IonQ, a company based largely on technology developed at the University of Maryland a decade ago, is acquiring Oxford, England-based startup Oxford Ionics in a deal worth nearly $1.1 billion.
It is the latest in a string of acquisitions College Park, Maryland-based IonQ has made since it went public three years ago, including Lightsynq Technologies and Capella Space this year.
The acquisition will combine IonQ’s quantum hardware and software with Oxford’s quantum chip technology. Oxford holds world records for accuracy in quantum operations, which exponentially speed up computing power at an atomic level, and will lead to solving computational problems that are too complex for the world’s most powerful existing supercomputers.
Quantum computing encodes data in units called qubits. In a statement, IonQ said the combined company expects to build systems with 256 qubits at accuracies of 99.99% by 2026, and advance to over 10,000 qubits by 2027. IonQ said it could eventually reach 2 million qubits in its quantum computers by 2030.
IonQ has not turned a profit but has still caught investors’ eyes. Its stock has gained almost 400% in the past 12 months.
Christopher Monroe, who developed quantum computing architecture at the University of Maryland, and Duke University professor Jungsang Kim founded IonQ in 2015.
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