Insider Brief
- According to TQI’s Intelligence Platform, IonQ is a maker of trapped ion quantum computers. IonQ’s current generation quantum computer, IonQ Forte, is the latest in a line of its systems, which includes IonQ Aria.
- IonQ reported revenue of $2.6 million, compared to $93 thousand in the prior year period and above the high end of IonQ’s previously provided range.
- Net loss was $1.7 million and adjusted EBITDA loss was $11.6 million.
- IonQ listed an impressive line up of domain experts exploring IonQ for their quantum use cases, including Airbus, Dow and GE Research.
PRESS RELEASE — IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), a leader in quantum computing, today announced financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2022.
“We are thrilled to share the progress we made in the second quarter,” said Peter Chapman, President and CEO of IonQ. “I am excited to announce that we are bringing to the cloud a computer that is over 130,000 times more computationally powerful than our previous cloud offering, as defined by the useful computational space. IonQ Aria has achieved a record-breaking 23 algorithmic qubits, representing an 8x increase in Aria’s power and further cementing its lead as the most powerful known quantum computer in the world.”
“Tomorrow, Aria will become available to all users of Microsoft Azure Quantum,” said Chapman. “This launch furthers our commitment to making our industry-leading hardware publicly accessible to current and future generations of quantum programmers. Meanwhile, our customer base–including new customers Airbus and Dow–is leveraging this superior performance to build quantum applications that deliver real business value. The future continues to be ever brighter for quantum computing.”
Second Quarter 2022 Financial Highlights
- IonQ recognized revenue of $2.6 million for the second quarter, compared to $93 thousand in the prior year period and above the high end of IonQ’s previously provided range.
- Cash, cash equivalents and investments were $571.3 million as of June 30, 2022.
- Net loss was $1.7 million and adjusted EBITDA loss was $11.6 million.* Excluded from adjusted EBITDA is a non-cash gain of $16.1 million related to the change in the fair value of IonQ’s warrant liabilities.
*Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure defined under “Non-GAAP Financial Measures,” and is reconciled to net loss, its closest comparable GAAP measure, at the end of this release.
Commercial Highlights
- IonQ announced a paid contract with Airbus, who is using Aria to explore optimization problems that are core to their aerospace business, such as how to efficiently load cargo on aircraft. IonQ expects that the quantum algorithm it is developing with Airbus will account for a number of critical aviation variables that make this problem particularly difficult for classical algorithms to solve.
- IonQ announced a paid contract with Dow, a global leader in chemistry and material science, who is using Aria to explore the boundaries of quantum computing in materials discovery research. They join other customers who are partnering with IonQ to explore the intersection of quantum machine learning, material science, and chemistry.
- IonQ announced the results of a partnership with GE Research to develop a quantum algorithm that manages financial risk exposure. The work used a large data set to generate risk models across up to four variables and is broadly applicable to industries which have risk-management needs, such as finance, insurance, and supply chain management.
- Aria, which IonQ believes to be the most powerful commercial quantum computer in the world with 23 algorithmic qubits, which will be available tomorrow to all users of Microsoft Azure Quantum. This announcement furthers IonQ’s commitment to making its industry-leading hardware publicly accessible to current and future generations of quantum programmers.
- IonQ signed a formal agreement to collaborate with the University of Maryland on a project for the National Science Foundation. For this, IonQ will build and host a quantum router as a part of a new quantum network–the Mid-Atlantic Region Quantum Internet—spanning UMD’s campus and surrounding area. The work is not only important for quantum communications, but also continues IonQ’s work towards connecting multiple quantum computers together to form even more powerful systems.
- IonQ finalized a subcontract with Zapata Computing to collaborate on a multi-million dollar DARPA project.
Technical Highlights
- Aria has increased its computational power by approximately 8x, now reaching #AQ 23, up from #AQ 20. Aria will become IonQ’s newest cloud offering, representing more than a 130,000x increase in computational power from the existing offering.
- IonQ announced an 8x increase in the computational power of IonQ Harmony, which has achieved up to #AQ 9, up from a previous benchmark of #AQ 6. Harmony systems are available to customers via all three major cloud partners, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud.
- IonQ is investing in cutting-edge research on natural language processing, or NLP. IonQ created quantum NLP algorithms to represent linguistic qualities like ambiguity, vagueness, and novelty which are notoriously difficult to represent in classical compute. No previously published work has demonstrated ambiguity resolution or language generation working on live quantum hardware. IonQ believes quantum techniques of this nature can dramatically improve NLP performance.
Company Highlights
- IonQ has identified a facility in Seattle, Washington to host its first assembly lines for manufacturing quantum computers.
- IonQ announced the hire of Dave Mehuys as Vice President of Product Engineering to support its production plans. Dr. Mehuys comes to IonQ after serving as Vice President of Systems Engineering at PsiQuantum and brings with him a deep understanding of quantum hardware.
- IonQ announced the creation of IonQ GmbH and IonQ Israel Ltd in support of growing regional investments in quantum computing.
- IonQ welcomed Kathy Chou to the IonQ Board of Directors in July 2022. Ms. Chou is currently the Senior Vice President of SaaS Engineering at Nutanix, and brings a wealth of experience in go-to-market strategy and developing and deploying SaaS applications.
2022 Financial Outlook
- For the third quarter of 2022, IonQ is expecting revenue of between $2.6 and $2.9 million.
- For the full year 2022, IonQ has reiterated the previously stated revenue outlook range of $10.2 million to $10.7 million.
- IonQ notes that more than $24 billion was invested in quantum computing worldwide between 2016 and 2021. The United States government investment in quantum information science R&D nearly doubled from 2019 to 2022, going from a reported $449 million to a requested $877 million.
- IonQ achieved bookings of $0.6 million for the second quarter, compared to $57 thousand in the prior year period. As IonQ has noted on prior calls, management continues to expect bookings to be lumpy for quite some time. This means that while IonQ has confidence in its overall economic performance, it can sometimes be hard to accurately predict exactly in which quarter deals will close. IonQ believes providing bookings outlooks on an annual basis rather than on a quarterly basis will better capture its business outlook, and intends to provide only annual outlooks moving forward.
- IonQ is maintaining its previously stated bookings range of $23 million to $27 million for full year 2022.
- IonQ believes it will achieve its bookings forecast, but also feels it is prudent to acknowledge the risk associated with the present market conditions, which is leading to contracting delays across the technology sector. IonQ has identified $12 million of late-stage opportunity in its bookings forecast that is likely to close, but precise timing is unclear, which may lead us to miss some or all of this value in 2022. Management nevertheless remains confident that these customers will contract with IonQ.
- IonQ notes that the $571.3 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments enables the company to make investments in R&D and manufacturing to continue delivering market leading systems.
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