IonQ, Inc. 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to IonQ's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. My name is Hanley Donofrio, and I am the Investor Relations Director here at IonQ. I'm pleased to be joined on today's call by Niccolo de Masi, IonQ's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Inder Singh, IonQ's Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the company's second quarter 2026 earnings release issued this afternoon, which is available on the SEC's website and on the investor relations section of our website at investors.ionq.com. Please note that on today's call, management will refer to non-GAAP financial measures. While the company believes these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information for investors, the presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP.

You are directed to our earnings release for a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS to the closest comparable GAAP measures. During the call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements, including those regarding our guidance for 2026. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties. Therefore, you should not put undue reliance on those statements. We refer you to our SEC filings, including our annual reports on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 for a more detailed discussion of those risks and uncertainties.

We undertake no obligation to revise any statements to reflect changes that occur after this call, except as required by law. Now, I will turn it over to Niccolo de Masi, Chairman and CEO of IonQ.

Thank you all for joining us today. I am pleased to report that IonQ delivered second quarter revenue of $80.1 million, representing 287% year-on-year growth. This means Q2 2026 is the strongest quarter in IonQ's history and our fifth consecutive quarter of record results. As shown on slide four of this quarter's investor presentation, this performance reflects momentum across our entire quantum platform, spanning quantum computing, quantum networking, quantum security, and quantum sensing. Following the successful close of our acquisition of SkyWater, our platform now also includes quantum semiconductor manufacturing. Inder will take you through the financial results and outlook in more detail. I want to center my remarks today on three key areas defining our progress. First, manufacturing our industry-leading quantum systems on a semiconductor roadmap with SkyWater. Second, expanding our role as a merchant supplier to the U.S. and allied quantum ecosystem.

Third, delivering defense in depth via a complete quantum safe cybersecurity stack as we accelerate the timeline for full fault-tolerant quantum computing. Beginning now on our quantum computing achievements and the production of quantum systems with semiconductor manufacturing. One year ago, we announced that IonQ would move our pioneering and commercially successful trapped ion architecture from laser-based control to electronic qubit control. This is a globally unique and powerful control approach, allowing us to rapidly scale our trapped ion systems into the millions of qubits using well-established semiconductor pathways. For our customers, electronic control facilitates more seamless standard enterprise workflows while delivering the lowest cost and lowest energy footprint per logical qubit on the market. IonQ has been consistently executing against this major initiative over the past year. Let me recap that progress because the pace has been extraordinary.

For those following along in our investor presentation, please see slide five. Last September, we closed our acquisition of Oxford Ionics, bringing the pioneers of electronic qubit control into IonQ. In October last year, we published results setting the new world record in two qubit gate fidelities, demonstrating 99.99% fidelity without ground state cooling. These results proved that electronic qubit control enables world-leading performance via a scalable and production-ready semiconductor manufacturing process. In February 2026, we announced that we had progressed through three rounds of tape-outs for our first semiconductor-based quantum chip, and we're preparing to hand those designs to the foundry for production. In May 2026, we reported that we had received our first chip prototypes back. These prototypes demonstrated the critical quality metrics required for our production-grade 256-qubit chips, while also approaching those required for our 10,000-qubit chips.

Each milestone has reduced execution risk and positioned IonQ to create value for our customers and shareholders. I am proud to report that this quarter, we received our first fully featured, fully integrated QPUs back from SkyWater, and they are now undergoing testing in our College Park facility. These chips consolidate all the individual capabilities validated by our last few months of prototyping into a single unified chip architecture. Having a full QPU prototype like this is what enables us to start testing integrated systems. These QPUs represent a pivotal milestone in our compute roadmap and a powerful testament to what IonQ and SkyWater can achieve together. We have moved with conviction to demonstrate our 256-qubit technology and plan to begin commissioning systems in 2027. We are also advancing our control software and system architecture. For those following along in our investor presentation, please turn to slide six.

In April of this year, we released our Walking Cat architecture, which is the industry's first end-to-end detailed manufacturable blueprint of a fault-tolerant quantum computer. This historic paper shows how fault-tolerant IonQ systems will execute operations while actively correcting errors. Importantly, this is an architecture that will scale with us as we grow our systems to millions of qubits. This quarter, we validated key elements of our Walking Cat architecture on our hardware. IonQ achieved a major milestone by demonstrating breakeven quantum error correction using QLDPC codes on a temporal engineering test system. Our published results this quarter are a major validation of our quantum error correction capabilities, which IonQ is proud to continue pioneering. These technical accomplishments demonstrate IonQ's industry-leading position, rapid commercial advancement, and tangible value creation potential.

