IONQ

IonQ is a quantum computing hardware and software company based in College Park, Maryland. They are developing a general-purpose trapped ion quantum computer and software to generate, optimize, and execute quantum circuits. History IonQ was co-founded by Christopher Monroe and Jungsang Kim, professors at the University of Maryland and Duke University, respectively, in 2015, with the help of Harry Weller and Andrew Schoen, partners at venture firm New Enterprise Associates. The company is an offshoot of the co-founders’ 25 years of academic research in quantum information science. Monroe's quantum computing research began as a Staff Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with Nobel-laureate physicist David Wineland where he led a team using trapped ions to produce the first controllable qubits and the first controllable quantum logic gate, culminating in a proposed architecture for a large-scale trapped ion computer. Kim and Monroe began collaborating formally as a result of larger research initiatives funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). They wrote a review paper for Science Magazine entitled Scaling the Ion Trap Quantum Processor, pairing Monroe's research in trapped ions with Kim’s focus on scalable quantum information processing and quantum communication hardware.