IonQ Builds Its Own Quantum Factory as Commercial Orders Surge 755%

IonQ reports 755% revenue surge to $64.7M, secures $39M defense deal, and pursues vertical integration via SkyWater acquisition, driving stock up 7.4%.

Amazon may have dumped its entire stake, but IonQ’s stock is climbing on a flood of commercial wins and a major push to bring chip production in-house. The quantum computing company reported its strongest quarter ever, signed a $39 million defence contract, and secured shareholder approval for a $1.8 billion takeover of chipmaker SkyWater Technology — all while the US government chose to funnel $2 billion in quantum funding elsewhere.

The Boulder, Colorado, facility that opened this spring is central to IonQ’s vertical integration strategy. The roughly 2,000-square-metre lab will focus on semiconductor multiplexing, a technique critical to scaling quantum chips. IonQ also plans to spend $100 million on a broader research and development centre in the same city, building out its own fabrication capabilities rather than relying entirely on external partners. The SkyWater acquisition, now expected to close in the second or third quarter of 2026 pending regulatory clearance, adds further heft to that ambition.

The company’s commercial traction is already visible in hard numbers. Revenue for the first quarter of 2026 hit $64.7 million, a 755% increase from a year earlier and 30% above the midpoint of IonQ’s own guidance. Adjusted earnings per share came in at a loss of $0.34, while adjusted EBITDA swung to a loss of $96.75 million — a reflection of the heavy spending on hardware development. Yet the market is betting the investment will pay off: remaining performance obligations (RPOs) jumped to $470 million, up 554% year over year, providing a multi-year revenue backlog that analysts point to as evidence of real demand.

Two deals in particular underscore how IonQ is diversifying beyond US government contracts. It sold its first chip-based 256-qubit system of the sixth generation to the University of Cambridge. And it won a $39 million contract under the Space Development Agency’s HALO programme for tactical space communications. Six out of every ten dollars of first-quarter revenue came from commercial customers outside the US government, and 35% of revenue originated from more than 30 countries — up from just a handful a year ago.

For the full year 2026, IonQ expects revenue between $260 million and $270 million; even the lower end would double the prior year’s total. The company sits on $3.1 billion in cash, giving it ample runway to fund the SkyWater integration and the Boulder expansion. The stock advanced 7.4% on 24 May to above $63, having already posted three consecutive double-digit percentage gains in the days before.

Wall Street took notice. Jefferies, Wedbush, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley all raised their price targets or reiterated positive ratings. Morgan Stanley lifted its target to $47 while keeping an "Equal Weight" rating, a cautious nod to the stock’s forward sales multiple of 67 — a valuation that leaves no room for execution missteps.

The biggest unanswered question is whether IonQ can deliver its promised 256-qubit commercial system in the first half of 2027, and eventually a 10,000-qubit machine. The Trump administration’s decision to skip IonQ in its $2 billion quantum funding round — the largest single award, $1 billion, went to IBM — was largely shrugged off by B. Riley as not a strategic setback. A smaller publicly traded rival, D-Wave Quantum, was among the nine companies that did receive government equity stakes, yet IonQ’s shares still rose on the sector-wide tailwind.

Amazon’s complete exit from the shareholder register, revealed in the latest 13F filing, drew more debate. The e-commerce giant had bought about 854,000 shares in the second quarter of 2025, but had largely sold them by the end of that year. The final clean-up occurred in the first quarter of 2026. Analysts note that the original position was small and symbolic, and that the operational partnership on cloud infrastructure remains intact. The sale signals opportunistic portfolio management rather than any loss of confidence in IonQ’s technology.

With investor conferences scheduled for June and the SkyWater deal moving toward final approval, the next few months will test whether IonQ can keep converting its $470 million order backlog into revenue fast enough to justify its elevated valuation. The company has sketched out a clear path from lab to factory to customer — but the quantum industry’s history is littered with well-funded road maps that never reached their destination.