U.S. quantum computing firm IonQ has been buoyed by a $1.0 billion equity offering.

Investment firm Heights Capital Management has agreed to buy more than 14 million common stock shares and a further 3.8 million shares via “pre-funded warrants” at $55.49 per share.

Part of trading giant Susquehanna International Group, the US firm is buying the shares from J.P. Morgan, along with seven-year warrants to purchase 36,042,530 additional shares of IonQ’s common stock at an exercise price of $99.88 per share.

IonQ marks Heights Capital’s first quantum investment, though the investment firm has previously backed startups in high-growth sectors, holding positions in SMR developer Nano Nuclear Energy and hydrogen, and shares in fuel cell designers Plug Power.

It also holds several hundred thousand shares in Flutter Entertainment, the Irish-American sports betting firm.

Niccolo de Masi, IonQ’s president and CEO, said the cash injection will help support its growing quantum computing and networking strategy.

“With this transaction, IonQ will benefit from a balance sheet of approximately $1.68 billion of pro-forma cash as of March 31, 2025, underwriting our sustained growth and pioneering quantum commercialization worldwide,” he commented.

The US quantum computing developer is among the early quantum startups racing ahead in the nascent market.

It’s developing a quantum facility outside Seattle in Washington and placing a trapped-ion quantum system at a site in Basel, Switzerland.

The startup is one of 15 firms chosen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) working to develop a fault-tolerant quantum computer within the next decade.

Beyond quantum computers, IonQ is also working to apply the emerging technology to networking.

Its EPB Quantum Network is already commercially available and powers secure workloads for public and private sector researchers.

At the start of 2025, it acquired the quantum networking company Qubitekk and took a controlling stake in quantum-safe networking and sensing firm ID Quantique (IDQ) back in May.

IonQ’s equity raise comes off the back of IonQ’s recent $372.6 million raise, having sold 16 million shares as common stock through an “at-the-market” equity offering program (ATM Program) back in March.

It’s not all plain sailing, however, with the startup reporting a full-year net loss of $331.6 million in 2024, despite reporting a year-on-year revenue rise of 95 percent.