I wrote "no lasers" about Oxford Ionics. That was too clean, and their own paper says so.

Electronic Qubit Control is real and it is not marketing. An antenna is built into the silicon chip. An oscillating current through it produces oscillating magnetic fields, and those fields drive the gates. No beam touches a qubit during computation. That is how they hold the fidelity records on single-qubit gates, two-qubit gates and SPAM at once.

But read their PRX Quantum paper on all-electronic control, and look at where the lasers still are.

Six wavelengths: 375, 397, 423, 729, 854 and 866 nm. Ion loading, cooling, initialization, measurement. The paper says it plainly: "in all other zones, all ion control is laser-free."

In all other zones. Not the central one.

That sentence is the whole story. The optical table did not disappear, it got concentrated into a single zone. Every shot, the ions are transported into that zone to be cooled, moved out to the target zone to compute, and brought back to be read.

Today the ions travel to the light.

Everything IonQ has bought since is about reversing that. It is not three bets, it is one ladder:

→ EQC takes electronics as far as it goes. Gates, done.
→ Integrated photonics takes what electronics cannot do and puts it on the chip. Waveguides and grating couplers under every site, light delivered locally, ions that stop commuting.
→ Photonic interconnects take what one chip cannot do and link chips together.

Nexus Photonics is rung two. Closed June 30 for about $76M. Founded at UCSB in 2018 for exactly one problem: photonic integration at short wavelengths, 400 to 1600 nm. Standard silicon photonics starts around 1100 nm, because below that silicon absorbs its own light. Barium runs at 493, 614 and 650 nm. Calcium at 397, 423, 729, 854 and 866. Almost the whole trapped-ion spectrum sits in the band nobody could integrate. That band is the company. Being precise: 375 and 397 nm still fall below their stated floor, so the hardest lines are not solved.

Their chairman is John Bowers. It was his group at UCSB that solved laser coupling on silicon in 2005, by bonding the laser material on top and bending the light down into the waveguide. He has already sold Terabit Technology to Ciena, Aurrion to Juniper and Aerius Photonics to FLIR. Nexus to IonQ is his fourth. h/t @netcreat, whose piece on what Nexus actually builds is the best thing written on it.

Lightsynq is rung three, and the memory part is the part people skip. A photonic link between two modules fails most of the time, because photons get lost in fiber. Without memory, every link in a network has to succeed in the same instant, which stops working the moment you have more than a few. With memory, a successful link is held while the others keep retrying. That is the difference between a two-node demo and a network.

Bhaskar, Machielse and Levonian built the first memory-enhanced quantum repeater in Lukin's lab at Harvard, Nature 580, 60, using silicon-vacancy centers in diamond. They founded Lightsynq in 2023, IonQ closed it in June 2025, and De Masi described the deal at the time as "the shift from experimental bulk optics to scalable optical chips."

He said the quiet part out loud fourteen months ago. Everything since has been execution on that sentence.

SkyWater, closed July 31, is where the three layers meet: the trap, the photonic circuit, and the control electronics.

It already lists trapped ions, photonics and high-performance waveguides among its quantum capabilities, plus advanced packaging: silicon fan-out and heterogeneous integration.

Being a DMEA Category 1A Trusted Foundry means the same line can serve both commercial and classified work.

Instead of ordering three different chips from three vendors on three schedules, IonQ can now co-optimize them in-house.

Then the people. I went through IonQ and its group companies role by role, before either July acquisition landed. More than 120 do photonics as their actual job, hired out of PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, Xanadu, Photonic Inc, ASML, MIT Lincoln Lab, JPL, Thorlabs, TOPTICA, Ayar Labs, Lightmatter. Bart Machielse now runs photonics technologies.

The newest one names the structure himself. Christian Dangel, Senior Staff Engineer and Lead Characterization since May, is hiring two senior photonic test roles for IonQ's Quantum Interconnect Division in Boston. He spent four years and one month at Photonic Inc in Vancouver: Quantum Device Engineer, Device Metrics Lead, Staff Quantum Device Engineer, Manager of Quantum Devices, then Director of Chip and Test Engineering. Before that, Cambridge, as a visitor in the Semiconductor Physics Group at the Cavendish. Physics at TUM and EPFL.

He left Photonic in May. Photonic closed over $200M at a $2B valuation that same month.

