IonQ has leading technology

Quantum computing is still a nascent technology, and there are several hurdles that its developers must overcome to make it suitable for mainstream use. The biggest is its accuracy, or rather, its lack of it. Because qubits -- the fundamental units for storing and processing data in quantum computers -- are incredibly sensitive to outside interference, it's relatively common for their final states in any calculation to get flipped incorrectly. What should be a 1 becomes a 0, or vice versa, and the whole computational result can be compromised. Discerning what is an effect of interference and what is actual data can be tricky, making accurate quantum computing difficult to achieve. There are a handful of error reduction and error correction techniques that are being pursued, but some require specific computing architectures.

IonQ has taken a different path in the quantum computing industry than most: It is focused on building its systems around trapped-ion qubits, a format that sacrifices faster processing speeds for greater accuracy. This may be the decision that gets it to commercial relevance sooner than many of its peers, but it will be some time before we find out if that's the case. Even with IonQ's world-leading accuracy, its quantum computers are still not accurate enough for many commercial applications yet.

The consultants at McKinsey & Company estimate that quantum computing will be a $72 billion market opportunity by 2035. It's highly unlikely that IonQ will capture all -- or even most -- of that. But it wouldn't need to in order to turn a $1,000 investment now into a $10,000 position by 2035.

Right now, IonQ has a $19.3 billion market cap. So, to 10x, it must reach a $193 billion market cap. If we assume that the market will assign an earnings multiple of 30 to IonQ's stock, it would require $6.43 billion in net income to justify that valuation. If IonQ can operate with a 30% net income margin, that would require $21.4 billion in revenue.