IONQ

IonQ was co-founded by Christopher Monroe, at the time a professor at University of Maryland, and Jungsang Kim, a professor at Duke University, in 2015, with the help of venture firm New Enterprise Associates.

The company is an offshoot of the co-founders’ 25 years of academic research in quantum information science. Monroe's quantum computing research began as a Staff Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with physicist David Wineland where he led a team using trapped ions to produce the first controllable qubits and the first controllable quantum logic gate, culminating in a proposed architecture for a large-scale trapped ion computer.

Kim and Monroe, who was at the time a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), began collaborating formally as a result of larger research initiatives funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). They wrote a review paper for Science Magazine entitled Scaling the Ion Trap Quantum Processor, pairing Monroe's research at UMD in trapped ions with Kim's focus on scalable quantum information processing and quantum communication hardware.

This research partnership became the seed for IonQ's founding. In 2015, New Enterprise Associates invested $2 million to commercialize the technology Monroe and Kim proposed in their Science paper.

In 2016, they brought on David Moehring from IARPA—where he was in charge of several quantum computing initiatives—to be the company's chief executive. In 2017, they raised a $20 million series B, led by GV (formerly Google Ventures) and New Enterprise Associates, the first investment GV has made in quantum computing technology. They began hiring in earnest in 2017, with the intent to bring an offering to market by late 2018.

In May 2019, former Amazon Prime executive Peter Chapman was named new CEO of the company. IonQ then partnered to make its quantum computers available to the public through Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

In October 2021, IonQ received $636 million when it went public on the New York Stock Exchange via a special-purpose acquisition company. The company opened a dedicated research and development facility in Bothell, Washington, in February 2024, touting it as the first quantum computing factory in the United States.

Niccolò de Masi became president and CEO of IonQ in February 2025, after beinging on the company's board since 2021. He succeeded Peter Chapman, who became executive chair. In August 2025, de Masi was appointed chairman.

IonQ's hardware is based on a trapped ion architecture, from technology that Monroe developed at the University of Maryland, and that Kim developed at Duke.

In November 2017, IonQ presented a paper at the IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing describing their technology strategy and current progress. It outlines using a microfabricated ion trap and several optical and acousto-optical systems to cool, initialize, and calculate. They also describe a cloud API, custom language bindings, and quantum computing simulators that take advantage of their trapped ion system's complete connectivity.

IonQ and some experts claim that trapped ions could provide a number of benefits over other physical qubit types in several measures, such as accuracy, scalability, predictability, and coherence time. Others criticize the slow operational times and relative size of trapped ion hardware, claiming other qubit technologies are just as promising. IonQ measures performance of their devices by Algorithmic qubits, a metric devised in 2020 which accounts for both qubit quality and the overall quality of gate operations.

IonQ was selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to participate in Stage B of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), joining ten other leading companies in the quantum computing industry. This selection follows IonQ’s successful completion of Stage A, which required participants to outline a path to developing utility-scale quantum computers. The QBI program seeks to assess whether a practical, industrially useful quantum computer can be realized by 2033.

In November 2024, IonQ announced it would acquire Qubitekk, a U.S. firm focused on quantum networking technologies.

In May 2025, the company acquired a controlling stake in ID Quantique (IDQ), a Geneva-based firm specializing in quantum-safe cryptography and sensing technologies, adding hundreds of patents to IonQ's portfolio.

In June 2025, IonQ agreed to acquire British quantum computing startup, Oxford Ionics, for approximately $1.1 billion in IonQ stock. Also in June, IonQ completed the acquisition of Lightsynq Technologies, a US startup developing photonic interconnects and quantum memory, for 12.4 million shares of IonQ stock.

In July 2025, IonQ acquired satellite imaging company Capella Space, which had raised $320 million since it began in 2016, for $311 million of IonQ stock, with the aim of supporting plans for space-based quantum key distribution networks.