Pasqal plans quantitative expansion of $2 billion SPAC listing, promises to ‘stay French’

Amid investors’ continued appetite for all things quantum, another European company in this space is exiting 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 Pasqal is doing the same.

Accompanied by a separate $200 million private financing round, Pasqal’s SPAC deal will see it merge with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp II and subsequently list on the Nasdaq. The merger values ​​Pascal at $2 billion, up front.

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 competes with major technology companies. It generates tens of millions in annual revenue from selling hardware, software and cloud services to laboratories and industry partners.

The SPAC deal comes as Pascal’s North American peers, which have taken a similar route to the public markets, have seen their shares rise in recent months. US markets offer companies like Pascal the kind of scale and revenue multiples that are hard to come by at home in Europe, not to mention the cash they need for the long journey to fully realize quantum computing’s potential.

But Pascal (like IQM) is planning a dual listing in the US and Europe. The Nasdaq stock is scheduled to go public this year, and the company will prepare to list on Euronext later in 2026 or 2027.

The dual list may be one way Pascal is trying to reassure his French supporters. Bpifrance, the French public investment bank, is a major shareholder and will remain active on both Pasqal’s capital table and the company’s board of directors, according to a press release.

Pascal stressed that it expects to remain a French legal entity headquartered in Palisau, a suburb of Paris that is home to a cluster of academic institutions, as well as industrial research centers run by Pascal’s clients, energy giant EDF and defense company Thales. The quantum computing company also intends to appoint a “new non-executive chairman with French nationality” to its board of directors.

An investor presentation from Bleichroeder indicates that Coombs will serve as Pasqal’s “lead independent director” after the deal closes – although this appointment may not be entirely positively received in France.

In 2015, current French President Emmanuel Macron publicly rebuked Coombes for stepping down as CEO of Alcatel-Lucent before closing Nokia’s troubled takeover of Alcatel. Combs’ exit package proved so controversial that it was eventually cut in half.

Combs’ subsequent steps have gone some way toward rehabilitating his reputation in French technology circles. After replacing Marcelo Claure as CEO of Sprint, he headed SoftBank Group International, where he championed major French companies like Swile. But he left that position after just five months amid a wave of departures in 2022.

Pascal is no stranger to executive reshuffles. Underlying this announcement is the fact that the company’s former CEO, Wathiq Bukhari, is now the CEO of the company. Loïc Henriet, who started as CTO, moved to co-CEO and then became the company’s sole CEO, has returned to the role of CTO again.

Reaffirming its commitment to France may bring more intangible benefits to Pascal as well. The company tells taxpayers its growth will create highly qualified jobs in the country, where it plans to employ 50 people over the next 18 months. Not being an American company in the current geopolitical climate also has a good chance of opening doors, as French AI lab Mistral AI has found.

But no company can survive for long without a good product. The race is tight in quantum computing as competing approaches to the technology hold just as much promise. For example, IQM is betting on superconducting qubits, while Pascal is following the path of the neutral atom championed by its co-founder, 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 by the end of the decade. Such advances will be essential to unlock applications in areas such as drug discovery, healthcare, and cybersecurity.

The SPAC deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026, and Pascal expects an initial 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 financing 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 the Islamic Financial Regulatory Institute.