Latest move by chipmaker Skywater positions it as a leader in quantum computing - Star Tribune

IonQ’s $1.8 billion acquisition of Skywater Technology will help the Bloomington semiconductor firm develop quantum uses. Skywater Technology’s latest move further cements its position as a U.S. leader in quantum, the next frontier in high-capacity computing. Quantum computing is changing the way information is calculated, making computer analysis faster. It is key to everything from artificial intelligence to cybersecurity to automotive and pharmaceutical research. Both companies and nations are racing to be the first to build out the technology. Firms have established that quantum computing can work, but engineering and technical challenges have blocked full-scale adoption. In the fall, Skywater Technology bought Fab 5 in Texas, making it the largest pure-play semiconductor chip foundry in the U.S. Now, IonQ announced earlier this week that it will acquire Skywater for $1.8 billion, which will help the Maryland company accelerate the development of its technology. The deal, which is expected to close later this year, will enable IonQ to secure its U.S.-based capability to design, package and fabricate quantum semiconductor chips through Skywater. Skywater’s technology-as-a-service model will enable IonQ to run tests and prototypes in parallel, accelerating its development and giving it a leg up on quantum competitors. Skywater will become an independent subsidiary of IonQ. “We believe this deal creates an unusually robust competitive moat vs. peers,” wrote Craig Ellis, an analyst with B. Riley Securities. ”IonQ gains both manufacturing control and partner revenue streams, with SkyWater’s 10-year quantum development heritage bringing institutional knowledge competitors cannot quickly acquire." A September 2025 study from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), the experts in advanced-computing technologies, predicted that quantum computing could reach commercial scale within five to 10 years. Studying 10 quantum computing companies, the NERSC estimated “an exponential increase in quantum-computer performance over the next decade.” Quantum computing represents the next stage in high-performance computing. It’s not necessarily a race for computation speed or power. Instead, quantum computing has the promise to make algorithms work better, reduce computational steps and more efficiently solve the most complex problems. Classic computing is based on a series of ones and zeros, or bits. Quantum computing uses something called qubits and a lot of quantum physics. The best way to imagine quantum is to think of a sphere with an arrow inside. The arrow pointing straight up is 1 and straight down is 0, but there is a whole continuum of positions within the sphere. That’s quantum, said Vlad Pribiag, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s School of Physics and Astronomy who is an expert in quantum computing and superconducting. “You can be anywhere on the sphere,” Pribiag said. “So every point has a meaning in the computation, and all points can be useful.” Pribiag said quantum is the future, but “it’s certainly not at that point of just tweaking a few things. It’s very much research plus development, but it is definitely a fundamentally new way of thinking about computation.” Many view keeping the development and manufacturing of quantum technology within the U.S. as a matter of national security. “Great countries are great manufacturers,” Skywater CEO Thomas Sonderman said in an interview. “We have to manufacture these technologies in the U.S.” IonQ and Skywater are contrasting companies. IonQ is an early-stage technology company with about $100 million in annual revenue. It’s still a long way from profitability, but it has a market capitalization of $16.1 billion. Skywater has a longer history and four times the annual revenue of IonQ. It has a market capitalization of $1.6 billion and was on a path to profitability before the sale. It has also attracted about $300 million in investments from the U.S. government at Skywater’s fabrication plants in Minnesota and Florida. Acquisitions by Skywater have helped build the company, including 10 in 2025 alone. “The investment the U.S. government has made at Skywater over the last seven years really is the backdrop of why we became the right choice to be the manufacturer of choice for this domestic, secure manufacturing capability that IonQ and also many others will leverage,” Sonderman said. Skywater became an independent company in 2017 and in 2021 completed an initial public offering that raised $112 million. But its Bloomington-based production facility has its roots in the Control Data era, when Minnesota was at the forefront of supercomputer development. “It’d be interesting to see if having this kind of formalized industrial presence on quantum in Minnesota will also translate into other research and development opportunities for the university or for other entities in the area,” Pribiag said. Business reporter Patrick Kennedy covers executive compensation and public companies. He has reported on the Minnesota business community for more than 25 years. The funding, temporarily preserved by a judge’s order, supported nurses and others providing rural health access as well as efforts to prepare for public health emergencies. Exports to Canada from Minnesota continue to fall. The U.S. House in a rare rebuke this week voted to end the tariffs. The Minnetonka-based agriculture giant is shuttering a ground-meat processing facility in Milwaukee to “better align” its portfolio. The funding, temporarily preserved by a judge’s order, supported nurses and others providing rural health access as well as efforts to prepare for public health emergencies.