IonQ agreed to acquire Elisity for $1.3B in stock, adding a network security platform to a company best known for quantum hardware.
The price includes $150M in performance incentives tied to business milestones, and the deal is expected to close by the end of the year.
Elisity’s software maps the devices on a corporate network automatically, cataloguing workstations, servers and specialized endpoints such as factory sensors. It then assembles a profile of each one, covering manufacturer and the users who reach it.
From those profiles the platform identifies security gaps, particularly devices that should not be talking to one another at all.
For IonQ the purchase extends a cybersecurity line it started building with the acquisition of a Swiss encryption hardware maker last year. That company built devices using quantum mechanical effects to protect data.
The combination is unusual. Quantum computing and identity-based network segmentation address different problems with different sales cycles, and buyers rarely shop for both at once.
IonQ’s flagship system is a 256-qubit machine launched last month, using ions suspended in a vacuum rather than the bulky laser arrays common in other designs.
