It is a common assumption that quantum computing is a long-term bet that may take at least a decade to turn a profit. But that’s not always the case. 

At TNW Conference in Amsterdam last week, Jan Goetz, co-founder and co-CEO of Finnish quantum startup IQM, revealed his company began earning revenue much earlier — by taking a page from SpaceX’s funding playbook.

“When we started, it was a classic deep tech case, and people thought revenue would be five to 10 years out,” Goetz said. “No, that’s stupid. You can make money already with these very early-stage machines.”

Rather than wait for a fully mature product, IQM has focused on selling quantum computers in their nascent stages to state-funded research institutions. The approach is similar to how SpaceX sold early rockets to public sector clients, even when many of those rockets failed shortly after launch. The idea, Goetz explained, was to build early partnerships that would fund future development.

Founded in 2018, IQM signed its first contract in 2020 and sold its first system soon after. The company has so far sold 13 quantum computers globally and has a bookings pipeline exceeding €90mn, making it one of the industry’s front-runners. It’s also the second best-funded quantum hardware company in Europe, having raised a total of $210mn (€181mn). 

Goetz said the biggest challenge for quantum computing is not technological, but financial. While he does not think Europe has lost the tech race, he warned that without serious capital in place, the continent would not be able to compete with countries like the US or China.

“Europe has excellent universities and research projects, but can we scale these into competitive businesses and industries?” he asked. “We see industry starting to engage, but the level of investment is still quite small.”

Goetz believes the next major shift in the quantum computing landscape will not come from end users, but from the infrastructure layer – specifically, the companies that build and operate data centres. 

He expects them to expand these investments rapidly. “I think that’s what’s going to happen next on the private side, and hopefully we can really enable the commercial uses so that all of the end users can help build up the industry.”

Goetz also addressed the potential impact of artificial intelligence. He noted that it will remain technically challenging to push a lot of data through quantum computers for the foreseeable future, which will limit their capacity for AI applications. However, there is an emerging role for quantum in AI, particularly in creating training data. IQM is developing this capability through a collaboration with Siemens on quantum-enhanced machine learning.

“What quantum computers are really good at is creating true randomness,” Goetz said. “[They] can actually be used to generate synthetic data for training AI models more efficiently… It’s like democratic voting. You bundle a group of qubits together, and if a few go wrong, the rest can correct them. The majority gives you the right answer, and the errors get flipped back.”