Quantum Computing
Trapped-ion quantum computing with real, recognized revenue, a $1.2B backlog, and an owned semiconductor foundry. What the stock now depends on is 2027 delivery.
Personal notes published for reference. Figures are sourced from company filings, releases, and press coverage as of the date above — the interpretation is mine and may be wrong.
CEO Niccolo de Masi, with Chris Ballance as President of Quantum Computing. The team has a record of setting technical milestones publicly and then hitting them (99.99% two-qubit fidelity and #AQ64 in 2025, Superion 256 chips on schedule in 2026), plus six straight record revenue quarters. That record matters more than usual in a field this speculative. The weak spot is capital allocation: four large stock-funded deals in about 16 months.
Potentially enormous, and almost entirely in the future. Today's buyers are governments, national labs, universities, and research centers buying to build capability. Production workloads at scale don't exist yet. The nearer-term market is defense and government: computing, networking, sensing, clocks, and security sold as national infrastructure.
About $3.7B pro forma ($1.7B at Sept 30 plus the $2.0B raise that closed Oct 16). That's years of runway, but the burn is growing: Q3 adjusted EBITDA was a $133.6M loss, up from $48.9M a year ago and $120.3M in Q2. The cash came from selling stock, not from operations.
Q3 revenue of $173.8M (+336% YoY) beat the ~$141M consensus, and the 2026 guide went to $505–515M, up from $450–460M against a ~$456M consensus. The quantum business on its own grew 127% to $90.3M. Backlog more than doubled to $1.2B. Execution on the numbers is not the question. Losses and dilution are.
A clean beat and raise on the headline. Splitting the numbers apart shows how much is acquired versus grown, and how much of the demand is still backlog.
Revenue splits into two segments. The IonQ Platform (computing, networking, sensing, security, space) did $90.3M, up 127%, and that number also includes revenue from earlier acquisitions (Oxford Ionics, ID Quantique, Capella, Vector Atomic, Lightsynq). SkyWater Foundry Services added $83.5M, but that's only about two months, since the deal closed July 31, with IonQ's own foundry spending eliminated. It has no prior-year number to compare against. The 127% Platform figure is the growth rate that matters.
Management named global deployments of the 5th-generation Tempo systems as the main driver of quantum computing revenue, and guides that line up about 110% for 2026. Quantum computing was about two-thirds of new Platform contract dollars signed in Q3. These are real systems shipped and recognized as revenue, not pilots. The buyers are still mostly institutional (DARPA, the Air Force, universities, Korea's SDT, NVIDIA's research center). That's a strategic purchase, not yet proof of quantum advantage on commercial work.
De Masi said it in his prepared remarks: IonQ has “sold out all of our 256 capacity” for 2027. In Q&A, he added that IonQ is “beginning to fill the order books into 2028.” He also said the chips are not the constraint, since SkyWater can make them in volume. The limit is building, assembling, and commissioning the rest of each system, and IonQ is expanding that. The CFO noted Tempo was supply-limited a year ago too, and that was fixed within a quarter. He declined to give 2027 guidance or a price-times-units number. Keep it in proportion: Superion launched Sept 8, no unit has been installed and accepted yet, and at roughly $25–33M a system, the 2027 capacity is probably a small number of machines. It's a strong demand signal, and also a sign that system assembly is the bottleneck.
GAAP net income was $564M ($1.42/share), all from a non-cash mark-to-market gain on warrants. The same line was +$805M in Q1 and −$1.87B in Q2. Adjusted EPS was a loss of $0.29, against estimates around −$0.35. Adjusted EBITDA and cash burn are the numbers to track.
$33M with SDT (Korea) for a Superion 256 plus a quantum memory platform; $28M from DARPA for 25 optical atomic clocks, with a $30M option for 100 more; a Superion 256 for Florida International University (reportedly ~$25M, not confirmed by IonQ); $8.2M with Congruity360 for post-quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution; $7.5M of follow-on Air Force Research Lab networking work; and an MOU with Northrop Grumman.
