LUTZ | ABEL advises MIG fund on seed investment in IQM

Helsinki/ Munich — Finnish start-up IQM raises EUR 11.45 million seed capi­tal in a seed finan­cing round. MIG Fonds parti­ci­pa­tes as lead inves­tor with a share of EUR four million. LUTZ | ABEL is advi­sing its long-stan­­ding client MIG in the finan­cing round toge­ther with colle­agues from Finland.

The invest­ment in IQM now adds the fifth start-up to MIG Fonds’ invest­ment port­fo­lio since May 2018. With IQM, the decis­ion fell on a “deep-tech” company from Finland, a spin-off of the renow­ned Helsinki Aalto Univer­sity and the VTT Tech­ni­cal Rese­arch Center of Finland in Helsinki: The start-up IQM is working on the deve­lo­p­ment of hard­ware compon­ents for quan­tum computers.

In prac­ti­cal appli­ca­ti­ons, these quan­tum compu­ters are to be used in the future in medi­cal drug rese­arch, in finan­cial markets, or in mate­ri­als and trans­por­ta­tion scien­ces. The high-perfor­­mance compu­ters are expec­ted to solve extre­mely complex compu­ting tasks within hours, a task that previously took seve­ral years to complete. With their invest­ment, the parti­ci­pa­ting MIG funds acquire a total share of around 17% in the Finnish company. Inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors should open up access to networks in the tech­no­logy scene and the asso­cia­ted know-how for the start-up. In addi­tion to the Munich-based MIG Fonds as lead inves­tor, Matadero QED, the VC compa­nies Maki.vc and Open­O­cean, the Finnish state-owned indus­trial inves­tor Tesi, the venture capi­ta­list Vito Ventures and other inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors also parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round as capi­tal providers.