IonQ raises its 2026 revenue forecast to $505-$515 million

Third-quarter revenue rose 336% from a year earlier to $173.8 million, and IonQ raised its 2026 forecast to $505 million to $515 million. The company also expects revenue from quantum computing to grow 110% this year.

It was IonQ's sixth consecutive record quarter, and the starting point was small: Tickeron puts the year-earlier figure at $39.9 million. The new range replaces the $450 million to $460 million IonQ guided to in September. That adds about $55 million to its own outlook in one reporting cycle.

If you are pricing a quantum purchase or vetting IonQ as a supplier, the useful question is what that number is made of. Part of it comes from quantum hardware. Part comes from a chip foundry IonQ bought in July. The profit line tells a third story.

Ahead of analysts and its own September plan

Wall Street expected less. Investing.com, which compared the results with consensus, put the revenue estimate at $141.71 million and the full-year guidance consensus at $455.11 million, against IonQ's new midpoint of $510 million. COO and CFO Inder Singh called the outlook "an industry record of more than half a billion dollars."

CEO Niccolo de Masi called it "the strongest quarter in our company's history" and credited "the benefits of our vertically integrated quantum manufacturing capabilities through SkyWater." That second phrase deserves attention. The CEO himself links the record to the foundry, and that is where the closest scrutiny of the quarter falls.

TIKR's David Hanson framed the stakes for next year. Analysts had expected $455 million for 2026 going into the report, and he estimated that figure should rise about $55 million. Whether the 2027 consensus of $808 million also rises depends, in his view, on how much of the beat came from the foundry.

The market liked the results. Shares rose 3% in after-hours trading Thursday, according to Investing.com, and Tickeron put Friday's session gain at roughly 21.5% from a prior close of $26.43. Tickeron also credited broader momentum in quantum stocks after strong results from a peer, along with a rebound from Thursday's tech-led sell-off. So IonQ's own numbers explain only part of Friday's move.

Who is buying the Superion 256

CEO Niccolo de Masi described IonQ's systems as built for data centers and designed to work alongside classical computing. The biggest-name customer shows what that looks like in practice. NVIDIA will deploy a Superion 256 as the first on-premise quantum computer at its Accelerated Quantum Research Center, connected directly to its AI supercomputing infrastructure.

For data center operators, the NVIDIA installation is the reference case to study: a quantum system installed on site and wired into an existing AI supercomputer. That is the setup de Masi is selling. If it works at NVIDIA, it gives other operators with GPU-heavy facilities a template to evaluate.

Two other orders show what these deals cost. SDT signed a $33 million contract for a Superion 256 plus a quantum memory platform, and Florida International University signed a separate $25 million contract for its own Superion 256. Public prices for quantum hardware are rare. These two contracts give a budget owner an actual range to work from, though the SDT figure covers more than the computer alone.

The third figure in that grid is a different kind of number. It comes from DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, which is meant to assess progress toward useful quantum computing. Stage C is the program's final stage, and IonQ says it is the only trapped-ion company to reach it. The company also disclosed a separate $28 million contract through DARPA.

For buyers comparing hardware approaches, that matters. A government benchmarking program gives them a reference point that does not rest only on vendor claims, which suggests Stage C could weigh more in procurement conversations than any single commercial order.

A quantum company that also makes other people's chips

Start with IonQ's own business. Platform revenue rose 127% to $90.3 million, driven by global deployments of its Tempo quantum computers.

SkyWater Foundry Services contributed $83.5 million in revenue. IonQ said revenue from quantum customers other than itself grew more than 30%.

Timing makes that foundry figure bigger than it looks. IonQ bought SkyWater in July, so the $83.5 million covers only about two months under IonQ ownership. TIKR calculates that it accounts for more than half of the quarter's growth. Take the foundry out, though, and revenue still more than doubled.

The mix comes at a cost. Gross margin slipped to 21.9% from 24.9% in the prior quarter, according to TIKR. With the foundry now supplying close to half of revenue, IonQ's margins partly reflect a chipmaker's economics, which makes quarter-to-quarter comparisons harder to read.

The outside-customer growth points to something unusual. Other quantum hardware makers are buying fabrication from a direct competitor, and buying more of it each period.

Two profit numbers in one quarter

IonQ reported net income of $564 million, or $1.42 a share, for the quarter. The gain came from noncash changes in the value of the company's warrants. On an adjusted basis, IonQ lost $133.6 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or 29 cents a share.

Changes in warrant value can lift reported profit without bringing in any cash. That makes the adjusted figure the better guide to how the business is running. Even so, the adjusted loss per share came in two cents better than the analyst consensus of a 31-cent loss, according to Investing.com.

IonQ held $1.7 billion in cash on September 30, and $3.7 billion pro forma after a $2.0 billion equity offering that closed October 16.

That cash came with more shares. TIKR noted that the offering landed during a month in which the stock slid 32%, and that IonQ issued another $1.15 billion of stock to close its acquisition of security company Elisity on November 4. The Elisity deal widens IonQ's security business, which adds a third line of activity next to quantum systems and foundry work.

To Hanson, the real news is the 127% growth in IonQ's own business, and at Friday's price the stock trades at about 19 times forward sales, a multiple he calls fair. Ahead of the report it stood at 18x, the lowest in five years and well under its 125x average. The risk he points to is dilution: IonQ keeps issuing more shares to fund acquisitions and cover losses.

What happens before year-end

Hanson pointed to the next test: whether IonQ has the working 256-qubit system it is targeting in place by the end of the year.

The rest of the sector helps put that in scale. Quantinuum grew revenue 233% to $9.1 million and lifted its 2026 outlook to a range of $31 million to $34 million. On its own, IonQ's Platform segment produced nearly ten times Quantinuum's figure.

D-Wave's tie to IonQ is more direct. It pays IonQ's foundry to produce some of its chips, and this quarter the two companies extended their multi-year foundry agreement. In the second quarter, D-Wave posted revenue of $3.1 million, unchanged from a year earlier, while its first-half bookings rose to $35.5 million from $2.9 million. D-Wave reports on November 10. Those results should show whether the bookings are turning into sales, which could send more foundry work to IonQ.