https://x.com/kingtutcap/status/1921972750689730847?t=ltqhlJ78ekGPkfIBBSJY8g&s=19
Capella Space Corporation, which was announced as acquired last week, also appears to be listed in the Pentagon’s HSA project..
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https://x.com/DesFrontierTech/status/1922065765584322724?t=EJxOkQSThPwMyS9ZAdMPFw&s=19
I wonder if IONQ will mention this through its own channels at all, or if Capella’s deals will be handled solely through its own communications. So, yet another thing to follow.
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The acquisitions significantly reduce IonQ’s risk level, as there are now many different business angles. Growth in the coming years does not depend on just a couple of cards. The first breakthrough may not necessarily come from a quantum processor, but perhaps from secure data communication between sensors. We don’t know what IonQ’s management sees now. They must see something, as they raised a good pot of new money in the spring. As a publicly listed company, IonQ can use the value of its shares to acquire those unlisted companies. The economics are on IonQ’s side; IonQ’s valuation as a public company is greater relative to unlisted acquisition targets. IonQ can already be considered a diversified portfolio of emerging quantum technology companies, which nevertheless forms a coherent functional entity. That’s why IonQ’s value will be greater than the sum of its parts. IonQ’s value could be the product of its parts, conceptually speaking. Now we just need to have the patience to let the companies mature into interoperable solutions under IonQ’s umbrella.
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This is an important observation.
I initially thought that IonQ’s success depended on scalability. A 64-qubit machine would significantly increase sales and the company would become the new Nvidia if it ever had 1064 qubits.
In the Q4 investor call, I recall something being said about the strategy no longer focusing on the number of qubits, but rather tailoring solutions according to the application. Acquisitions fit this picture.
And as for scalability, a while ago I came across a paper that compared the machines of different manufacturers (Quantinuum, IBM, IonQ, IQM, and Rigetti). A somewhat concerning observation was that IonQ’s performance did not increase as expected by the number of qubits when comparing Aria (25) and Forte (36). (Quantinuum, by the way, performed best and Rigetti worst.)
“In the case of IonQ, we observed a significant improvement in quality from ionq harmony to ionq aria 2, but the progression from ionq aria 2 to ionq forte is less pronounced.”
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The tweet below states that NVIDIA’s ABCI-Q supercomputer concept clearly communicates; quantum computing is no longer marginal, but a critical part of future AI infrastructure. NVIDIA doesn’t build everything itself, but dominates as a platform solutions provider – just like with CUDA. Now the company is creating standards before the hardware is even ready, and it’s turning its attention to quantum partners.
And this is where IonQ steps in. IonQ didn’t wait for a quantum “solution,” but built already operational quantum capacity and software. So NVIDIA created the demand – IonQ provides the answer. According to the tweeter, this is no longer an experiment, but an essential link to next-generation computing.
Largely familiar information, well, the tweet has much more on these matters:
https://x.com/StockSavvyShay/status/1924579983802126448
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IonQ Aims to Become the Nvidia of Quantum Computing, CEO Says - Barron’s
Niccolo de Masi jutteli mukavia Barron’s -lehdelle ja näköjään markkina tykkää.
“We’re in the business of quantum just like Nvidia and Broadcom are in the business of classical GPUs. I believe IonQ will be the Nvidia player. There will be other people that copy us and follow us; they have always copied and followed us.”
“We feel good about our competitive positioning because, at the end of the day, we are trying to drive ecosystem.”
“The stock keeps going up and we keep putting out announcements and delivering progress.”
“I think someone will pay hundreds of billions of dollars to buy IonQ because it’s the right thing for their cloud. It’s the right thing to do for them to defend their classical AI or machine learning business. They’re going to need our advantage because if they don’t have us, their competitors will have them on their knees.”
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The tweet below certainly contains overlapping information and things that have already been mentioned a bit earlier in this thread.
The tweet states how IonQ is building a quantum platform with the same strategy that NVIDIA used to build its AI cluster. The company is not just focusing on better quantum chips, but on the entire architecture, e.g., how quantum data moves, scales, and integrates with computation. The Lightsynq acquisition is reminiscent of the Mellanox deal, meaning it’s about managing a critical bottleneck before the market realizes its significance, according to the tweeter.
The future of quantum computing will not be solved by qubit count alone, but by who owns the entire technology package, i.e., data flows, interfaces, and the network. IonQ aims to control the entire ecosystem, so every technological advancement happens on its terms.
