From €12M to €1.8B: The Patience Behind Deep Tech

In 2019, IQM wasn’t a headline. It was a small start up team working on a very hard scientific problem. The valuation was €12M. Quantum computing was still considered speculative by many. Four of us wrote the first €12M checks. What stood out wasn’t hype. It was clarity of vision, depth of science, and founders who understood the long road ahead. Today, IQM filed via SPAC Instrument to be listed in the U.S. at an €1.8B valuation. But the real lesson isn’t the number. It’s this: Frontier innovation rarely looks obvious in its early days.If and when it does, you’re already late. Deep tech demands patience. It demands intellectual honesty. And it demands the willingness to sit with silence while the world catches up. This milestone is a signal that science-backed companies are entering a new capital era. The next breakthroughs won’t announce themselves either. Original reporting by Reuters.