Insider Brief
- Pasqal shares rose 95.2% to $19.11 in the French quantum computing company’s first day of Nasdaq trading.
- The company went public through a merger with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II that provided approximately $360 million in cash.
- Pasqal plans to use the capital to expand system production and deployment, grow commercial operations and advance fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Pasqal shares nearly doubled during the French quantum computing company’s first day of trading on Nasdaq, reflecting strong investor interest in one of Europe’s leading quantum hardware developers.
The shares closed Friday at $19.11, up 95.2% from Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II’s previous closing price of $9.79. Pasqal opened at $16.98 and traded as high as $20.10 before retreating from the session peak. About 3.7 million shares changed hands during the day. Pasqal now trades under the ticker symbol PSQL, while its warrants trade as PSQLW. Market data showed the shares fell about 10% in after-hours trading.
The debut followed Pasqal’s merger with Bleichroeder, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Bleichroeder shareholders approved the combination Aug. 25, and the companies completed the transaction Aug. 27.
The deal valued Pasqal at about $2 billion and provided approximately $360 million in cash at closing. Pasqal said it plans to use the capital to expand production and deployment of its quantum processing units, advance its work toward fault-tolerant quantum computing and broaden access to its cloud and software platform.
The company also plans to connect more of its systems with conventional high-performance computing infrastructure and expand its commercial operations internationally.
“Today is not a finish line; it is an acceleration point,” Pasqal CEO Wasiq Bokhari said in a statement announcing completion of the merger. “Pasqal was built to take neutral-atom quantum computing from foundational science to industrial-scale deployment. We have deployed quantum systems in real operating environments, connected our processors to the computing infrastructure customers already use and established a roadmap built on a single hardware platform that delivers state-of-the-art analog quantum computing today and is designed to enable industry-leading fault-tolerant quantum computing in the future. Our systems operate in standard data center environments and are built to scale with enterprise workloads. As a public company, we will have a stronger platform to move faster, serve customers around the world and build enduring value for shareholders.”
Pasqal‘s neutral-atom quantum computers use lasers to hold and control individual atoms that serve as quantum bits, or qubits. The company said its systems can operate in standard data-center environments and support both current analog quantum computing applications and its longer-term development of error-corrected machines.
According to Pasqal, the company has deployed seven quantum processors and has three more in production. Its machines are available through cloud services and support more than 25 commercial and research applications across industries including energy, financial services and materials science.
Four of Pasqal’s systems have been installed at national supercomputing centers in France, Germany, Italy and Canada. Its customers include Saudi Aramco, which is exploring the technology for applications that include modeling underground oil and gas reserves.
Pasqal reported revenue of €16.5 million, or about $19 million, in 2025, although the company remains unprofitable. Its manufacturing facilities in France and Canada can produce as many as 13 systems annually, the company told Reuters.
The company was co-founded by Alain Aspect, who shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics for experiments involving quantum entanglement. His later research into controlling atoms with lasers helped provide part of the scientific foundation for Pasqal’s technology.
