SpaceX, Quantum Computing, and the Real Path to Profit
Quantum computing is supposed to be a ten-year moonshot. Something distant, experimental, locked in research labs. But Finnish startup IQM is breaking that idea wide open.
At TNW Conference in Amsterdam, IQM’s CEO Jan Goetz explained how they started making money not ten years in, but almost immediately. How? They followed a model laid out by SpaceX. Not the tech. The funding logic.
Instead of waiting for a perfect product, IQM sold early quantum machines to state-funded research institutions. Just like SpaceX sold early rockets to public sector partners, even when they failed. That move turned risk into revenue. And bought time to build.
This approach isn’t just clever. It reveals something deeper about how innovation actually survives. Not through perfection. Through partnerships, public backing, and boldness that blurs the line between failure and progress.
IQM has now sold 13 machines. Their pipeline tops 90 million euros. They are building the road while walking it. And doing so in a climate where Europe is trying to compete with US and Chinese dominance, without anywhere near the same capital.
Goetz’s warning is clear. Europe has the science. But without real investment, it won’t have the industry.
The message here is not about quantum computing alone. It is about how systems scale. Who gets early access. Who funds foundational tools. And how stories of technological progress are never neutral. They are shaped by the structures and incentives behind them.
The next wave of quantum may come not from big tech but from infrastructure providers—those who run the data centers, who quietly hold the keys to computation. And in this shift, there is a larger question at stake: who owns the future's foundation?
AI and quantum will intersect. But the real value, Goetz says, might come in how quantum can generate synthetic data to train AI better. Not faster machines. Better randomness. Better truth.
It sounds abstract. But it touches everything. Governance. Intelligence. Power.
What if the most profitable technologies are not the ones that work best, but the ones that get funded first?
And what if public money is always the hidden engine behind private success?
That is the lesson behind IQM’s playbook. And it is one more reason to stop seeing innovation as just a race between companies. It is a negotiation between capital, states, and the people who get to define what progress means.
Progress is never neutral. And profit is never accidental.