IonQ rises after company releases two technical papers which claim to demonstrate 99.99% two-qubit gate performance
IonQ is up in early trading on Tuesday after the quantum computing company shared two technical papers that demonstrate 99.99% two-qubit gate performance.
According to IonQ’s press release this marks a new “quantum computing world record,” topping the previous world record of 99.97% set in 2024 by Oxford Ionics, which the company acquired earlier this year. Although 99.99% and 99.97% sound very similar, the former represents an error rate of 1 in 10,000 operations, the latter represents an error rate of 3 in 10,000 operations.
The company says it is the first and only quantum computing company to cross the “four-nines” benchmark, per the release, putting IonQ on track to scale up towards millions of qubits by 2030.
The “two-qubit gate fidelity,” or the error rate of quantum computers’ two-qubit operations, is an important yardstick to measure the performance of a quantum computer. When accuracy improves, the technology’s window for commercial operations widens — a welcome development in the nascent industry which has been fueled by increased US government interest, and speculative trading, as much as it has been by technical breakthroughs this year.
In CEO Niccolo de Masi’s words:
“This level of quantum performance has been the industry’s north star for decades and crossing it brings fault-tolerant quantum systems years closer to mass market adoption. For our global customers, it means unlocking more value from quantum computing sooner, while dramatically lowering the cost and complexity of large-scale systems.”