Superion is the 6th-generation product line the valuation rests on. SkyWater is the fab that makes it possible to iterate quickly.
Superion controls qubits with on-chip electronics instead of lasers. That's the Oxford Ionics technology (acquired 2025 for about $1.075B, mostly stock). It means the processor can be built with a standard semiconductor process, fits a server rack, and runs in a normal data center. That is the premise behind scaling from hundreds of qubits to millions.
IonQ ran six tapeouts in the first half of 2026 and says design cycles fell from 9 months to about 9 weeks, with 12x more wafer lots and tapeouts more than 3x faster than before. Most of that happened while IonQ was still a SkyWater customer. Owning the fab (closed July 31, $1.8B) locks in that capacity and priority, and removes about $120M a year IonQ was paying SkyWater. Faster iteration compounds: more chip generations per year means getting to the 10K and fault-tolerance milestones sooner.
SkyWater keeps serving outside customers, including IonQ's competitors. Revenue from non-IonQ quantum customers grew more than 30% YoY. In Q3 it launched the SC250 (superconducting) and SP90 quantum manufacturing platforms, extended its multi-year D-Wave collaboration, won Qolab (John Martinis's superconducting startup) as an SC250 customer, and started an OnRamp program for early-stage quantum hardware startups. That makes IonQ a supplier to other qubit types too, whichever one wins. The catch is that most of SkyWater is a low-margin, conventional foundry business, and growth for the foundry overall wasn't broken out.
Horizon Quantum (Dublin, Q1 2026), NVIDIA's Accelerated Quantum Research Center (its first on-premises quantum processor, wired into GB200 NVL72 systems), Florida International University, and SDT (Korea). NVIDIA matters more as an endorsement than as revenue. Timing depends on customers as well as IonQ: FIU's install is set for late 2027, after its new data center is finished.
In October IonQ advanced to Stage C, the final stage of DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, worth up to $300M through 2029. DARPA will independently test several Superion generations. That's the first time a government lab will verify the roadmap instead of taking the company's word for it. Caveats: $300M is a ceiling that depends on future appropriations, and IBM, Atom Computing, and Diraq also made Stage C.
Government demand is what connects “quantum is interesting” to “quantum has customers.” Defense budgets don't need the technology to be commercially mature, only strategically necessary.
In February 2026 IonQ was selected for the Missile Defense Agency's SHIELD contract vehicle, an IDIQ with a $151B ceiling across the whole program. Selection makes IonQ eligible to compete for task orders, alongside more than 2,400 other companies. It's a credential, not a booked contract.
DARPA's $28M optical clock award (plus a $30M option), DARPA QBI Stage C, AFRL networking work, a Sandia collaboration, a Northrop Grumman MOU, an Anduril MOU (Aug 2026, no dollar value), and a Carahsoft partnership for government distribution. IonQ Federal is being built as its own sales channel.
IonQ closed the Elisity acquisition on Nov 4: a zero-trust network security company with 100+ enterprise deployments, bought for about $1.15B in stock plus up to $150M of earnout. The idea is to sell IonQ's post-quantum cryptography and key distribution through a platform that already has customers, alongside the Congruity360 deal and IonQ's published estimate for breaking Bitcoin's elliptic-curve cryptography (~19,400 physical qubits). It's logical as a security strategy. It's also a software business, not quantum computing, and the stock fell 9% the day it was announced.
IonQ has funded nearly everything with stock. Revenue per share is the real scorecard, not just revenue.
Market cap is price times shares, so the gap between the two lines is dilution. Over the past year the stock fell 45% ($53.38 to $29.54 on Nov 4) while market cap fell only 33% ($19.0B to $12.8B), because the share count grew 22% (355M to 432M) through Oxford Ionics, SkyWater, and the October raise. From the Oct 13, 2025 peak ($82.09, a $28.3B market cap) the stock is down 64%. Shareholders earn the price line, so the gap is not a cushion. The Oct 28 count doesn't yet include the Elisity shares or the 29.5M pre-funded warrants from the raise.
