IonQ Stock Wins Analyst Backing Ahead of 2027 Superion Launch

IonQ Inc. (NYSE:IONQ) landed a bullish new backer on Monday with BofA Securities initiating coverage with a Buy rating and a $60 price target. The firm argued that IonQ’s semiconductor-based design gives it a credible path to quantum computing at scale.

IonQ’s stock has been volatile. Over the past 52 weeks, shares have traded between $25.89 and $84.64, currently about 44% below the high. The company’s shares were up 3.7% at $47.15 at the last check on Monday, per Benzinga Pro. BofA’s target implies about 27% upside from that level.

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Chips Replace Lasers

Analyst Vivek Arya’s team pegged IonQ as the largest public pure-play quantum company by revenue and its next-generation Superion 256 system is the core of the bull case. Customer deliveries are set to begin in the second quarter of 2027. 

Superion combines electronic qubit control from Oxford Ionics, which IonQ bought for about $1 billion in 2025, with SkyWater’s fabrication and packaging. 

Electrodes on chips send microwaves that control the ions, a job lasers used to handle. In BofA’s view, this swaps much of the optical complexity of trapped-ion systems for silicon-based electronics.

Superion is expected to have 256 physical qubits and 12 logical qubits and would be IonQ’s first fully error-corrected logical qubits in a commercial machine.

By 2030, IonQ’s roadmap targets more than 80,000 logical qubits. According to BofA, most rivals see a path to hundreds, or about 1,000 at most, over the same period.

SkyWater Speeds Things Up

IonQ closed its SkyWater acquisition, valued at about $1.8 billion, on July 31. Bringing wafer fabrication in-house could shrink the design-to-sample cycle for the 256-qubit chip from nine months to two, IonQ says. SkyWater still serves outside customers, which gives IonQ a separate foundry revenue stream.

BofA forecasts sales rising from $130 million in 2025 to $455 million this year and $3.7 billion in 2030. The forecast implies 69% compound annual growth from 2026 to 2030.

The $60 target applies a 7x multiple to projected 2030 quantum hardware and services revenue of $2.5 billion. Foundry revenue of $1.2 billion gets a 2x multiple.

Risks

The Buy rating comes with caveats. Quantinuum Inc. (NASDAQ:QNT), another trapped-ion company, has already delivered 48 fully error-corrected logical qubits on its Helios platform. IonQ has yet to show any on a commercial system.

BofA also pointed to integration risk after IonQ’s fast pace of acquisitions. The firm expects negative free cash flow through 2030 and warned of possible share dilution. After the SkyWater deal closed, IonQ had about $2 billion in pro forma cash.

However, near-term execution matters most, and BofA said engineering milestones through the rest of 2026 are likely to be “highly influential for the stock.”

IONQ Stock Price Activity: IonQ stock was up 3.65% to $47.14 at the time of publication on Monday, according to Benzinga Pro market data.

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