IonQ: the trapped-ion quantum company that bought its own chip foundry

IonQ (IONQ) builds quantum computers whose qubits, the basic units a quantum computer computes with, are single charged atoms held in a vacuum by a chip called an ion trap. It sells the machines and time on them over the cloud, and since July 31, 2026 it owns SkyWater Technology, a U.S. chip foundry that brought in 48% of third-quarter revenue, according to its quarterly filing. At the November 10, 2026 NYSE close of $34.99 (price from Yahoo Finance), the company was valued at about $15.1 billion, on the 432.5 million shares on that filing’s cover, a count dated October 28, 2026.

Key numbers

What the company does

IonQ reports two segments.

• IonQ Platform. Quantum hardware brought in $135.3 million in the first nine months of 2026 and quantum services $99.7 million. The annual report describes complete systems built for a single customer, and time on IonQ’s machines sold through Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure Quantum and Google Cloud Marketplace. Acquisitions added networking, sensing and security products, and satellite imagery.
• SkyWater Foundry Services. It makes chips for outside customers and recorded $83.5 million between July 31 and September 30, 2026, of which $53.8 million came from standard chips (the filing’s “CMOS foundry” line).

The third-quarter release names contracts worth $33 million with a customer named SDT, to deploy a Superion 256 computer and a quantum memory platform, and $25 million with Florida International University, to deploy a Superion 256. It gives no term for either.

IonQ’s systems page lists Forte, a machine of 36 qubits, and Tempo, with a target of 100 qubits. The Superion 256 can be ordered now and first ships in 2027, IonQ says. The promise is far larger: 2 million physical qubits by 2030.

The technology in plain words

An ion is an atom with one electron removed, which gives it an electric charge. IonQ holds a row of them in a vacuum and steers them with laser beams, its technology page says.

The strengths are the company’s claims, from its annual report. Atoms of one kind are identical, so no two qubits differ. Any qubit can interact directly with any other. The systems “can operate at room temperature”, where superconducting chips need large refrigerators.

The number to read is two-qubit gate fidelity: how often an operation on a pair of qubits gives the right result. IonQ gives Tempo a target of 99.9%, or one failure in 1,000. It says it reached 99.99% in 2025, and the filing names no outside party that measured it.

The known weakness is speed. The annual report concedes that “trapped ions are widely believed to have slow gate speeds”. IonQ argues the limit is not fundamental, but says faster operation “has not yet been demonstrated in commercial applications”. Rigetti Computing (RGTI), which builds superconducting chips as Google does, says in its annual report that its operations are “about 1,000 times faster”, a comparison that is Rigetti’s own. Quantinuum, IonQ’s filing says, takes a trapped-ion approach similar to its own.

IonQ bought Oxford Ionics in September 2025 for its method, which controls the ions with electronics built into the chip instead of lasers. IonQ says such chips can be made with standard chip-making processes, and that Superion 256 chips are “already fabricated by the wafer” at SkyWater.

The roadmap counts logical qubits, groups of physical qubits combined so that errors are caught and corrected. The targets on IonQ’s roadmap page:

The business

Revenue tripled in 2025, to $130.0 million from $43.1 million, and reached $318.5 million in the first nine months of 2026, against $68.1 million a year earlier. Part of the growth was bought. In the third quarter the IonQ Platform brought in $90.3 million, up from $39.9 million, and two months of SkyWater $83.5 million.

IonQ expects $505 million to $515 million for 2026, which leaves $186.5 million to $196.5 million for the fourth quarter. IonQ expects to record about half of its $1,168.0 million of contracted revenue as revenue within twelve months.

U.S. customers paid 67.5% of nine-month revenue. One customer, which the filing does not name, was 30% of the third quarter. Some revenue comes from parties IonQ has paid or funded. The University of Chicago received 2.1 million IonQ shares in November 2025 for a licence and naming rights, and a sales contract signed the same month produced $29.5 million of revenue in the nine months. Companies in which IonQ holds strategic investments produced $15.7 million. IonQ says it assessed “the commercial substance” of those contracts.

The loss from operations was $1,041.8 million in the nine months, against $405.1 million a year earlier. Of that, $417.3 million was pay in stock and $216.9 million depreciation and amortization, neither of which uses cash. Operations used $570.3 million of cash, against $208.7 million.

