| IonQ | |
| Type: | Public |
| Location: | College Park, Maryland |
| Founders: | Christopher Monroe, Jungsang Kim |
| Key People: | Peter Chapman (President and CEO) |
| Industry: | Quantum computing |
| Products: | Trapped ion quantum computation |
IonQ is a quantum computing hardware and software company based in College Park, Maryland. They are developing a general-purpose trapped ion quantum computer and software to generate, optimize, and execute quantum circuits.
IonQ was co-founded by Christopher Monroe and Jungsang Kim, professors at Duke University,[1] in 2015,[2] with the help of Harry Weller and Andrew Schoen, partners at venture firm New Enterprise Associates.[3]
The company is an offshoot of the co-founders’ 25 years of academic research in quantum information science.[2] Monroe's quantum computing research began as a Staff Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with Nobel-laureate physicist David Wineland[4] where he led a team using trapped ions to produce the first controllable qubits and the first controllable quantum logic gate,[5] culminating in a proposed architecture for a large-scale trapped ion computer.[6]
Kim and Monroe began collaborating formally as a result of larger research initiatives funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).[7] They wrote a review paper[7] for Science Magazine entitled Scaling the Ion Trap Quantum Processor,[8] pairing Monroe's research in trapped ions with Kim’s focus on scalable quantum information processing and quantum communication hardware.[9]
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.[3]
In 2016, they brought on David Moehring from IARPA—where he was in charge of several quantum computing initiatives[10] —to be the company’s chief executive.[2] 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.[11] They began hiring in earnest in 2017,[12] with the intent to bring an offering to market by late 2018.[2] [13] In May 2019, former Amazon Prime executive Peter Chapman was named new CEO of the company.[14] IonQ then partnered to make its quantum computers available to the public through Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.[15] [16] [17]
In October 2021, IonQ became publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange via a special-purpose acquisition company.[18] [19] 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.[20]
See also: Trapped ion quantum computer.
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.[11]
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[21]
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.[22] [2] [23] Others criticize the slow operational times and relative size of trapped ion hardware, claiming other qubit technologies are just as promising.[22]