BofA pays 7 times sales for IonQ's quantum and 2 for the fab feeding its rivals
Bank of America's new Buy rating prices $2.5 billion of hoped-for 2030 quantum revenue at 7 times sales and the SkyWater foundry at 2. The fab now serves nine quantum companies, IonQ's rivals among them, and the Q3 report in November tests whether their work stays in the cheap bucket.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
The fab treats IonQ like any other customer
SkyWater, the foundry IonQ finished buying on 31 July for about $1.8 billion, now serves nine quantum customers, by CEO Thomas Sonderman's count, a list that includes Qolab 42. IonQ is one of them. So are PsiQuantum and QuamCore, companies racing IonQ toward fault-tolerant machines. "IonQ is treated as a customer of the foundry, just like anyone else," says Mihir Bhaskar, who runs SkyWater's quantum unit 2.
Its Minnesota fab, working with Stanford and MIT researchers, built the first monolithic 3D chip made in a US commercial foundry 3. On Monday, Bank of America told investors what that industrial base is worth inside a quantum stock: 2 times sales 4.
Seven times for hope, two for silicon
BofA's 28 September initiation, a Buy with a $60 target, puts 7 times estimated 2030 sales on $2.5 billion of quantum hardware and services, and 2 times on $1.2 billion of foundry revenue: a blend of about 5.4, on a path needing 69% compound annual growth from 2026 to 2030 45. A foundry dollar is worth less than a third of a quantum dollar in that model.
A quantum dollar is worth 3.5 foundry dollars in BofA's model
- 2030 revenue, BofA estimate
- Implied value at BofA's multiples
- Estimate
Data
| 2030 revenue, BofA estimate | Implied value at BofA's multiples | |
|---|---|---|
| Quantum (estimate) | $2.5B | $17.5B |
| Foundry (estimate) | $1.2B | $2.4B |
At $44.58, buyers pay roughly 37 times 2026 guided sales for the mix 6. The sellers are along for the ride: SkyWater holders took $15.00 cash plus 0.4883 IonQ shares each, about 24 million shares, roughly 6% dilution 1. And public summaries of the note do not say which bucket the quantum-foundry work sits in. That silence is the whole reclassification bet 4.
The cheap bucket is filling with scarce work
The revenue drifting into the 2-times bucket is the scarce kind. On 8 September IonQ launched SkyWater Quantum Solutions, a merchant foundry for superconducting and photonic quantum chips, opening with a development program at Qolab, co-founded by Nobel laureate John Martinis 7.
IBM has spun up its own pure-play quantum foundry, Anderon, and the Commerce Department handed it $1 billion of CHIPS money this month 2. Bhaskar calls SkyWater "already the operational quantum foundry today," shipping wafers for other companies' designs while rivals build toward it 2.
The foundry is most of the growth
SkyWater booked $442 million of revenue in 2025, nearly double IonQ's own trailing sales, and $317.1 million in the first half of 2026 18. At that pace the fab out-produces IonQ's best-ever quarter, $80.1 million 8, in under seven weeks. The 8 September guidance raise, to $450 million to $460 million from $280 million to $290 million, is mostly the foundry folding in 89.
IonQ's best quarter is half the foundry's pace
Data
| IonQ reported revenue | |
|---|---|
| Q1 '25 | $7.6M |
| Q2 '25 | $20.7M |
| Q3 '25 | $39.9M |
| Q4 '25 | $61.9M |
| Q1 '26 | $64.7M |
| Q2 '26 | $80.1M |
November decides the bucket
The honest case for 2 times: the Texas CMOS fab, bought from Infineon in mid-2025, is conventional contract manufacturing, and BofA itself flags delivery delays as a risk to the whole forecast 14. Mizuho cut its target to $52 after the 8 September investor day 4.
CFO Inder Singh says IonQ has "not had to go into the Texas fab to do quantum," and will not break out the foundry lines at "this level of granularity" 4. The Q3 report, due early November, carries about two months of SkyWater 4. One blended foundry number gives the market no reason to pay 7 times for any of it. A separate, faster-growing quantum-foundry line would say part of that 2 belongs at 7.
How this brief was made
01Gathered & sourced235 channels · 1,690 articles▾
Agents swept 235 channels and ingested 1,690 articles, then de-duplicated and ranked them for signal.
02Verified & cross-validated10 claims · 24 data feeds▾
Every one of 10 load-bearing claims was checked against primary sources, with 24 live data feeds reconciling the figures and charts.
- 1The Motley Fool via AOL, "IonQ Paid $1.8 Billion for a Chip Foundry. Here's What Investors Should Know.", 16 August 2026
- 2EE Times, "After IonQ Buyout, SkyWater Reiterates Role as Quantum Foundry", 24 September 2026
- 3Intelligent Living, "First U.S. Monolithic 3D AI Chip Breakthrough Breaks The Memory Wall with SkyWater Foundry", 4 May 2026, updated 25 September 2026
- 4Yahoo Finance (TIKR), "BofA Rated IonQ a Buy at $60 but Valued Its Foundry at 2 Times Sales. Here's Why That Split Matters", 29 September 2026
- 5TheStreet via Yahoo Finance, "Bank of America makes fresh 33% call on surging quantum stock", 28 September 2026
- 6AInvest, "IonQ's New $60 Bull Case Prices 2030, Not This Year", 28 September 2026
- 7SkyWater Technology via Business Wire (Morningstar), "SkyWater Launches Quantum Solutions Offering to Advance Quantum Technologies from Breakthrough to Industrial Scale", 8 September 2026
- 8The Motley Fool via MSN, "IonQ just raised its 2026 revenue outlook by about 60%. Most of the raise isn't quantum computing.", 8 September 2026
- 9IonQ via Business Wire (Morningstar), "IonQ Announces Increased Full-Year 2026 Financial Outlook Following SkyWater Acquisition", 8 September 2026
- 10Sharadar quarterly fundamentals, from IonQ's SEC filings, retrieved 30 September 2026
03Reviewed & edited1 human editor▾
One editor read the draft against the evidence, tuned the framing, and signed off before it shipped.
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