By Geoffrey Seiler
Publication Date: 2026-10-15 22:23:00
IonQ (IONQ +9.32%) CEO Niccolo de Masi has stated that he wants his company to become the Nvidia (NVDA -1.84%) of quantum computing. This means he wants IonQ not just to develop a fault-tolerant quantum computer but to control the entire quantum ecosystem.
While Nvidia is best known for its powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) that are the primary chips used to run artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, the company’s dominance stems from its ecosystem. Its CUDA software platform is where most original AI code was written and remains an important moat today. Meanwhile, the development of the company’s NVLink interconnect system, which enables multiple GPUs to operate as a single, massive unit, has further widened its moat.
Nvidia also hasn’t been afraid to make important acquisitions and incorporate acquired companies’ technology into its ecosystem. It did this with Mellanox and networking in 2020, which is one of its fastest-growing businesses today and helps provide the foundation for its complete end-to-end AI factories. Nvidia also smartly “acquired” Groq and its language processing units (LPUs) to boost its inference offering, while scooping up critical AI software layers through additions like SchedMD and Hugging Face.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
IonQ: An aggressive acquirer
IonQ has taken a page out of Nvidia’s playbook and been very aggressive in making acquisitions across the quantum ecosystem. One of its most important acquisitions was Oxford Ionics…
