IonQ rises after company releases two technical papers that 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” for a two-qubit system, topping the previous world record of 99.97% set last year by Oxford Ionics, which IonQ acquired earlier this year. Though 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 toward 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 July, peer Rigetti Computing announced that its two-qubit fidelity was 99.5%, catalyzing its largest one-day gain since January. The two companies both operate gate-based models, but with different approaches: Rigetti uses superconducting circuits, while IonQ, as its name implies, uses trapped ions.

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.”