IonQ

IonQ develops general-purpose quantum computers using trapped-ion technology. Although the company calls itself a full-stack player, its focus has been on developing hardware. In December 2020, it revealed its quantum roadmap that introduced its new metric, “algorithmic qubits (AQ),” which represents the largest number of qubits that can be deployed while maintaining high performance and considering error correction. Its latest system IonQ Aria achieved 20 AQ, as of May 2023. In terms of physical qubits, IonQ’s latest hardware had 32 qubits, which were expected to hold 22 AQs.

Founded in 2015, IonQ’s main competitive advantage stems from its approach to designing qubits that allow computers to be operated at room temperature with lower error rates. 

IonQ unveiled the industry’s first glass-based trapped ion computing chip called the Reconfigurable Multicore Quantum Architecture (RMQA) technology, in August 2021, which the company believes will significantly expand the longevity of qubits and enable at least triple-digit scalability. 

Key customers and partnerships

The company secured Samsung’s first-ever quantum computing investment (co-led by a UAE wealth fund) of USD 55 million in 2019. IonQ believes it can tap into Samsung’s expertise in miniaturization to shrink quantum computing components. 

IonQ secured a strategic partnership with SoftBank Investment Advisers (June 2021) to provide support in deploying the company’s quantum systems globally, and with Accenture (September 2021) to accelerate the industrial application of IonQ’s quantum systems. It also joined hands with the University of Maryland (UMD) in September 2021 to establish a national quantum lab in Maryland. In October, UMD and IonQ demonstrated a breakthrough cost-effective, error correction approach to enable building a fault-tolerant practical trapped ion-based quantum computer. 

The company offers access to its quantum computer via all major quantum cloud computing platforms including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Marketplace (GCM). It is also integrated with major software development kits (SDK) including IBM Qiskit and Google Cirq. In May 2023, IonQ began offering its IonQ Aria system on Amazon Braket.

Funding and financials

The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker “IONQ,” in October 2021 via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger. The IPO raised more than USD 650 million and made IonQ the first publicly traded pure-play quantum computing company.