IBM and the Basque Government announce plan to install Europe's first IBM Quantum System Two
On 2025-03-13 IBM and the Basque Government announced a plan to install Europe's first IBM Quantum System Two at the IBM-Euskadi Quantum Computational Center in Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain, under the BasQ Basque Quantum initiative that began in 2023. The system, ultimately powered by a 156-qubit IBM Quantum Heron processor, was the second System Two deployment outside the United States. The plan announced in March was realized with the center's inauguration on 2025-10-14.
The commitment placed IBM's flagship modular System Two in Europe for the first time and anchored a national-scale quantum-computing center, deepening IBM's superconducting-hardware footprint in publicly funded European infrastructure.
Strengthens IBM's position against European-origin platforms (IQM, Pasqal, Quandela) competing for sovereign quantum deployments and gives Basque/Spanish research access to a Heron-class processor, seeding a regional quantum ecosystem.