'800-Pound Gorilla' Of Quantum Computing: IonQ CEO Touts Market Dominance, Highlights Key Edge Over Rivals

IonQ, Inc. (IONQ) is uniquely positioned as the only company doing both quantum computing and quantum networking, according to CEO Niccolo de Masi.

"We are in the safe-making and safe-breaking business…. code-making and code-breaking business," de Masi said in a fireside chat with Stocktwits. "Both of these  are a revolution that is on the way."

De Masi said quantum computing will eventually crack modern-day encryption, blockchain, and quantum networking and will help build secure communication protocols.

IonQ has a market cap of over $5 billion, employs about 550 people, and reported about $100 million in revenue in 2024.

Touting the company's product lineup, de Masi said it sells quantum computing systems worldwide and that its next-generation system will be about 240 million times more powerful than its predecessor. 

The quantum computing industry wasn't growing at the pace suggested by Moore's law, which envisages growth doubling every year or two, but was growing exponentially, he said.

De Masi said this will change many market dynamics and give IonQ a lot of pricing power.

"IonQ is ushering in the greatest change in the history of computing since the start," he said, adding that the world is effectively moving away from bits to a future model called qubits and from the CPUs and GPUs to quantum processing units (QPUs).

He sees QPUs growing the compute market dramatically and eventually helping to conserve energy and space. IonQ's quantum computers are small, the size of a couple of commercial refrigerators, and they plug into a wall socket, he added.

"I think that quantum computing's historic moment will be remembered for far longer," de Masi said.

The executive said the bipartisan issue is that the U.S. has to win in quantum computing and quantum networking, just as it did in the Internet at the time of its creation.

"I'm very bullish on the U.S. innovation model," he added.

De Masi conceded that IonQ has competition but said it is the only publicly traded company in the world that offers quantum computing and networking and has the largest market share in both categories.

"So I think of ourselves as the 800-pound gorilla of quantum [computing], and our goal is to remain that…. perpetually and scale the way that you've seen other computing companies scale during their eras, their decades of success," de Masi said.

The executive also noted that IonQ is the only company that has enterprise-grade machines publicly accessible on the cloud platforms of Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Since its initial public offering (IPO) four years ago, the company has booked $200 million in sales and sold systems to Air Force research labs, banks, and telecoms such as Singtel and SK Telecom. 

De Masi took over as CEO of IonQ in late February but has served on the company's board since 2021.

Watch the full interview here.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment toward IonQ stock improved, although still was 'neutral' (47/100) by late Thursday from the 'bearish' mood seen a day earlier. The message volume remained 'low.'

Earlier, a bullish watcher said he had bought IonQ stock before the CEO's interview.

IonQ ended Thursday's session down 7.19% at $23.25, taking its year-to-date loss to 41%. The reversal came after a 150% jump in 2024.

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