IonQ, Inc.

IonQ was co-founded by Christopher Monroe, at the time a professor at University of Maryland, and Jungsang Kim, a professor at Duke University, in 2015, with the help of venture firm New Enterprise Associates.

The company is an offshoot of the co-founders’ 25 years of academic research in quantum information science. Monroe's quantum computing research began as a Staff Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with physicist David Wineland where he led a team using trapped ions to produce the first controllable qubits and the first controllable quantum logic gate, culminating in a proposed architecture for a large-scale trapped ion computer.

Kim and Monroe, who was at the time a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), began collaborating formally as a result of larger research initiatives funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). They wrote a review paper for Science Magazine entitled Scaling the Ion Trap Quantum Processor, pairing Monroe's research at UMD in trapped ions with Kim's focus on scalable quantum information processing and quantum communication hardware.

This research partnership became the seed for IonQ's founding. In 2015, New Enterprise Associates invested $2 million to commercialize the technology Monroe and Kim proposed in their Science paper.

In 2016, they brought on David Moehring from IARPA —where he was in charge of several quantum computing initiatives —to be the company's chief executive. In 2017, they raised a $20 million series B, led by GV (formerly Google Ventures) and New Enterprise Associates, the first investment GV has made in quantum computing technology. They began hiring in earnest in 2017, with the intent to bring an offering to market by late 2018. In May 2019, former Amazon Prime executive Peter Chapman was named new CEO of the company. IonQ then partnered to make its quantum computers available to the public through Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

In October 2021, IonQ received $636 million when it went public on the New York Stock Exchange via a special-purpose acquisition company. The company opened a dedicated research and development facility in Bothell, Washington, in February 2024, touting it as the first quantum computing factory in the United States.

Niccolò de Masi became president and CEO of IonQ in February 2025, after beinging on the company's board since 2021. He succeeded Peter Chapman, who became executive chair. In August 2025, de Masi was appointed chairman.

In August 2026, IonQ's Space Division, previously known as Capella, secured a contract with the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office to provide services related to the NRO’s Radar Commercial Augmentation program.