Overview
- IonQ and Quantinuum claim the industry’s best two‑qubit gate fidelities, with IonQ reporting 99.99% and Quantinuum reporting 99.92%, measures that speak to raw hardware accuracy.
- The two trapped‑ion leaders use different hardware tactics: IonQ holds ions with lasers plus on‑chip microwave antennas while Quantinuum uses lasers only, and the firms say those choices affect speed and control.
- IonQ has expanded by buying companies in sensing, networking and satellite links and is pursuing the SkyWater chip foundry to make chips in‑house and reduce supplier reliance.
- Rigetti pursues superconducting qubits that can be fabricated in conventional semiconductor fabs but must operate near absolute zero and rely on microwave control and dilution refrigerators.
- Investors compare five public pure‑play firms—IonQ, Quantinuum, Rigetti, Infleqtion and D‑Wave—while the unresolved problems of qubit sensitivity and error correction remain the main barriers to commercial, fault‑tolerant quantum computers and will determine which strategies pay off.