Is IonQ Overvalued at 57x Sales? Evaluating Its M&A Strategy and Cash

IonQ IONQ is pursuing an aggressive, tightly focused M&A strategy to accelerate scaling, expand its total addressable market and vertically integrate critical parts of the quantum value chain.

The company’s 2025 acquisitions were aimed squarely at technical acceleration and platform expansion. The acquisition of Oxford Ionics brought Electronic Qubit Control (EQC) technology in-house, reinforcing IonQ’s semiconductor-based scaling strategy and supporting its roadmap toward larger qubit systems.

IonQ’s acquisition of Vector Atomic extended the company beyond computing into quantum sensing and precision timing. With deployed atomic clocks and inertial sensors and existing U.S. government program exposure, Vector Atomic expanded IonQ’s capabilities in positioning, navigation, timing and defense applications. This supported IonQ’s broader “full-stack quantum platform” approach across computing, networking, sensing and security.

The January 2026 agreement to acquire SkyWater Technology represents a structural shift toward vertical integration. Valued at $1.8 billion in cash and stock, the transaction is designed to embed trusted U.S.-based semiconductor fabrication directly into IonQ’s operating model. Management stated that closer foundry integration will materially compress development cycles—for example, reducing time from design completion to first samples on its 256-qubit chip from nine months to two months and enabling more parallel wafer runs. The deal is also likely to pull forward elements of IonQ’s roadmap, including its 200,000-qubit chip targeted for 2028.

Importantly, IonQ entered this expansion phase well capitalized, with $1.5 billion in cash as of Sept. 30, 2025 and an additional $2 billion equity raise completed in October 2025.

Peer Position

D-Wave Quantum QBTS remains focused on commercial deployment and tooling for its quantum annealing systems, distinct from gate-model competitors. In 2025, the company publicly launched its Advantage2 annealing system, claiming improvements in coherence, energy scale and qubit connectivity to tackle optimization and materials workloads. QBTS has also released developer tools, such as an open-source quantum AI toolkit, to integrate its hardware with machine-learning frameworks. It has bolstered its balance sheet with a $400 million equity offering to support R&D and customer expansion.

Rigetti Computing RGTI continues pushing its superconducting, full-stack quantum computing platform toward broader adoption. In 2025, Rigetti advanced its Cepheus-1 multi-chip systems with a median two-qubit gate fidelity of 99.5% and achieved general availability of its 36-qubit architecture while working toward larger systems. The company also reported commercial traction, including an $8.4 million order for a 108-qubit system from India’s C-DAC and a strategic collaboration with Quanta Computer to co-develop superconducting technologies. Despite technical delays and ongoing losses, these steps underscore Rigetti’s focus on scaling superconducting processors and expanding global deployments.

IONQ's Price Performance

Over the past six months, IONQ’s shares have dipped 22.2%, underperforming the industry’s 65.8% growth. The S&P 500 composite has grown 11% in the same period.

IONQ 6-Month Stock Performance

Expensive Valuation

IonQ currently trades at a forward 12-month Price-to-Sales (P/S) of 57.3X compared with the industry average of 4.9X.

IONQ Stock Estimate Trend

In the past 60 days, its loss per share estimate has narrowed by 6 cents for 2025.

IonQ stock currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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