IonQ is on a buying spree. Earlier this month, the company agreed to acquire Elisity , a Zero Trust network security company, in an all-stock transaction valued at up to $1.3 billion, including up to $150 million in performance-based payments.

The deal arrives less than three months after IonQ closed its $1.8 billion purchase of SkyWater Technology and a month after IonQ completed the acquisition of Nexus Photonics , an integrated photonics developer.

Elisity is the clearest evidence yet that IonQ’s ambitions extend well beyond building quantum computers. Since early 2025, the company has assembled a portfolio of businesses spanning quantum processors, networking, sensing, satellite communications, chip fabrication, and now enterprise cybersecurity.

IonQ’s competitors are making different bets. IBM draws on decades of internal research and selectively adds capabilities. Quantinuum, which went public in June, continues to deepen its integrated hardware-and-software platform. D-Wave Quantum bought its way into gate-model computing.

Together, these strategies frame the industry’s central business question: what a quantum computing company must own outright and what it can source from partners and suppliers.

The stakes are high. McKinsey estimates that quantum computing companies generated $650 million to $750 million in revenue in 2024 and projects the segment will reach $28 billion to $72 billion by 2035.

What It Takes To Build A Quantum Business

Quantum companies are typically evaluated using compute-centric metrics such as qubit count, gate fidelity, and progress toward error-corrected logical qubits. While those measures remain relevant, commercially useful quantum systems depend on a much broader set of technologies. Control electronics, cryogenic or photonic subsystems, interconnects, fabrication processes, and software must mature in concert before fault-tolerant machines reach production.

Commercial reach is equally critical. Providers need developer tools, cloud access, and sales channels that put their systems into the hands of enterprises, researchers, and government agencies.

Each major quantum player has reached a different conclusion about which of these layers it must control, and those conclusions are now reflected in their deal activity.

IonQ Buys Its Way Across The Stack

No leading quantum computing company has pursued acquisitions as aggressively as IonQ. Its deals since early 2025 fall into four broad categories:

  • Scaling the computer: Oxford Ionics brought electronic qubit control to trapped-ion systems, and Lightsynq added photonic interconnects and quantum memory to link processors.
  • Networking and security: ID Quantique contributed quantum key distribution and random-number generation, and Qubitekk contributed quantum networking expertise.
  • Sensing and space: Vector Atomic expanded IonQ’s capabilities into quantum sensing and precision timing, while Capella Space and Skyloom extended them to satellites and optical communications.
  • Manufacturing: SkyWater gives IonQ access to the largest U.S.-based semiconductor foundry, and Nexus Photonics adds wafer-scale integration of lasers and optical components onto chips.

The manufacturing deals are the most revealing. Quantum systems depend on specialized components that are difficult and expensive to produce at scale, and owning fabrication, advanced packaging, and integrated photonics shortens the loop between system design and production.

IonQ CEO Niccolo de Masi describes the company’s goal as becoming a “merchant supplier and ecosystem enabler across the entire quantum industry.” To support that vision, IonQ plans to offer a dedicated quantum photonics foundry service at SkyWater.

Elisity is a different kind of acquisition. Its software limits how far attackers and ransomware can move within a corporate network, and its customers include hospitals and healthcare providers. It’s a market that exists today and does not depend on progress in quantum computing.

IonQ intends to pair Elisity with its quantum key distribution and post-quantum cryptography portfolio, and de Masi framed the deal around his view that “Q-Day is coming much faster than predicted.”

Its portfolio raises a fair question about what IonQ is becoming. Oxford Ionics and Lightsynq advance the computer itself. SkyWater and Nexus address manufacturing. Elisity adds recurring enterprise revenue in an established security market.

IonQ is building either an integrated quantum infrastructure provider or a diversified technology company, with businesses that vary widely in their ties to quantum computing.

Both models can succeed, but they entail very different integration burdens because semiconductor fabrication, satellite communications, and enterprise software each operate within distinct engineering cultures, customer relationships, and margin structures.

IBM Builds On What It Already Owns

IBM offers the sharpest contrast. The company has conducted quantum research for decades and already has deep expertise in semiconductors, materials science, packaging, and software. Its Qiskit developer ecosystem and cloud-delivered quantum systems give it a commercial footprint that younger companies are still building through deals.

Note: The author and his firm, NAND Research, have in the past provided IBM with advisory and other analyst services.