Let me turn to SkyWater and IonQ's expanding role as a merchant supplier to the U.S. and allied quantum ecosystem. Last week, we closed our $1.8 billion acquisition of SkyWater, creating the only vertically integrated, full-stack quantum platform company. Together, IonQ and SkyWater own the design, fabrication, packaging, and deployment of our systems entirely onshore, entirely in trusted U.S. facilities. For IonQ and our partners, this has a profound impact, as seen on slide seven. This is a transformational combination that enables IonQ to materially accelerate our quantum computing roadmap and our ability to design, test, and iterate on QPUs at speed. Oxford Ionics brought us proprietary, world-leading electronic qubit control technology to scale qubit counts on standard silicon. SkyWater brings a world-class semiconductor foundry under our own roof to fabricate those designs. This past quarter, we closed the loop.

QPUs designed with electronic qubit control, built at SkyWater, and returned to us as our first fully featured chips. IonQ and SkyWater have together carried a design from concept to fabrication, proof that our strategy is translating into results. As you can see on slide eight, with SkyWater, we're also pleased to expand our role as the leading merchant supplier to the broader quantum ecosystem. Even before the acquisition, IonQ served as an important merchant supplier with our industry-leading atomic clocks, sensors, and networking products being sold to other leading quantum companies. With SkyWater semiconductor technology supporting multiple QPU modalities, IonQ is now the world's largest quantum merchant supplier, delivering the critical technologies every quantum company needs. Our goal is to accelerate all quantum companies working with us, ions, atoms, superconductors, photonics, sensors, and networks.

I'm also pleased to share that we are further expanding our merchant supplier capabilities in Q2 through our acquisition of UC Santa Barbara spinoff Nexus Photonics. Nexus brings foundational technologies that enable chip-scale integration of lasers, modulators, and optical subsystems for the miniaturization and mass manufacture of quantum systems. We have already begun integrating these solutions into our next-generation atomic clocks and gravimeters. For quantum networking, these integrated photonics capabilities move us closer to data center scale distributed quantum systems. We plan to supply these critical integrated components to the broader quantum ecosystem as part of the industry's first dedicated quantum photonics foundry offering at SkyWater. As the cornerstone quantum merchant supplier across the U.S. and allied landscape, we have the procedures in place to protect our customers' IP and can assure our customers a partnership focused on accelerating their roadmaps.

Turning to slide nine, I want to now address quantum security and Q-Day, a topic rapidly moving to the forefront of boardrooms and defense agencies around the world. Quantum computing is a paradigm shift, not only for every aspect of applied science, but also for cybersecurity. As I foretold a year ago, the timeline for cryptographically relevant machines that threaten RSA encryption is rapidly compressing. Over the past 15 years, the estimated number of qubits needed to break encryption has dropped by four orders of magnitude. Simultaneously, IonQ is accelerating our path to 10,000 qubits in 2027, positioning us at the forefront of this security reality. As you can see on slide 10, IonQ uniquely provides defense in depth by our complete quantum-safe cybersecurity stack. Post-quantum cryptography is a critical first step in protecting existing infrastructure at scale.

Longer-term resilience, however, will increasingly rely on advanced quantum communications technologies, including quantum key distribution. To meet those needs, this quarter, we launched a new QKD product that allows customers to send multiple data types across existing municipal fiber networks, making enterprise-grade quantum security practical, deployable, and cheaper to operate. We welcome the U.S. administration's June 22nd quantum executive orders, which recognize that quantum technologies are inflecting. Quantum leadership is emerging as the defining technological competition of not only our lifetimes, but I expect, of the 21st century itself. We enter the second half of this year as a clear technology leader, critical merchant supplier, and vital ecosystem enabler for the entire quantum industry. With SkyWater now a part of IonQ, we are de-risking and accelerating multiple engineering pathways for our next-generation quantum chips. In parallel, we are also helping to create the manufacturing and supply chain foundation required to accelerate and scale the entire U.S. and allied quantum industry.