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IonQ revenue jumps 336% as orders hit $1.2 billion

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November 5, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

IonQ reported record third-quarter revenues of $173.8 million, a 336% year-over-year increase, and raised its full-year guidance to between $505 and $515 million as demand for quantum computing continues to surge. The company’s growing backlog now totals $1.2 billion, reflecting sustained customer interest in its full-stack quantum platform and foundry services.

“I am pleased to report that IonQ delivered its sixth consecutive quarter of record results and the strongest quarter in our company’s history,” said Niccolo de Masi, Chairman and CEO, citing the benefits of vertically integrated quantum manufacturing. IonQ currently holds $3.7 billion in cash, cash equivalents and investments.

Record 3Q26 Revenues Driven by Tempo Deployments and SkyWater Growth

IonQ’s third-quarter revenue reached $173.8 million, a figure propelled by increasing deployments of its IonQ Tempo quantum computers and a strong performance from its recently acquired SkyWater foundry services. This revenue represents a 336% year-over-year increase, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of record results for the company and solidifying its position in a rapidly evolving quantum industry, IonQ says. The company’s financial performance is further highlighted by a raised full-year revenue guidance, now projected to exceed $505 million, anticipating 110% year-over-year growth in quantum computing revenue specifically.

A key driver of this success is the growing demand for the Superion 256 system, which will become the first on-premise quantum computer at NVIDIA’s Accelerated Quantum Research Center. “We are deeply proud that IonQ is the only trapped-ion company to advance to DARPA Stage C. This final stage of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative includes a potential program value of up to $300 million.” This DARPA program advancement, coupled with the NVIDIA partnership, highlights IonQ’s focus on creating deployable quantum computers designed for integration with existing data center infrastructure, according to the company.

The acquisition of SkyWater is also contributing to IonQ’s financial gains, with the foundry services segment generating $83.5 million in revenue. SkyWater’s non-IonQ quantum customer revenue increased by more than 30% year-over-year, following the launch of SkyWater Quantum Solutions and the introduction of the SC250 superconducting platform.

This expansion into foundry services is not merely about revenue. It’s a strategic move to build a broader quantum ecosystem. “IonQ is building the quantum ecosystem as the first vertically integrated quantum technology company that spans computing, networking, sensing, and security,” de Masi explained. SkyWater welcomed Qolab, founded by Nobel Prize winner John Martinis, as a new quantum customer, and extended a multi-year collaboration with D-Wave, demonstrating this commitment.

Beyond hardware, IonQ is also expanding its focus on quantum security, acquiring Elisity to address the growing need for cybersecurity solutions that can withstand the threat of quantum computers. This acquisition adds Zero Trust technology to IonQ’s portfolio of Post-Quantum Cryptography and Quantum Key Distribution solutions, aiming to protect sensitive enterprise data as post-quantum standards evolve. The company intends to integrate these solutions to drive durable growth and long-term profitability.

Inder Singh, COO and CFO, emphasized the strength of IonQ’s financial position, noting that the company’s remaining performance obligations have more than doubled to $1.2 billion. “Our Remaining Performance Obligations more than doubled to $1.2 billion, even as we converted our backlog into record third quarter revenues,” Singh stated. “This was an especially strong quarter in quantum computing, which represented approximately two-thirds of new contract dollars signed by our IonQ Platform segment, driven by Superion 256 demand.” IonQ’s balance sheet includes $3.7 billion.

The company’s recent contracts, including a $33 million agreement with SDT and a $28 million contract through the DARPA It’s About Time Program, further illustrate this momentum. These agreements, alongside a $25 million contract with Florida International University and an $8.2 million contract with Congruity360, demonstrate a diverse range of applications for IonQ’s quantum technologies, spanning computing, sensing and security, the firm reports. IonQ’s continued growth trajectory and strategic investments position it as a key player in the emerging quantum industry.

IonQ’s strong balance sheet, including $3.7 billion in cash and equivalents pro forma with our recent equity offering, gives us incredible financial firepower to continue investing in our technology, manufacturing infrastructure, and commercial capabilities as we scale the business and capitalize on the growing demand for quantum solutions.

Inder Singh, COO and CFO
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Avatar of Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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