Pasqal

Overview

Pasqal is a French company that makes quantum processors from arrays of neutral atoms. A laser technique called optical tweezers captures individual atoms and arranges them in any pattern the user wants, in two or three dimensions. Because the atoms are arranged by light, the geometry of the processor can be changed from one problem to the next, which is useful when the problem itself has a geometric shape, as in many simulations of materials and networks.

The company says it has deployed seven quantum computers, more than any other pure-play neutral atom company, with three more in production as of its March 2026 announcement. Customers include research centers, industrial groups, and the energy company Aramco in Saudi Arabia.

History and background

Pasqal was founded in 2019 as a spin-off from the Institut d'Optique in Palaiseau, near Paris. Its founders include Georges-Olivier Reymond, Christophe Jurczak, and the physicists Antoine Browaeys, Thierry Lahaye, and Alain Aspect, who shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments on quantum entanglement. The company raised more than 300 million dollars in total funding from investors including French and European backers.

In June 2024 Pasqal reported loading more than 1,000 atoms in a single shot, and in the first half of 2026 it prepared defect-free registers of 1,024 atoms, doubling its earlier 506-atom result, while extending atom lifetimes by about forty times with a redesigned cryogenic setup. In March 2026 it announced plans to go public through a merger with the special purpose acquisition company Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II, at a 2 billion dollar pre-money valuation, and by late September 2026 it was reporting results as a Nasdaq-listed company under the ticker PSQL.

How the technology works

In a neutral atom computer, each qubit is a single atom, often rubidium, suspended in a vacuum chamber. Lasers cool the atoms to near absolute zero and trap them in tweezers, and a camera system checks which sites are filled and rearranges atoms to remove gaps. To perform two-qubit operations, the atoms are excited to Rydberg states, in which an electron orbits far from the nucleus, so that nearby atoms interact strongly and can become entangled.

Two features distinguish this approach. First, scale: loading thousands of atoms into tweezers is easier than wiring thousands of superconducting circuits, so neutral atom machines may reach large qubit counts sooner. Second, flexibility: atoms can be physically moved during a computation, which allows connections that fixed chips cannot make. The challenges are slower operations, lost atoms that must be replaced, and gate errors that are higher than the best trapped-ion results.

Pasqal's machines can run in an analog mode, where the atoms evolve under a controlled interaction to simulate physical systems, and in a digital gate-based mode. The company's roadmap has aimed for several thousand qubits and logical-qubit architectures in the second half of the decade. Its older roadmap pointed to 10,000 qubits around 2026 to 2027, and readers should treat such figures as goals rather than delivered results.

Products and platforms

Processors in our Hardware Database

• Pasqal Fresnel (Orion generation) — 100 qubits, released 2023 (cloud availability expanded 2024 to 2025)

Key milestones

Strengths and challenges

Strengths

• A scalable platform that can trap thousands of atoms without individual wiring.
• Reconfigurable geometry, well suited to simulation and graph problems.
• One of the largest deployed fleets among neutral atom companies, with international customers.
• Operates in conventional data center environments, since the atoms are cooled by lasers and the apparatus does not need a dilution refrigerator.

Challenges and open questions

• Gate fidelities trail those of leading trapped-ion and superconducting systems.
• Atom loss and the time needed to reload registers slow down computations.
• Competition is intense from QuEra, Atom Computing, Infleqtion, and others pursuing similar technology.
• The public listing brings quarterly scrutiny, share-based compensation charges, and listing costs that weigh on reported results.

Why it matters

Neutral atoms have become one of the fastest-moving hardware approaches, and Pasqal is Europe's leading company in the field. Its customers and its public listing show that governments and large companies are willing to buy machines that are still imperfect.

For learners, Pasqal is a good case study of analog versus digital quantum computing. Many of its earliest use cases rely on analog simulation, where the machine mimics a physical system directly, and the move toward error-corrected digital gates is one of the main transitions in the field to watch over the next few years.

Latest news

• Pasqal reports first-half 2026 financial results as a Nasdaq-listed company — September 2026
• Pasqal appoints Stéphane Rougeot as Chief Financial Officer — June 2026
• Pasqal's 200-qubit system is deployed at Aramco — 2026
• Pasqal announces plans to go public via a merger with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II — March 2026

Frequently asked questions

This profile is written for educational purposes and summarizes public announcements, company filings, and published research. Last reviewed: September 30, 2026. It is not investment advice. Check the company's official channels for the latest figures and claims.

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