On Oct 14 IonQ sold $2.0B of stock and pre-funded warrants (20.5M shares plus 29.5M pre-funded warrants at $40.00, a 15% premium) to an entity managed by Heights Capital. The buyer also got seven-year warrants on 100M more shares at $69.46. The good read: a large buyer paid above market, and financing risk is gone for years. The bad read: those warrants cap the upside. Above ~$69 they add about 23% to today's share count, and my bull case below doesn't model that.
Three ways to read the same quarter: a big beat and raise, a $1.2B backlog, and losses that nearly tripled. The stock is sitting near the bear case.
If this plays out: ~$25
The 336% headline is mostly SkyWater, a low-margin foundry, and the 127% Platform growth includes four earlier acquisitions. Oxford Ionics, SkyWater, Elisity, and the $2B raise grew the share count 22% in a year, with 100M warrants overhead. Adjusted EBITDA losses nearly tripled year over year. “Sold out for 2027” describes a product with zero accepted units, and installs like FIU's already depend on customer construction. Any slip in Superion 256 delivery or the 2028 fault-tolerance demo resets the credibility the stock trades on, and IBM's foundry spinoff and DARPA's other Stage C winners mean IonQ isn't alone.
If this plays out: ~$50–69
Tempo is shipping and recognized as revenue, the Platform is growing over 100%, and $1.2B of backlog converts as Superion 256 units are accepted through 2027. Owning the fab keeps the chip cadence fast enough to stay on the 10K roadmap, and DARPA Stage C provides outside verification along the way. Losses stay heavy but the $3.7B cushion carries the company to 2028 without another raise. The stock re-rates toward the sell-side range as Superion acceptances turn backlog into revenue, with big swings around every milestone date.
If this plays out: $100+
Chip-based qubit control removes trapped ion's biggest scaling bottleneck, and the owned fab turns it into a manufacturing pipeline that competitors who rely on lasers or outside foundries can't match on iteration speed. SkyWater becomes a merchant supplier to every qubit modality, so IonQ wins whichever architecture does. Superion is sold out a year ahead, government demand compounds (DARPA, Golden Dome, clocks, security), and if 2027–2028 milestones land like the 2025–2026 ones did, ~$510M of 2026 revenue is a small base. At $100+ the warrants add 100M shares, but they also bring in $6.9B of cash.
$29.54 at the Nov 4 close, the day before Q3 results: about $12.8B of market cap on the Oct 28 share count, roughly 25x the 2026 revenue guide. That's about 10% above the $26.59 52-week low (Mar 30) and far below the $72.07 high (May 29). The drawdown since September came from the Elisity deal, the $2B raise, and a risk-off tape. Going into the print, B. Riley's Craig Ellis cut his target to $75 from $100 on Nov 2 (Buy kept), and Wedbush's Matt Bryson cut to $50 from $75 on Nov 4 (Outperform kept), citing lower 2027–28 growth assumptions and the equity raise. Both cuts came before the beat and raise. The scenario targets above are my own rough, directional estimates, not formal price targets.
(1) The first Superion 256 customer acceptance, which is when backlog becomes revenue. (2) Gross margin and organic growth, neither of which the Q3 release broke out. (3) Whether adjusted EBITDA losses level off now that SkyWater and Elisity are inside. (4) The 2027 fault-tolerance lab demo and the 2028 Superion 10K.
The 2027 Superion deliveries are what everything depends on. No unit has been installed and accepted yet, and some installs depend on customer facilities IonQ doesn't control.
Four stock-funded deals in about 16 months, a 22% higher share count in a year, and 100M warrants at $69.46. Track revenue per share, not just revenue.
A $133.6M adjusted EBITDA loss in one quarter. The $3.7B is years of runway, but it came from shareholders, not operations.
IBM and Google with far deeper balance sheets and different qubit technologies, Rigetti and D-Wave among the pure-plays, and IBM's foundry spinoff competing with SkyWater for quantum fab work. Trapped ion winning is an assumption, not a given.
Quantum stocks move 30%+ in single sessions on milestones and short reports, then give it back in risk-off markets. Position sizing matters more here than anywhere else on the watchlist.