IonQ agreed to buy cybersecurity firm Elisity in an all-stock deal worth up to $1.3 billion.
The Maryland-based quantum computing company announced the acquisition on Monday. The deal is structured entirely in stock, with up to $150 million of that total tied to how well Elisity performs going forward. IonQ says it wants Elisity's tools to defend against attacks aided by AI, and eventually against attacks powered by quantum machines. Elisity's existing cybersecurity business becomes IonQ's in-house security arm.
Quantum computers are usually framed as a future threat to encryption, since a sufficiently powerful machine could one day crack the algorithms protecting most internet traffic. IonQ buying a security company lets it sell the defense alongside the eventual offense, positioning itself on both sides of a threat it's helping bring into existence. That's a convenient hedge for a company whose most disruptive hardware doesn't fully exist yet.
Pairing a quantum computing pitch with a cybersecurity acquisition is a solid way to sound forward-looking before the machines actually catch up to the marketing.