IonQ: Short Sellers Circle as Revenue Skyrockets 755% and SkyWater Acquisition Closes In

IonQ stock rallies 142% in 2026 despite 22% short interest; revenue jumps 754% but losses widen. Overbought RSI and valuation gap with $5 fair value raise concerns.

Nearly a quarter of IonQ’s shares — 22.4% — are sold short, yet the stock keeps climbing. On Thursday it added another 5.46% to close at $68.97 after touching an intraday high of $71.47. The rally is testing the nerves of bears who have bet $26.2 billion in market capitalization will eventually deflate, even as the quantum computing company reports growth numbers that look straight out of a startup’s wildest dream.

First-quarter 2026 revenue hit $64.7 million, up 754.7% from a year earlier. Management promptly raised its full-year forecast to a range of $260 million to $270 million. The order backlog swelled to $470 million — a 554% jump. But the flip side is a $229 million operating loss and a per-share loss of $0.34, wider than the $0.26 analysts had penciled in. The company is burning cash fast, and profitability remains out of sight.

The technical picture adds to the squeeze potential. IonQ’s relative strength index sits at 70.69, firmly in overbought territory. The stock trades 30.2% above its 20-day moving average of $52.79 and 44.5% above the 200-day line of $47.57. Thursday’s volume of 31.5 million shares was 19% above the average. With resistance at $76 and support at $60, any sustained push higher could force short sellers to cover, accelerating the rally.

Valuation models, however, tell a starkly different story. Some analysts peg IonQ’s fair value at just $5.06 a share, a fraction of the current price. The criticism hinges on extreme price-to-sales multiples and aggressive growth assumptions that may take years to materialize. Of the 17 analysts covering the stock, ten rate it a buy, six a hold, and one a sell. The average price target of $68.63 is almost exactly where the shares trade today. Zacks ranks the stock as a “Sell.”

IonQ’s strategic pivot is designed to address the scalability problem head-on. The planned acquisition of SkyWater Technology, which has cleared shareholder approval and is expected to close in the second or third quarter of 2026, will give IonQ its own semiconductor fabrication capacity. Currently the company relies on external suppliers for its trapped-ion quantum processors, which use ytterbium atoms as qubits and have achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity. Earlier it bought Oxford Ionics to integrate microwave control systems into its architecture. Vertical integration could reduce costs and speed up production, but execution risk remains high.

The CHIPS Act’s $2 billion quantum funding round passed IonQ by entirely. The Commerce Department awarded money to IBM, D-Wave, Rigetti, and Infleqtion, among others. Investors, however, seem to view the snub as less relevant than IonQ’s own manufacturing push. The stock has rebounded 142% from its March low of $25.89, shrugging off the federal exclusion.

For IonQ, the next few months are critical. Hitting the $260–$270 million revenue target and integrating SkyWater smoothly would provide the strongest rebuttal to the skeptics. The high short interest means that any positive catalyst could turn the screws on bears. But with the shares trading at a multiple that implies decades of perfect execution, the margin for error is razor-thin.