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IonQ Buys SkyWater, Securing U.S.-Based Quantum Chip Supply

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July 31, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

IonQ has completed its acquisition of SkyWater Technology, the largest semiconductor foundry operating exclusively within the United States. The move signals IonQ’s ambition to become a supplier across the entire quantum industry, extending beyond its own computer building to serve all quantum platforms. “Acquiring SkyWater crystalizes IonQ’s vision to serve as a technology leader, merchant supplier and ecosystem enabler across the entire quantum industry,” said Niccolo de Masi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IonQ. This vertical integration aims to secure domestic chip production and support quantum applications spanning land, sea, air, and space.

IonQ Acquires SkyWater to Expand Quantum Manufacturing Capabilities

This acquisition secures domestic chip manufacturing capacity at a time when supply chain vulnerabilities are a major concern for advanced technologies; SkyWater already serves both public and private sectors for advanced development and manufacturing. The company intends to function as a supplier for the entire quantum industry, a departure from the typical model of vertically integrated quantum computer builders.

IonQ anticipates this vertical integration will accelerate development across all quantum platforms, and not just its own; the deal provides investment in capabilities ranging from quantum foundry work to commercialization. De Masi further stated that secure chip design, fabrication, and packaging will deliver vertical integration across IonQ’s full stack of quantum applications for land, sea, air, and space, highlighting a diverse range of potential applications.

Following the closing, SkyWater will continue operating under its current name as a subsidiary, with Thomas Sonderman remaining as CEO and reporting to de Masi; this ensures continued service to existing semiconductor foundry customers. SkyWater shareholders will receive $15.00 in cash and 0.4883 shares of IonQ stock per share held, and the combined company plans to hold an investor day on September 8, 2026.

Acquiring SkyWater crystalizes IonQ’s vision to serve as a technology leader, merchant supplier and ecosystem enabler across the entire quantum industry. We are investing in capabilities from quantum foundry and advanced packaging to manufacturing and commercialization that the quantum ecosystem requires for future growth.

Niccolo de Masi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IonQ
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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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