diff --git a/setup/requirements.txt b/setup/requirements.txt
index c4bf6df..55a56cc 100644
--- a/setup/requirements.txt
+++ b/setup/requirements.txt
@@ -6,6 +6,16 @@ supermarq
 pennylane
 pennylane-qiskit
 qiskit-ibm-runtime
+# qiskit-ibm-runtime asks for ibm-platform-services>=0.22.6, and iqm-client
+# below pins requests==2.32.3 exactly. ibm-platform-services 0.77.0 moved to
+# ibm-cloud-sdk-core>=3.24.4, which needs requests>=2.32.4, so the two cannot
+# both be satisfied and the resolver walks back down the platform-services
+# versions. Without a floor it reaches 0.55.2, the one version in that range
+# published as an sdist only, whose build imports pkg_resources without
+# declaring setuptools and so fails. This floor keeps the resolution on 0.66.1,
+# the version QFw has been building with. It can go once iqm-client stops
+# pinning requests to a single version.
+ibm-platform-services>=0.59
 iqm-client==34.0.1
 iqm-data-definitions==2.24
 iqm-exa-common==27.5.1