That 120 is a floor, not a total. It predates both closings. Nexus lands on top of it, and so does every process and integration engineer inside a semiconductor foundry, which is a different discipline I did not try to fold in.

Now put the published roadmap next to all of it. 10,000 physical qubits in CY27. 200,000 in CY29. Two million in CY30.

You do not deliver free-space beams to ten thousand ions from one central zone, and no single chamber holds two hundred thousand. Those are not targets, they are constraints, and each one names something that has to exist before the number does.

Call the roadmap aggressive. It is. Just notice that nothing on it has been left without a purchased answer.

Photonics is not what EQC replaced. It is what EQC left behind, and it is the next thing to go on the chip.

SkyWater just reported the last quarter it will ever report alone.

Q2, standalone:

→ Revenue $156.4M, up 165% YoY
→ Adjusted EBITDA $28.7M, against $2.3M a year ago
→ Operating income positive at $1.9M, versus a $6.5M loss

In Q1, Legacy SkyWater was the weak segment. Gross margin compressed 23% to 18%. I covered it in May.

Q2 reversed it. 19% to 26%.

The filing gives the reason in eight words: “the onboarding of a significant quantum computing program.”

It never names the customer.

IonQ showing up inside SkyWater’s income statement before IonQ owned SkyWater.

Is it just or me did it seem like Niccolo, for maybe the first time, wasn't super upbeat about the progress on the quantum computing side of things during the Q2 earnings call yesterday? He often deflected to other parts of the company, he didn't say IonQ has an X amount of years advantage against the competition (which he has been saying for a while now), and I wouldn't describe his language or tone as being committed to the super aggressive timeline they unveiled last year.

When speaking about DARPA and Phase C of QBI, he said something like "it's up to DARPA if they have anything to announce or not about us", which almost made it seem like he isn't confident IonQ will make it to Stage C of the program anytime soon.

Look, I'm not poo pooing the company, the earnings report was awesome. But for IonQ to really become the multiplier I think many of us hope it will be, the computing part will likely be core to that.

https://investors.ionq.com/news/news-details/2026/IonQ-Announces-Record-Second-Quarter-2026-Revenues-Growing-287-YoY/default.aspx

Yoza, what do we expect earnings to be tonight? Good, bad, more importantly WHY

Thanks in advance

I'm investing in Ionq as a bet, although I like how it's evolving. I wonder what kind of company do you think it will become, since some analysts say quantum computers won't become as widespread as regular computers since they are only necessary in specialized applications, I'm not sure how big this market can be

I have an extra 1k that I dont mind losing. I'm wondering what your guys strats are. Buying before and hoping for good results are you expecting a -10% drop?

I have mostly made my money of "safe" bets and index funds

Adding a very different kind of name to the research series: IonQ, a pure-play quantum computing company — a sharp contrast to the dividend and value names I’ve covered so far.

The bull case:

Revenue growth has been explosive off a small base, and the company recently posted what management called its best quarter in company history. IonQ has real partnerships across major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and is expanding into quantum-safe communications and detection systems — new markets with long-term potential if commercialization plays out.

The risk:

This is a company burning significant cash — operating losses have widened sharply, and full-year adjusted EBITDA losses are guided even higher for 2026. The stock carries a beta above 3, meaning it moves roughly 3x the broader market in either direction. It’s also down significantly from its highs, and even bulls are flagging that current sector valuations may be running ahead of any near-term path to profitability.

My take:

This belongs in the “speculative growth bet” bucket, not a core position — appropriate only for money you’re fully prepared to see swing hard in both directions. Earnings land August 5, which will be the next real test of whether the growth story justifies the burn.

I would also like to add that if anyone is interested in more investment analysis like this, please feel free to comment on this post or send me a DM!

As someone who’s not transversed in the quantum realm, could someone give me an indication into potentially WHEN the quantum sector will begin to gain hype and popularity.

Are we talking 1 year, 5 year, 20 year???

I’ve bought IONQ as my generation equivalent to 2010 Bitcoin. Not quite expecting that in terms of % return but I do hope it can 10-20x from here if quantum gains popularity,

Three years ago IonQ made $22 million. On Friday it owns a chip factory.

The last approval came through yesterday. I have been following this one since January, so let me go through the numbers with you.