IonQ reported a third-quarter profit of $563.1 million only because the accounting value of its warrants fell by $896.2 million. Operations lost $433.1 million in the quarter.

Cash and investments fell from $3.34 billion at the end of 2025 to $1.66 billion on September 30, 2026, the sum of three balance sheet lines. Acquisitions took $926.2 million of that.

Funding and ownership

IonQ went public through a merger with dMY Technology Group III, a blank-check company, completed on September 30, 2021. Since the start of 2025 it has sold stock four times, for about $5.3 billion in all, according to the quarterly filing.

A warrant is a right to buy a share at a set price. A prefunded warrant is already paid for.

Acquisitions are paid mostly in stock. The six purchases of 2025 cost $2,660.6 million, of which $2,538.0 million was shares. SkyWater cost $1,944.4 million, about half in cash and the rest mostly in 24.1 million shares. Elisity, a network security company bought on November 3, 2026, was paid with 32.2 million shares, with up to 4.3 million more tied to revenue targets, according to an 8-K filing. Those shares are not in the count on the quarterly filing’s cover.

People

IonQ was founded in 2015 by Chris Monroe and Jungsang Kim, on technology licensed from the University of Maryland and Duke University, its company page says. It lists Monroe as chief scientific advisor.

Niccolo de Masi became chief executive on February 26, 2025 and chairman in August 2025, when Peter Chapman stepped down as executive chairman and left the board. Inder Singh is chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

Risks

• Dilution. The share count nearly doubled between the end of 2024 and October 28, 2026. On September 30, 2026, 79.1 million Series A and B warrants were outstanding, before the 100 million issued in October.
• Acquisitions. IonQ’s filings describe 11 purchases since the start of 2025. Goodwill, the price paid above the value of the assets bought, was $3.2 billion of $7.9 billion in total assets on September 30, 2026.
• Concentration. “We have a high degree of revenue concentration”, the annual report says, and government customers can end contracts early.
• A steep roadmap. The targets go from 256 qubits to 10,000 in one year, and the annual report says meeting them “is not guaranteed”.

What to watch

• The fourth-quarter report, against the $505 million to $515 million outlook. IonQ’s release gives no date for it. The 2025 annual report was filed on February 25, 2026.
• 2027, when IonQ says the first Superion 256 systems ship and its roadmap calls for 10,000 physical qubits.
• The Quantum Benchmarking Initiative of DARPA, the U.S. defense research agency. IonQ says it reached the final stage, with a potential program value of up to $300 million.

Our read: IonQ is betting that trapped ions will scale like ordinary chips once electronics replace lasers, and that owning the factory speeds that up. Shareholders pay for the bet in new shares. With eleven companies bought in under two years, total revenue reflects what IonQ bought as much as what its quantum computers sell.

Last checked 2026-11-11

Sources

• IonQ, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, filed November 5, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1824920/000119312526449829/ionq-20260930.htm
• IonQ, Form 10-K for 2025, filed February 25, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1824920/000119312526071562/ionq-20251231.htm
• IonQ, Form 10-K for 2023, filed February 28, 2024: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1824920/000095017024022072/ionq-20231231.htm
• IonQ, Form 8-K of November 5, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1824920/000119312526449779/ionq-20261103.htm
• IonQ, third-quarter 2026 results release, November 5, 2026 (exhibit 99.1): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1824920/000119312526449779/ionq-ex99_1.htm
• IonQ, roadmap page: https://ionq.com/roadmap
• IonQ, technology page: https://ionq.com/technology
• IonQ, systems comparison page: https://ionq.com/quantum-systems/compare
• IonQ, Tempo page: https://ionq.com/quantum-systems/tempo
• IonQ, Superion 256 page: https://ionq.com/quantum-systems/superion-256
• IonQ, company page: https://ionq.com/company
• IonQ, chief executive appointment, February 26, 2025: https://www.ionq.com/news/ionq-names-niccolo-de-masi-as-president-and-chief-executive-officer
• IonQ, second-quarter 2025 results release, August 6, 2025: https://www.ionq.com/news/ionq-announces-second-quarter-financial-results
• Rigetti Computing, Form 10-K for 2025, filed March 4, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1838359/000110465926023454/rgti-20251231x10k.htm
• Google Quantum AI, hardware page: https://quantumai.google/quantumcomputer