Parradee Kietsirikul
IonQ (NYSE:IONQ) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Oxford Ionics for $1.075 billion.
The deal is largely an all-stock transaction, with $1.065 billion in IonQ common stock and about $10 million in cash.
The IonQ common stock will be issued between 21,143,538 and 35,241,561 shares, corresponding to between 7.02% and 11.46% of the outstanding shares. The final number of shares will be calculated using the volume-weighted average price for IonQ shares for the 20 trading days preceding the third business day prior to the closing, with a price range of $50.37 to $30.22 per share.
The development is expected to accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, chemistry, aerospace, cybersecurity and defense.
IonQ’s acquisition of Oxford Ionics will merge IonQ’s quantum compute and networking capabilities with Oxford Ionics’ advanced ion-trap technology. Both companies will benefit from this synergy, leveraging IonQ’s global resources and customer base.
The combined company plans to develop systems with 256 physical qubits by 2026, achieving 99.99% accuracy, and over 10,000 qubits with 99.99999% accuracy by 2027. By 2030, they aim for 2 million qubits, targeting extremely high logical accuracies. The quantum computing market is projected to create up to $850 billion by 2040.
Oxford Ionics’ team, including founders Dr. Chris Ballance and Dr. Tom Harty, will continue with IonQ post-acquisition, focusing on quantum technology.
The merged company aims to grow its Oxford workforce and maintain customer relationships, collaborating with government initiatives in both the UK and US to advance quantum computing in various sectors like manufacturing and defense.
The transaction is expected to close in 2025.