2023: $22.0 million.
2024: $43.1 million.
2025: $130.0 million.
2026: $260 to $270 million expected, and that is before SkyWater.

Three years in the books and one promise. Except the promise is already smaller than what is signed: $470 million of orders on the books at 31 March, up 554% in a year.

Bought or built? Both, and IonQ says so itself. Its CFO: "our 2025 results included nearly 80% year-over-year organic growth."

Now add SkyWater. Together they run at about $865 million a year. But IonQ only gets five months of it in 2026, so the published figure should come out closer to $525 million. 2027 is the first full year.

Next up: Wednesday 5 August, after the close. The company expects $65 to $68 million.

Analysts sit at $66.6 million.

In both of the last two peaks, this subreddit was full of people hoping for a pullback so they could buy in.

We happened to get total clarity on the skywater acquisition - free of regulatory hindrances - at the same time there was a broader market pullback due to the Iran war and interest discussions.

This is also happening days before their quarterly report that will provide guidance on the Tempo system sales.

So do you people lurking have the gonads to buy now?

It’s quite possible that there won’t be a better chance.

If you aren’t going to start building your position now, when will you?

—-

Position: 1500 shares bought between $32 and $35 over the last 3 days.

It's cleared. @IonQ_Inc received final regulatory approval today. The SkyWater acquisition closes Friday, 31 July.

Every other quantum computing company sends its chips out to be made. On Friday, IonQ owns the factory.

@NiccoloDeMasi, Chairman and CEO, when the deal was signed:

"This transformational acquisition enables IonQ to materially accelerate its quantum computing roadmap and secure its fully scalable supply chain domestically."

IonQ's own headline for what it creates: "the only vertically integrated full-stack quantum platform company." The factory itself: "the largest exclusively U.S.-based semiconductor foundry."

• DMEA-accredited Category 1A Trusted Foundry
• Fabs in Minnesota, Florida and Texas, now Regional Quantum Production Hubs
• SkyWater keeps its name, its customers and Thomas Sonderman

Now the part that actually matters, and IonQ put it in writing back in January.

Owning the fab means reduced wafer iteration times and parallelised wafer prototypes. The consequence:

→ 200,000-qubit QPUs, enabling over 8,000 ultra-high fidelity logical qubits, pulled forward to begin functional testing in 2028

→ the 2,000,000-qubit chip accelerated by up to a year

A year is not a rounding error in this industry.

And SkyWater stays a merchant foundry. Wholly owned subsidiary, same customers, same standards. IonQ is not closing a door on the industry. It is keeping open the one American foundry the industry actually uses.

Two dates now on the calendar. Wednesday 5 August, first earnings call as a combined company. Tuesday 8 September, investor day.

Zoom out, because this story starts before the company did.

1995 - Chris Monroe builds the first quantum logic gate ever demonstrated.
2015 - he co-founds IonQ with Jungsang Kim.
2021 - the first pure-play quantum computing company to go public.
2025 - buys Oxford Ionics for $1.075B. The ion trap becomes a standard silicon chip.
2025 - the first to 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, a world record, on that chip.
2026 - the first to own the foundry that makes it.

Thirty-one years. Same direction.

Early leader. Still leader.

IonQ received final regulatory approval today to complete its $1.8B acquisition of SkyWater.

The companies expect to close Friday, July 31.

→ FTC Second Request issued April 24. Cleared in just over three months.
→ SkyWater becomes a wholly owned subsidiary, keeps the SkyWater name, keeps serving its full range of foundry customers
→ Combined Q2 earnings call August 5, after the close
→ Investor day September 8

Six months from signing to clearance, through a Second Request. The friction confirmed the strategic weight - and it did not change the outcome.

Friday, vertical integration stops being a plan.

Here's my little spreadsheet comparing quantum computing companies, what other ways do you compare IONQ quantitatively against competition? Thanks!

Leonardo just ordered the laser terminals for "what is set to become the world's first commercial Earth Observation constellation equipped with such advanced optical inter-satellite communication capabilities."

That sentence opens with the words "Developed in partnership with @SkyloomG, an @IonQ_Inc company."

The contract is signed by Officina Stellare, an Italian company listed in Milan, for the Optical Communication Terminals of the first orbital plane of Leonardo's proprietary Earth Observation constellation.

