Has Pasqal grown their patent portfolio through organic growth or acquisition?
An IPO tells you the share price. It doesn't tell you who really invented what — or why Pasqal's own numbers don't quite add up.
At the end of August Pasqal successfully began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker “PSQL”, following its merger with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II.
The transaction provided approximately US$ 360 million in cash. Pasqal’s shares closed their first day of trading at US$ 19.11, up 95.2% from Bleichroeder’s previous closing price of US$ 9.79.
An IPO shows the market's reaction — the share price, the capital raised — but not the innovation driving the company's commercial success. For that we need to look at Pasqal's patent portfolio.
Pasqal has a growing patent portfolio
Our analysis found Pasqal's patent portfolio has 269 patent applications, 42 granted patents and 1 unitary patent across 86 patent families.
Since 2022 Pasqal's published patent applications have grown rapidly. In contrast, published granted patents show the most activity prior to 2022.
Pasqal files most of their patent applications at the EPO and USPTO
The majority of patent applications have been filed with the EPO, and USPTO, 100 and 50 respectively. There are 75 patent applications filed as PCTs (WO).
In contrast, the majority of granted patents have been issued with the USPTO, CIPO (Canadian Intellectual Property Office), 24 and 7 respectively.
If you look closely at the patent applications you see there are two distinct periods of filings. Those can be clearly seen in the two charts below that show number of patent applications by filing year.
Similarly for granted patents there are also two distinct groups of filings.
Which raises the question - if Pasqal was founded in 2019 who filed these early patents?
Pasqal acquired a PIC specialist in 2025
In June 2025 Pasqal acquired Aeponyx, a Canadian pioneer in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) – these are specialised chips in precise light control and manipulation. According to Pasqal this aims to strengthen the company's hardware platform and accelerates the company’s roadmap to fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC).
Pasqal refers to this acquisition in the SEC filing and lists Aeponyx as having 30+ registered patents.
Aeponyx holds more than 30 registered patents, primarily in the field of optics, with a technology focus on silicon photonics, planar micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), hybrid integration for tunable transceivers, and microoptical switches for cloud and data center applications.
- These patents underpin the company’s development of compact, energy-efficient photonic integrated circuits (PICs).
- The underlying technology is amortized over a 10-year period, reflecting its expected useful life and anticipated technological obsolescence.
[Source: Early prospectus - preliminary - subject to completion, dated March 26, 2026]
Pasqal's current patent portfolio is a mix of applicants
Our analysis found most patent applications have a single applicant; Pasqal (181), Aeponyx (53) and Qu & Co R&D (12), the latter two were obtained via acquisitions. A small number have been filed in partnerships.
Two groups of activity can be seen from the table below: an Aeponyx group of filings, and a Pasqal group of filings. There is little overlap between these two groups of inventions.
Pasqal's state their patent portfolio contains up to 90+ patent families
In June 2026 Pasqal published an investor presentation which laid out the company's technology, operations and intellectual-property position. In this presentation, Pasqal openly states they have more than 85 patents, including pending applications.
However, this seemed at odds with our own research on Pasqal's patent portfolio which found a much larger portfolio.
So we reviewed the early prospectus SEC filing to see if it had any more details on the patent portfolio, and found on page 261:
As of the date of this proxy statement/prospectus, Pasqal has approximately 90 issued and pending patent families across multiple jurisdictions, that protect its full-stack technology across hardware, software, and services.
The Company’s hardware-related IP portfolio comprises approximately 55 patent families covering
- qubit and register-related technologies, QPU operations (fidelity and flexibility), industrialization, and quantum error correction.
The Company’s applications and software IP portfolio comprises approximately 35 patent families covering
- optimization, quantum simulation and materials, quantum machine learning, and quantum software infrastructure.
[Source: Early prospectus - preliminary - subject to completion, dated March 26, 2026]
Based on this it can be assumed the Analyst presentation refers to patent families not the total of patent applications or granted patents.
So we have several different numbers for patent families:
- Analyst presentation - 86+ patent families (hardware 53+ and software 33+)
- SEC filing - 90+ patent families (hardware 55+ and software 35+)
- Our findings - 86 patent families
Based on this we can conclude there are 86 patent families that have been published, and there is at least 4+ patent families that have been filed, but not yet made public.
Pasqal's patent portfolio is 62% hardware and 38% software
Using Pasqal's own segmentation of their patent portfolio it is possible to determine how patent families are related to hardware and software, and the segments within each.
To convert the following calculation is used:
The table below show all the conversions of percentages in to numbers of patent families.
Pasqal has pursued both hardware and software innovation since its founding
Each patent family title and abstract was reviewed and mapped to one of the eight segments defined by Pasqal. This revealed hardware and software innovations have been actively pursued by Pasqal since their formation.
A small number of Aeponyx patent families account for most of its filings
The Aeponyx acquisition expanded Pasqal’s patent portfolio by 11 patent families, the top 4 patent families account for 40 patent applications and 33 granted patents, the top patent family has 30 members.
Conclusion
A first search for Pasqal's patents turns up exactly what you'd expect: patents filed by Pasqal. That's where most research would stop — and it would miss more than a third of the portfolio.
It was only by pushing further — cross-referencing the investor presentation against the SEC filing, then tracing the two distinct groups of filings back to their source — that the Aeponyx acquisition surfaced: 11 patent families, including the single largest family in the entire portfolio, filed years before Pasqal existed.
Only once those acquired patents were added back in did our count come close to what Pasqal itself states publicly.
Every month, the Quantum Computer Patent Monitor applies this same level of research and analysis to bring subscribers more than simply patent counting — tracking not just who's filing, but who's been acquired, and what that means.
Sources:
Pasqal and Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II Complete Business Combination, 27 August 2026 - https://www.pasqal.com/newsroom/pasqal-and-bleichroeder-acquisition-corp-ii-complete-business-combination/
Defining The Quantum Reality: Analyst Day Presentation June 2026 - https://www.pasqal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/2026.04_Pasqal-Quantum-Computing-Processor-Brochure.pdf
Early prospectus - preliminary - subject to completion, dated March 26, 2026 - https://investors.pasqal.com/static-files/c4224ff3-6c24-4d34-b962-7e64399f2846
Pasqal Acquires Photonics Innovator AEPONYX to Accelerate the Race to Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing, 3 June 2025 - https://www.pasqal.com/newsroom/pasqal-acquires-photonics-innovator-aeponyx/