DURHAM – IonQ, the quantum computing startup with ties to Duke University, is now publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange following the business combination with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) last week.
The company, founded in 2015 by by Chris Monroe and Jungsang Kim, announced the merger plans in March.
IonQ combined with dMY Technology Group, Inc. II after the SPAC’s stockholders granted final approval on the deal, with 97% approving, according to a statement issued last week.
“IonQ is bringing quantum computing to its Fortune 500 clients, and we believe will positively impact many key areas of valuable applied science in the coming decade,” said Niccolo de Masi, CEO of dMY III said in the statement. “It has been a privilege to get to know the team at IonQ and we are proud to support this next leg of their journey as a public company, where they will be capitalized to continue leading the industry they have pioneered for over two decades.”
As a part of the deal, which closed at the end of the day on September 30, 2021, Harry You and Niccolo de Masi joined the board of directors for IonQ, the company stated.
The company will now trade its stock on the New York Stock Exchange, under ticker symbol IONQ. The company became the first publicly traded pure-play quantum computing company, according to the New York Stock Exchange.
Peter Chapman, IonQ’s president and CEO, rang The Opening Bell® on Friday, October 1.
The company operates with a licensing agreement with Duke University that translates the research into IonQ technology.
Monroe now heads the recently established Duke Quantum Center, based in downtown Durham in 20,000-square-foot facility. Both Monroe and Kim are members of the Duke University faculty. Monroe also testified in front of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in May, speaking about quantum computing.
The company also received $2 million in seed funding from New Enterprise Associates, and a license to technology developed at the University of Maryland at College Park, where Monroe conducted research prior to joining Duke University.
According to the company’s website, it raised an additional $20 million from GV, Amazon Web Services, and NEA, and built two of the world’s most accurate quantum computers. The company then raised an additional $55 million in a round led by Samsung and Mubadala and announced partnerships with Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.
Duke professors’ quantum computing startup going public in $2B offering
The company anticipates developing modular quantum computers that can be networked by 2023, it said in March.
This week, the company also announced that its researchers have had a paper published in the journal Nature that indicates the results of quantum computers can be trusted, even when they are built from pieces that sometimes fail.
Quantum computer pieces can be assembled for reliable results, Duke and Maryland researchers find
