Slow and Steady

IonQ, Inc., a College Park, Maryland company, builds quantum computing processors using trapped ion technology. Trapped ions are not a conventional way to obtain qubits because they make for a slower quantum computer. But trapped ions have two powerful advantages—first, they are easy to obtain, and second, they can operate at room temperature. Because most of IonQ’s competitors (with the exception of Honeywell, which also uses ion trap technology) need to cool their qubits to near absolute zero, which is very expensive, IonQ is sacrificing speed for cost. This might be a wise decision—it is better to have a slow quantum computer than no quantum computer at all.

Already raising over $77 million dollars in funding since 2015, IonQ recently obtained an additional $7 million from Robert Bosch and Lockheed Martin. While IonQ does not yet have any revenue, monetization is coming soon: Amazon has announced that IonQ, along with D-Wave and Rigetti, will have their services placed on the cloud through Amazon Braket.