That starting position lets IBM buy narrowly. HRL Laboratories, IBM’s research lab acquired in August from Boeing and General Motors, brings silicon-spin qubit expertise, along with cryogenic electronics, packaging, and interconnect technologies.

Silicon-spin qubits are an alternative to the superconducting qubits at the center of IBM’s roadmap, so HRL gives the company a hedge against a second modality while strengthening its core hardware engineering.

IBM is also making a manufacturing move. In May, it unveiled Anderon , a 300mm pure-play quantum wafer foundry subsidiary in Albany, New York, backed by $1 billion from IBM and a matching $1 billion CHIPS Act award finalized in September. Anderon will fabricate wafers for other quantum hardware vendors, not just IBM.

IBM and IonQ both want a central role in quantum manufacturing. However, IBM is building that capacity from its balance sheet and intellectual property, while IonQ is buying it.

IBM also enjoys a financial advantage over its quantum competitors. Quantum is a program within a much larger enterprise technology business, so IBM can fund long-horizon research without relying on acquisitions to generate near-term revenue growth.

Quantinuum Doubles Down On Integration

Quantinuum was formed in 2021 through the merger of Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum Computing. Since then, it has grown primarily through internal development.

Its Helios trapped-ion system, launched commercially in late 2025, pairs hardware with a software stack that includes the TKET compiler, the Guppy programming language, and the Nexus cloud platform.

The company now has public-market capital backing for that strategy. Quantinuum priced its Nasdaq IPO in June at $60 per share, raising about $1.68 billion. Its offering documents also showed how early the market remains, with $17 million in revenue for the twelve months ended March 31, 2026. In its most recent earnings release, it reported $8 million in revenue, up 279% year over year.

Quantinuum’s challenge is turning its tight hardware-software integration into scalable systems and pay applications. Its approach also reminds us that acquisition volume is a poor proxy for ecosystem strength.

D-Wave Broadens Its Architectures

D-Wave completed its $550 million acquisition of Quantum Circuits in early 2026, adding superconducting gate-model technology and error-correction expertise to its established quantum annealing business. Quantum annealing has traditionally targeted optimization and sampling problems, whereas the gate model offers a path to universal, fault-tolerant computing.

The deal widens D-Wave’s addressable market and doubles its engineering agenda, as the company must now advance two architectures on separate roadmaps.

While IonQ is broadening its ownership across the supply chain, D-Wave is broadening the range of computing technologies it sells.

The Fight Over The Quantum Supply Chain

The semiconductor industry offers a useful parallel to what’s happening in the quantum computing market. Intel built its business on vertically integrated design and manufacturing, while NVIDIA focused on chip design and software and relied on external foundries. TSMC became the indispensable manufacturer serving competing chip designers. Quantum companies face the same choices, but with far less mature technology.

The SkyWater deal brings that choice into sharp relief. On October 13, one day after the Elisity announcement, D-Wave and SkyWater signed a multi-year agreement to continue process development and manufacturing of D-Wave’s superconducting processors at SkyWater’s Minnesota fab.

This makes D-Wave both an IonQ competitor and a customer of an IonQ-owned foundry, with contract terms designed to protect D-Wave’s intellectual property. The arrangement validates SkyWater’s role as a neutral supplier, at least for now. It also places the burden on IonQ to demonstrate that its foundry can serve rivals at arm’s length.

If customers lose confidence in that independence, IBM’s Anderon offers an alternative, and the industry ends up with two vertically integrated companies competing for the same pool of foundry customers.

Quantum computing is entering a phase in which competitive advantage depends as much on manufacturing, interconnects, software, and commercial reach as on processor performance. IonQ is assembling that ecosystem through acquisition. IBM is expanding an established research organization and seeding a foundry. Quantinuum is deepening its integrated platform with fresh IPO capital, and D-Wave is spreading its bets across two architectures.

Three developments are worth watching over the next 12 to 24 months:

  • Whether SkyWater and Anderon win business from competing quantum vendors will show whether the industry trusts rival-owned foundries.
  • Whether IonQ can integrate a portfolio that now spans fabs, satellites, and enterprise software without slowing its computing roadmap.
  • Whether organic quantum computing revenue, separate from acquired revenue, grows fast enough to support the valuations the sector now commands.

The industry has yet to settle on a structure, and vertically integrated suppliers will likely coexist with specialized processor designers, foundries, and software providers for years to come.

The quantum race now spans the entire supply chain, and companies that control scarce manufacturing and integration capacity will set the terms for others.