IonQ is expanding its enterprise cybersecurity business by agreeing to buy zero-trust specialist Elisity in an all-stock deal worth up to $1.3 billion.

Elisity would bring identity-based microsegmentation and more than 100 global customer deployments, according to IonQ, giving the quantum company a broader foothold in enterprise networks.

The deal would combine IonQ’s post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum key distribution (QKD) capabilities with Elisity’s network access controls. The companies aim to protect sensitive communications while limiting the routes attackers can take through a compromised network.

The price includes up to $150 million in performance-based earn outs, and is expected to close by year-end. Elisity CEO James Winebrenner and the current leadership team would remain in place.

Quantum-safe security meets network access

Security teams must replace cryptography vulnerable to future quantum computers while protecting the systems they operate today.

“Our customers need to prioritize post-quantum cryptography initiatives while securing existing assets to keep essential operations running,” Winebrenner explained as part of the announcement.

Elisity’s IdentityGraph pulls together identity, asset, and risk information to inform access policies for users, devices, workloads, AI agents, and other nonhuman identities. Teams can simulate policies before enforcing them through the network, restricting each identity to the connections it needs.

This microsegmentation helps contain attacks: an intruder who compromises one system has fewer opportunities to reach others. Elisity’s software policy layer enforces access rules independently of the underlying network technology.

IonQ and Elisity plan to add cryptographic inventory and risk information to IdentityGraph, bringing cryptographic exposure alongside the identity and asset information used to manage network access.

The technologies tackle different security problems. PQC is designed to protect cryptographic operations against quantum-computer attacks, while QKD uses quantum signals to distribute encryption keys. Elisity’s controls govern which systems can communicate and help limit an attack’s spread.

The announcement did not specify release dates for integrated products.

Buying a route to enterprise customers

Elisity’s customer base would give IonQ additional channels for selling its security products into enterprise and government networks.

IonQ expects to cross-sell complementary products and develop combined offerings. Its existing security portfolio spans quantum-safe posture management, PQC, and QKD.

The company reported 40% year-over-year growth in multiproduct revenue in the second quarter of 2026. It did not disclose Elisity’s revenue or identify customers committed to adopting the proposed integrated capabilities.

IonQ recently reported more than 1,000 entanglement events per second across a photonic link between a trapped-ion qubit and a silicon-vacancy quantum memory. The hardware demonstration connected a computing qubit with a quantum memory, a building block for distributed quantum computing and IonQ’s planned networked quantum data centers.

“Classical data centers achieved massive scale by connecting specialized processors, memory, and networks,” IonQ CEO Niccolo de Masi explained as part of that demonstration. “Quantum systems will scale in much the same way.”