A fast-growing quantum computing company from College Park has set the date on which it will take its place on the New York Stock Exchange.
IonQ Inc. executives said Monday that, pending stockholder approval, the company will begin trading publicly on Friday through its proposed merger with Las Vegas special purpose acquisition company dMY Technology Group Inc. III.
The SPAC merger, which was first announced in March, still has yet to be voted for by IonQ’s stockholders. That's set for a meeting at noon on Tuesday. But executives for the quantum computing company said in a statement that 60% of those stockholders have submitted proxies for the vote that are overwhelmingly in favor of the deal.
Once the merger is approved, IonQ will conduct a final stockholder vote on Thursday to officially close the deal. It is then expected to receive more than $600 million in gross proceeds and will begin trading under the ticker "IONQ" when trading opens the following morning.
The company also reports it has obtained full private investment in public equity (PIPE) funding from investors like Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, Silver Lake, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, MSD Partners L.P., Hyundai Motor Company, Kia Corp. and others.
According to dMY Technology Group Inc. III’s August filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company has agreements with its PIPE investors to purchase 35 million shares of IonQ stock for $10 a share once the merger is completed, raising $350 million in capital that will account for part of the anticipated gross proceeds, with approximately $253.5 million coming from previously raised SPAC funding.
IonQ formed in 2015 in College Park from research conducted at both the University of Maryland and Duke University. The company produces computers that ionize the atoms of rare earth element ytterbium in order to create the quantum bits, or qubits, needed for quantum computing.
If a bit serves as the basic unit of computing power in traditional technology, represented as either a one or zero, then a qubit is the combination of both the one and the zero at the same time. By using quantum physics to entangle or superposition the one and the zero into the same value state, quantum computers can provide dramatically more computing power than modern-day computers, and IonQ executives think their technology can do so at a more stable, reliable capacity.
The potential application of quantum computing touches everything from scientific and pharmaceutical research to national security and cybersecurity concerns, leading to significant interest from the federal government.
Earlier this month, the company struck a deal with UMd. to open a first-of-its-kind quantum laboratory at the school, offering its technology to university researchers in a space it will jointly operate. It has also secured partnerships with prominent cloud service providers like Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) cloud subsidiary Amazon Web Services and Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google Cloud network.
According to an investor update filed by IonQ on Sept. 17, the company has increased its contract bookings for the year by 200% to an anticipated $15 million, which is expected to generate recognized revenue over the next 36 months.
