Europe has a new quantum computer up and running. Finnish quantum hardware firm IQM and the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) have officially inaugurated SOL, a 54-qubit quantum computer, at CINECA — Italy's national supercomputing center. According to Investing.com, the machine clocks in at 54 qubits, placing it among the more capable publicly deployed quantum systems in Europe.
According to HPCwire, the inauguration also included the launch of a LISA AI partition at the same facility, suggesting CINECA is being built out as a combined quantum-and-AI research hub rather than a single-purpose installation.
This is not IQM's only Italian footprint. HPCwire separately reported that IQM and the Italian National Center for HPC, Big Data and Quantum Computing (ICSC) launched a second quantum system called NOX, integrated directly with the Leonardo Supercomputer — one of the most powerful high-performance computing machines on the continent. The pairing of quantum processors with existing supercomputers is a key strategy for making quantum hardware practically useful before fully fault-tolerant machines exist.
On the business side, IQM announced it is preparing to go public in the United States. The company has entered into a business combination with Real Asset Acquisition Corp (Nasdaq: RAAQ), which is expected to result in IQM becoming a publicly listed company in mid-2026, according to the company's announcement.
Why it matters: Europe is investing heavily to close the quantum gap with the U.S. and China, and getting real quantum hardware running inside major supercomputing centers — where scientists can actually use it — moves the technology meaningfully closer to practical impact.