IonQ reports a record of 1,000 quantum connections per second, beating a record held by its own chief scientist's research group

IonQ reports more than 1,000 successful entanglement events per second between a trapped-ion qubit and a silicon-vacancy quantum memory, connected using light. That is more than four times the previous trapped-ion record set by Chris Monroe's research group at Duke University in 2024. Monroe is IonQ's Chief Scientist, and Duke helped with the new research paper, which is available as a preprint (arXiv 2610.10705). IonQ says it has made two commercial sales involving its quantum memory technology, one to Maryland in April and another to SDT in September. Neither sale has a disclosed price.

The speed of connections between quantum systems is a real obstacle to building larger machines. IonQ links this work to DARPA's HARQ program.

IonQ reports the connection speed but does not provide a fidelity figure showing how reliable those connections are. A fast connection is less useful if it produces too many errors. IonQ's claim that this is the fastest connection across any platform is its own. The commercial evidence remains two sales with no disclosed prices.

IonQ, Inc. (2026, October 9). IonQ demonstrates world-first quantum memory-enhanced interconnect for distributed quantum applications. IonQ Newsroom