College Park quantum computing company IonQ is in talks to go public

College Park-based quantum computing company IonQ is in “advanced talks” to go public, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

The company could be taken public through a merger with DMY Technology Group Inc. III, that would create a combined worth $2 billion. DMY is what’s known as a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), which have gone mainstream among investors as a vehicle to take privately held companies to publicly traded status. The merger talks also include a private investment in public equity (PIPE), in which investors back the SPAC, Bloomberg reported.

IonQ emerged out of clustered activity around quantum computing between government, academics and companies that’s centered in the state around the University of Maryland College Park. The company was founded in 2015, and has raised $84 million. It launched a next-generation quantum computer as it opened a new data center space in October.

IonQ’s growth is a prominent local example of how new companies can play a role in taking quantum computing discoveries made in the lab and applying them to solve problems. The merger would also signal another wave of market interest in the technology, as it creates one of the first quantum computing firms to be publicly traded on a stock exchange, Bloomberg reported.

“There has been tremendous innovation and advancement in the field of quantum computing in recent years,” IonQ CEO Peter Chapman told Technical.ly in December. “Quantum is no longer relegated to academia and we are already seeing real-world applications only possible through quantum, such as advances in machine learning.”