Vancouver’s BTQ Technologies (BTQ) is one step closer to acquiring France’s QPerfect after the quantum company received approval for the acquisition from the French foreign direct investment (FDI) authorities.
The news: On July 1, BTQ announced it has received regulatory approval to acquire the remainder of the Strasbourg-based quantum computing company, after announcing plans to take over the company last year.
FDI approval comes with a laundry list of stipulations from France’s Ministry for the Economy and Finance that the ministry says are “reflect the will to preserve QPerfect’s technological assets” in a sector “critical to the technological sovereignty of France and Europe.” They include maintenance of QPerfect’s French office, the appointment of a French corporate officer, continuing research and development activity, and protecting QPerfect’s intellectual property.
From the source: BTQ is poised to pay a $30 million price tag for the acquisition, broken down into a cash payment of roughly $3.3 million, and the remainder paid through the issuance of just over 2.1 million common shares of BTQ.
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Following the thread: BTQ is framing the QPerfect acquisition as a strategic investment aimed at shoring up the company’s capability to build the tech needed to transition from classical computing infrastructure to quantum computing systems. Specifically, BTQ cited three additions to the company’s quantum infrastructure stack, including MIMIQ, QPerfect’s quantum emulator which enables researchers to design, test, and validate quantum algorithms, Digital Twin, QPerfect’s system modelling capability, and the company’s Quantum Logical Unit, a control framework designed to support development of scalable, fault-tolerant quantum systems.
Final thought: With the acquisition of QPerfect, BTQ is showing that the momentum of the quantum sector continues to grow as companies look to consolidate, expand, and achieve larger market dominance. For BTQ, which is valued at north of $700 million USD, QPerfect’s acquisition won’t necessarily impact BTQ’s bottom line, but it will impact the company’s ability to scale its presence as a quantum computing leader at a time when governments on both sides of the Atlantic are looking at quantum as the next technological frontier.
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Feature image courtesy IBM.