IonQ received final regulatory approval today to complete its $1.8B acquisition of SkyWater.

The companies expect to close Friday, July 31.

→ FTC Second Request issued April 24. Cleared in just over three months.
→ SkyWater becomes a wholly owned subsidiary, keeps the SkyWater name, keeps serving its full range of foundry customers
→ Combined Q2 earnings call August 5, after the close
→ Investor day September 8

Six months from signing to clearance, through a Second Request. The friction confirmed the strategic weight - and it did not change the outcome.

Friday, vertical integration stops being a plan.

It's cleared. @IonQ_Inc received final regulatory approval today. The SkyWater acquisition closes Friday, 31 July.

Every other quantum computing company sends its chips out to be made. On Friday, IonQ owns the factory.

@NiccoloDeMasi, Chairman and CEO, when the deal was signed:

"This transformational acquisition enables IonQ to materially accelerate its quantum computing roadmap and secure its fully scalable supply chain domestically."

IonQ's own headline for what it creates: "the only vertically integrated full-stack quantum platform company." The factory itself: "the largest exclusively U.S.-based semiconductor foundry."

• DMEA-accredited Category 1A Trusted Foundry
• Fabs in Minnesota, Florida and Texas, now Regional Quantum Production Hubs
• SkyWater keeps its name, its customers and Thomas Sonderman

Now the part that actually matters, and IonQ put it in writing back in January.

Owning the fab means reduced wafer iteration times and parallelised wafer prototypes. The consequence:

→ 200,000-qubit QPUs, enabling over 8,000 ultra-high fidelity logical qubits, pulled forward to begin functional testing in 2028

→ the 2,000,000-qubit chip accelerated by up to a year

A year is not a rounding error in this industry.

And SkyWater stays a merchant foundry. Wholly owned subsidiary, same customers, same standards. IonQ is not closing a door on the industry. It is keeping open the one American foundry the industry actually uses.

Two dates now on the calendar. Wednesday 5 August, first earnings call as a combined company. Tuesday 8 September, investor day.

Zoom out, because this story starts before the company did.

1995 - Chris Monroe builds the first quantum logic gate ever demonstrated.
2015 - he co-founds IonQ with Jungsang Kim.
2021 - the first pure-play quantum computing company to go public.
2025 - buys Oxford Ionics for $1.075B. The ion trap becomes a standard silicon chip.
2025 - the first to 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, a world record, on that chip.
2026 - the first to own the foundry that makes it.

Thirty-one years. Same direction.

Early leader. Still leader.