Quantum computing company IonQ has agreed to acquire Elisity, an enterprise Zero Trust security firm, in an all-stock transaction valued at up to 1.3 billion dollars. The deal, announced Monday, includes up to 150 million dollars in earnout payments tied to the performance of the Elisity business after closing.
The combination is built around two problems security teams already face at once. Attackers are moving faster, increasingly with help from artificial intelligence, while organizations also need to prepare their encryption for a future in which capable quantum computers could break widely used cryptographic methods. IonQ brings post-quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution to the pairing. Elisity brings identity-based access control and microsegmentation for enterprise networks.
Elisity's platform centers on its IdentityGraph, which pulls together identity, asset and risk information to shape least-privilege access policy for users, devices, workloads and AI agents. Security teams can simulate a policy before enforcing it, then limit each identity to only the communications it actually needs. That approach is meant to shrink the attack surface and slow an intruder's movement inside a network after an initial compromise.
For IonQ, the attraction is also commercial scale. Elisity reports more than 100 global customer deployments, a customer base and revenue that have doubled year over year, and no churn among deployed customers, according to the companies. IonQ says the acquisition opens a microsegmentation market it puts at more than 10 billion dollars, growing at a double-digit annual rate, and gives its quantum security products a new channel into enterprise and government accounts.
The companies also plan to extend IdentityGraph with cryptographic inventory and risk data, so customers can see where vulnerable encryption is in use while they work through a multiyear migration to post-quantum methods. In other words, the pitch is not to wait for the quantum threat to arrive before acting: tighten access controls against today's attacks while mapping and replacing the cryptography that a future quantum machine might undermine.
Elisity will keep serving customers under its current leadership after the deal closes, including chief executive James Winebrenner. The number of IonQ shares issued will be set at closing from a 20-trading-day volume-weighted average price, subject to a floor and a ceiling specified in the agreement.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to customary conditions including regulatory approval. If it completes as planned, one of the best-known quantum computing names will also own a conventional, revenue-producing enterprise security business — a sign of how quickly the quantum security market is moving from research topic to boardroom budget line.