IonQ (NYSE:IONQ) reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $80.1 million, up 287% from a year earlier, as the quantum computing company cited demand for its fifth-generation systems and broader momentum across computing, networking, security, sensing and space-related products.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Niccolo de Masi said the result marked IonQ’s strongest quarter to date and its fifth consecutive quarter of record results. Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer Inder Singh said revenue exceeded the company’s own expectations by 20%.
Deployments and revenue mix
Singh said the primary contributor to the quarter’s outperformance was deployment activity for IonQ’s fifth-generation quantum computing systems. The company began shipping subsystems to the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, or KISTI, with equipment being delivered and assembled at the customer site in South Korea.
IonQ also said its fifth-generation system is in final assembly at QuantumBasel in Switzerland, alongside a previously purchased fourth-generation system. Singh described the installation as what the company believes is the first commercial deployment of two successive generations of quantum computers at the same customer site.
Organic revenue grew 132% year over year in the second quarter, according to Singh. IonQ continued to expect approximately 100% organic revenue growth for the full year.
- About 50% of quarterly revenue came from international customers, including customers in Australia, South Korea, Portugal, India, Denmark, Germany, Israel and Japan.
- Commercial customers, defined as non-U.S. government customers, represented about 60% of revenue.
- Sales involving more than one product grew 40% year over year and accounted for roughly 25% of quarterly revenue.
- Remaining performance obligations totaled $485 million at quarter-end, compared with $470 million in the first quarter and $122 million a year earlier.
Singh said IonQ is pursuing cross-selling opportunities, particularly combinations of quantum computing and quantum security products. He also pointed to quantum computing as a service and software and algorithm-development work as components of the company’s offering.
SkyWater acquisition and semiconductor roadmap
IonQ completed its acquisition of SkyWater last week, adding semiconductor fabrication capabilities to its platform. De Masi said the combination gives the company onshore design, fabrication, packaging and deployment capabilities at trusted U.S. facilities.
The company is transitioning its trapped-ion quantum computing architecture from laser-based control to electronic qubit control, technology it obtained through its acquisition of Oxford Ionics. De Masi said the approach is intended to use semiconductor manufacturing processes to scale systems toward millions of qubits.
During the quarter, IonQ received its first fully featured and integrated quantum processing units from SkyWater. The chips are undergoing testing at IonQ’s College Park facility. De Masi said the prototypes consolidate capabilities tested in earlier prototypes and will allow the company to begin evaluating integrated systems.
IonQ plans to begin commissioning systems based on its 256-qubit technology in 2027. The company said it is also advancing designs for a 10,000-qubit chip. De Masi said the company expects to begin manufacturing-line preparations, system deployment and customer commissioning in the first half of next year.
Management also highlighted IonQ’s “walking cat” architecture, which it released in April as a manufacturable blueprint for a fault-tolerant quantum computer. During the quarter, IonQ said it demonstrated breakeven quantum error correction using QLDPC codes on a temporal engineering test system.
Although SkyWater will support IonQ’s own hardware roadmap, de Masi said the foundry will continue operating as a merchant supplier to the broader quantum industry. He said IonQ intends to maintain intellectual-property protections for foundry customers across quantum modalities, including superconducting, photonic, ion and atom-based systems.
IonQ also discussed its acquisition of Nexus Photonics, a University of California, Santa Barbara spinoff whose technology supports chip-scale integration of lasers, modulators and optical subsystems. The company said it has started integrating those capabilities into next-generation atomic clocks and gravimeters and plans to offer quantum photonics foundry services through SkyWater.
Expenses, loss and quantum-security initiatives
GAAP operating expenses were $417.3 million in the quarter, while non-GAAP operating expenses were $201.2 million. Research and development accounted for $160.6 million of GAAP operating expenses.
Adjusted EBITDA was negative $120.3 million. Singh said the figure included approximately $20 million in additional SkyWater-related spending as IonQ accelerated its technology roadmap, including about $10 million associated with pre-integration costs, business scaling and supply-chain efforts.
IonQ reported a GAAP net loss of $1.9 billion, primarily driven by a roughly $1.6 billion non-cash mark-to-market impact from warrant valuations. Singh said the warrant-related accounting impact did not reflect the company’s operating fundamentals.
On security, de Masi said IonQ launched a quantum key distribution product designed to allow customers to transmit multiple data types over existing municipal fiber networks. The company said its security strategy combines post-quantum cryptography with quantum communications technologies such as QKD.
Management said it is seeing increased customer discussion around quantum-related cybersecurity risks following U.S. quantum executive orders issued in June. Singh said conversations are expanding beyond computing use cases to include network vulnerability assessments and security planning for a post-quantum environment.
IonQ said it will provide updates across its quantum platform at an Investor Day scheduled for Sept. 8 at the New York Stock Exchange.
About IonQ (NYSE:IONQ)
IonQ, Inc engages in the development of general-purpose quantum computing systems in the United States. It sells access to quantum computers of various qubit capacities. The company makes access to its quantum computers through cloud platforms, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Amazon Braket, Microsoft’s Azure Quantum, and Google’s Cloud Marketplace, as well as through its cloud service. It also provides contracts associated with the design, development, and construction of specialized quantum computing hardware systems; maintenance and support services; and consulting services related to co-developing algorithms on quantum computing systems.
