more than $35 million last year – a rare feat in a sector where the majority of companies remain pre-revenue. Within a day of the Nasdaq debut, IQM had also listed on the Helsinki exchange, keeping its Nordic roots firmly in place.

IQM's macro-economic significance

IQM is a case study in how Europe can build and export market-leading frontier technology in the most cutting-edge tech spaces. Quantum is the future; it is why China and the US are racing against time to secure an edge.

As we wrote in our recent Europe's Power Play report, Europe cannot be left behind in this race. Instead, it must seize the $35 trillion opportunity in addressing our current dependencies across energy, industry, critical materials, and compute. Europe must not outsource the next era of compute, or it will be left exposed and dependent in an increasingly isolationist world.

Investing in this opportunity will also help secure long-term economic security – the technologies that decarbonise Europe are the same ones that can strengthen it and underpin next-generation industries. 

Quantum is the foundation layer for the next era of industrial competitiveness, scientific discovery, and decarbonisation. IQM's success is a clear sign that this is the right time for quantum. It also shows what can happen when you invest in the most innovative European founders, with the best technology and talent, at the right moment.  

IQM is a company founded by European scientific talent that has built world-leading quantum technology, attracted global customers, raised substantial international capital and reached the US public markets. But IQM has also kept its roots and core technology base in Europe. It has entered the public market with the opportunity to scale further, to advance its technology roadmap and continue delivering for customers (and us, the investors).

A milestone for IQM, World Fund and Europe's power trajectory

When we launched World Fund in 2021, our vision was this: back the founders building the technologies of the future, and support them to scale and transform our economies. 

We are proud to be executing on this vision. We hoped to see a listing from Fund I, but we didn't expect to set a record. To our knowledge, IQM's listing means that World Fund is one of the first European funds to see a company list publicly while still investing its first fund. We are shouting about this because we believe it is proof of our thesis – evidence that investing early in deep tech will deliver returns earlier than many may think. And that Europe can produce market-leading global deep tech companies when Europe backs its own frontier technology with enough ambition.

We are extremely proud to have backed Jan, Mikko, Kuan and Juha early, and to continue supporting them and the entire IQM team as they scale. Daria has watched that journey at a closer range than most – Jan gave his very first public talk at 1E9 back in 2019, and seven years later she watched him ring the bell in New York. 

If you have any questions or would like to discuss further, please get in touch with Mark at mark@worldfund.vc.