en.Wedoany.com Reported - IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), a developer of trapped-ion quantum hardware, has received final regulatory approval to complete its acquisition of SkyWater Technology (NASDAQ: SKYT), the largest exclusive semiconductor foundry in the United States. The transaction, initially announced in January 2026 for $1.8 billion in a cash-and-stock deal, is scheduled to close on July 31, 2026. Upon completion, SkyWater will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary under its existing brand, maintaining its commercial pure-play foundry model while providing IonQ with an embedded dedicated manufacturing line. The combined entity will hold its Q2 2026 financial earnings call on August 5, 2026, followed by an Investor Day on September 8, 2026.

By acquiring a DMEA Category 1A Trusted Foundry, IonQ becomes the first vertically integrated, full-stack quantum platform company in the industry, with direct control over design, wafer fabrication, advanced packaging, and system integration under a single domestic infrastructure. Key operational advantages of the acquisition include: Accelerated technology roadmap—with SkyWater's facilities in Minnesota, Florida, and Texas, IonQ eliminates queue delays at commercial foundries and shortens wafer iteration times. This capability advances functional testing of IonQ's 200,000 physical-qubit QPU (supporting over 8,000 logical qubits) to 2028 and accelerates the development of its 2-million-qubit chip architecture. Synergistic cryogenic testing—SkyWater's Minnesota facility integrates cryogenic wafer testing directly on-site, eliminating the need to transport fragile wafers to third-party labs, thereby enabling faster hardware iteration cycles. Defense and sovereignty alignment—embedded access to a U.S. Trusted Foundry ensures a secure domestic supply chain, strengthening IonQ's positioning in U.S. Department of Defense programs, including the Microelectronics Commons network and the IonQ Federal initiative.

SkyWater will continue to serve its existing defense and commercial customer base in the aerospace, industrial, and microelectronics sectors. While SkyWater has historically provided foundry services to other quantum ecosystem participants, such as D-Wave, EeroQ, Silicon Quantum Computing, and PsiQuantum, IonQ intends to leverage this foundry model to distribute its proprietary quantum sensing and networking solutions through SkyWater's existing commercial channels.