This move shows that IonQ wants to be the owner of the quantum platform – not just a chip manufacturer.
I didn’t understand everything in this tweet, and I might have thought I understood something when I didn’t, so it’s worth checking out the whole tweet. 
https://x.com/StockSavvyShay/status/1931339379525795986
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Big news: IonQ acquires ion trap company Oxford Ionics for approximately one billion dollars. Ten million will be in cash and the rest in shares. The company will now gain a lot of complementary expertise, and the promised development is staggering:
“The combined company expects to build systems with 256 physical qubits at accuracies of 99.99% by 2026 and advance to over 10,000 physical qubits with logical accuracies of 99.99999% by 2027. The combined company anticipates extending its innovation by reaching 2 million physical qubits in its quantum computers by 2030, enabling logical qubit accuracies exceeding 99.9999999999%.”
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And the fireworks continue. Collaboration in drug development with AZ, AWS, and NVIDIA
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In a couple of hours, the ‘IonQ Technology Updates’ webinar will be available:
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Below are a couple of tweets related to insider dealings.
The tweet states that IonQ’s CEO Nicolo De Masi sold approximately $100 million worth of shares, nearly 80% of his holdings, and only three months after he had drawn up a two-year official selling plan. At least on X, the speed and timing of the sales raise questions about management’s motives, even though, according to the tweeters, the company has clear long-term potential.
It’s possible I’ve misunderstood something, even though I read about these in different places and on several occasions.
https://x.com/JKeynesAlpha/status/1933879502553124968
https://x.com/Jeff__AG/status/1933999593420665274
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"IonQ and Kipu Quantum will extend their collaboration with early access to IonQ’s upcoming 64-qubit and 256-qubit chips, unlocking the potential to address even larger, industrially relevant challenges. "
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Now I have to state that paid work and its rush are now hindering this stock hobby. IonQ has made a large number of acquisitions and partnerships, and the CEO has significantly divested his stock ownership. But I haven’t really had time to put things together here at all. But now something. Below is a small summary from June:
The acquisition of Oxford Ionics will surely cause the biggest stir, but as I said at the beginning, this investor is now behind on things. IonQ is probably currently one of the most difficult companies to evaluate in the market, from a layman’s perspective. The cash flow effects of the acquisitions are difficult to estimate. Actually, everything is difficult to estimate. So, a numbers person doesn’t get anything out of the company. But the more diverse the shopping list IonQ creates, the less risky the company is for investors. Here you get a really good diversification into different areas of quantum computing. The company has indeed reinvented itself. Nvidia has become a partner. CEOs have sold/are selling large stakes. The stock has been diluted with financial instruments. New partnerships and use case pilot sites are constantly emerging.
I have a strong reason not to consider selling the shares at such a high price, even though grasping the overall picture is becoming increasingly difficult. That reason is Chris Monroe’s interview on the 632nm podcast:
An interesting phenomenon around that podcast is that the American talking head Martin Shkreli used that interview to show that even Monroe doesn’t believe in IonQ. So, according to Shkreli, IonQ is a Scam. He has been shorting quantum companies since the beginning of the year. But when I listened to the podcast, the situation is quite the opposite. Monroe is still an IonQ man; he states that the Ion trap is now the best hardware, that IonQ has a good roadmap, and Monroe criticizes that he would like to see the focus shift more from marketing to research. This is what one might expect from a researcher. Monroe states that IonQ has the second-best accuracy, i.e., fidelity. The best, in Monroe’s opinion, was probably Quantinuum. Well, now the acquisition of Oxford Ionics will probably correct the situation. Monroe seems relaxed in the podcast and is not stressed about IonQ, at least. I believe (I haven’t checked) that he still holds a significant stake in IonQ. And he proudly highlighted that he is a co-founder of IonQ, spoke about the company’s early stages, and clearly brought out Peter Chapman’s significance when they were building the company and acquiring the first funding channels. IonQ will still go a long way.
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Big News!
Shawn Kwon informed us today about a research collaboration announced in South Korea between IonQ and South Korea. The deal is worth approximately $35 million. Finland’s own IQM and Rigetti were also in the running.
The original news source is here:
[Exclusive] IonQ selected for first commercial quantum computer investment by Korean government
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IBM was apparently also in the race, but lost despite previous cooperation with Yonsei University. A financially significant agreement, even though part of the budget will likely go to the Korean partner KISTA. Perhaps more important, however, is that IonQ generally won the competition (while awaiting official confirmation) and appears to be the frontrunner in the quantum race at the moment.