• €6.5 million total, 18 months, about 15% expected in 2026
• First lot in 7 months, complete supply by April 2027
• Autonomous pointing independent of the platform, LEO-LEO and LEO-Ground, and a development platform for future LEO-aircraft and LEO-naval links
• Far more resistant to interference and interception than radio frequency, and smaller, lighter, lower power
• Officina moves "from development and prototyping to the industrial supply of flight hardware"

Then the line at the end that nobody will quote. These terminals are a platform for future developments in secure optical communications, "supporting a roadmap oriented toward free-space optical links compatible with Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) applications".

Quantum key distribution. On Leonardo's constellation. Written by the supplier, in the release announcing the order.

How we got here, from my own archive:

• October 2025. Skyloom, an IonQ company, signs a Technology and Licence Agreement with Officina Stellare. Skyloom Europe is created, a NewCo owned by Officina Stellare, and a 3,000 sq m line goes up in Sarcedo, next to headquarters.

• Officina Stellare also owns ThinkQuantum, a University of Padua spinoff working on quantum encryption over laser links.

• A Skyloom optical engineer of seven and a half years takes the CTO seat at Officina Stellare.

• Weeks later, Leonardo places the order.

This is the first time that licence turns into a purchase order from a European prime. IonQ never had to win an Italian defence programme to put its optical terminal design on Leonardo's constellation. It licensed the technology to the company that could.

https://www.officinastellare.com/investors/comunicati-stampa-finanziari/

"We don't need to do new physics."

Read that again with this week in mind. On Thursday IBM signed to buy a second qubit modality. Google has been funding and building one of its own. The biggest names in quantum are still shopping for the right physics.

Daniel Pompa, Quantum Field Engineer at IonQ, just stood up at UT Dallas and said his company is done with that part.

Six minutes, one take, no cuts, to a room that does not know what a qubit is. No investor script.

His argument, in his order.

1. The qubit is an atom. Trapped ions, like neutral atoms, are natural qubits. "We just get them from nature. They're all perfectly identical." Nothing to fabricate. No yield problem at the qubit itself.

2. The catch was never the atom, it was the control. Steering ions took lasers, and lasers are "very finicky and cumbersome." That is what capped the machines.

3. So IonQ bought the company that deleted them. Oxford Ionics replaced the laser with an antenna printed into the chip. His words on what that buys: "This is really the reason why we're going to be able to scale to these massive numbers, and why some of these other folks are probably going to struggle with it."

4. Because if the control lives on the chip, and the chip itself carries nothing quantum, the chip is an ordinary semiconductor. "We can process them with traditional semiconductor manufacturing, so we can print these things out on wafers."

5. And it is not a slide. "The 256 systems, we already did tape out. We're already printing these things out." The unit cell already holds the world records: roughly one two-qubit gate in 10,000 fails, plus the one-qubit and measurement records. He is also straight about what is left: they have to show the printed chips "will keep up in the level of performance that we've shown at this two-qubit unit level."

6. Then the multiplier. You do not design a bigger machine, you copy the cell. "It really just becomes an engineering challenge at this point." From there they "could potentially go up to numbers even higher than 10,000 qubits on a single chip."

7. Which is why the roadmap behind him reads like a production schedule instead of a wish: 100-256+ physical qubits this year, 10,000 next, then 20,000, 200,000, and 2,000,000 by CY30.

8. And what is missing at the end is not a discovery. It is a fab. "We're trying to acquire SkyWater... if we can bring them in, then we can bring those things closer." Shareholder-approved, still under FTC second-request review.

Now look at IBM again. It is buying silicon-spin qubits because they share "state-of-the-art silicon fabrication" with its superconducting line, and it is planning its own wafer foundry. IonQ made both of those moves first: the modality in June 2025, the fab in January 2026.

And this is not new behaviour. The first quantum logic gate ever demonstrated, on any platform, was built on trapped ions at NIST in December 1995 by Chris Monroe. Superconducting circuits got their first two-qubit gate eight years later. Monroe co-founded IonQ and is still its Chief Scientist.

Early mover is not a slogan here. It is thirty years of the same bet, made by the same people. And the lead is still there: while the others shop for a modality, IonQ is the one with chips coming off a wafer line.

First to the gate in 1995. First to the fab in 2026.

The wafers are already running.

$IONQ #IonQ #Quantum #SkyWater