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Well, I just watched that IonQ webinar from 20 days ago. Now that I’ve seen the webinar, I can comment on how important it is to focus on the essential (= what the acquisitions mean) rather than the less essential (= Niccolo de Masi’s stock sales 2 days after the Oxford Ionics deal & webinar).
I’ll start by stating my conclusion after watching the webinar: Niccolo de Masi earned that $100 million. Many investors talk about asymmetric investing. I haven’t understood what it means before. But perhaps it means this: IonQ’s market value is now roughly the same as before the Lightsynq and Oxford Ionics acquisitions. But IonQ is now a 10x better company than before the aforementioned acquisitions. The asymmetry comes from the fact that if IonQ went bankrupt, the investor’s maximum loss would have remained the same, even though the acquisitions bring significant capabilities. But the upside, i.e., the company’s ability to create added value, is now much better than before the acquisitions. What is this about? It’s about IonQ gaining two significant capabilities:
- Oxford Ionics has developed a solution to use ordinary semiconductor chips as an Ion trap HW-base, where electrons are used to control qubits, instead of IonQ’s lasers. This means system simplification and significant scalability.
- Lightsynq brings quantum memory to IonQ. Memory is needed in a quantum network to buffer quantum communication. It also works without memory, but using memory improves the quantum network’s resilience to the temporal imprecision of entanglement-mediating photons.
If someone says that IonQ is a scam, it would mean that Oxford’s physics department is a scam.
It’s good that there are players in the stock market who don’t do their homework. This creates an opportunity for us to buy more, if we feel like it. However, let me state that THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE, BUT A SUBJECTIVE OPINION.
The presentations from Oxford Ionics and Lightsynq radiated deep enthusiasm for the overall merger. It seems that Niccolo de Masi negotiated the deals as a combined package: Oxford + Lightsynq. This is a package. Niccolo de Masi has publicly spoken of IonQ as the Nvidia of the quantum world. His words are not entirely without basis. Now, so much more scalability (Oxford Ionics) and more error-free operation (Lightsynq) have been added. So what do Oxford Ionics and Lightsynq get from IonQ? That also became clear: engineering expertise and system building capability.
Lightsynq mentioned Chris Monroe as the developer of quantum memory for quantum networks; it seems that the expertise of Duke (Monroe) and Harvard (Lightsynq) is combining. I now have a feeling that Chris Monroe is satisfied - Niccolo de Masi, with his deals, made IonQ the best company in the field, even in Monroe’s opinion.
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Texas seems to be becoming the new land of gold for progress in the US (side note: AST Spacemobile also originates from there)
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https://x.com/TheSixFiveMedia/status/1940961773622120820?t=KTF-26ZdY6w0ZJZ6RHRHVg&s=19
DeMasi describes how significant the acquisition of Lightsync is for Ionq.
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Niccolo de Masia probably half of the investors consider a charlatan. But fortunately, every private investor has the freedom to choose which number to play. It’s possible that from this moment on, MicroStrategy (MSTR) is a better investment than IonQ. I intentionally chose MSTR for this. MSTR’s Bitcoin investment is worth approximately 55 billion, and for MSTR hoarding Bitcoin, the market pays double, meaning MSTR’s value is approximately 110 billion.
I checked Niccolo de Masia’s educational background again. He has a master’s degree (M.sc.) in physics from Cambridge. That’s why he’s not a charlatan with his talk, but in my opinion, he says what he thinks. I share Niccolo’s vision, but I don’t understand MSTR’s business. IonQ is my crypto. Since I don’t know how to invest in crypto, IonQ is the most difficult investment for me to understand. But I like it, and it suits me. And there is no other IonQ. There is no competitor. There is no other quantum company that makes both a computing platform (ion trap HW) and quantum networks. At least to some extent, it’s about a complete system, at least as far as I understand, IonQ is talked about as the world’s most advanced complete system. And if IonQ has managed to buy almost the world’s best complete system components, it is possible that IonQ will eventually buy everything essential for itself. There is a possibility of a winner-takes-all phenomenon here. THIS IS NOT AN INVESTMENT RECOMMENDATION. But my pure opinion and guess. But that’s why I’m playing this IonQ square.
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