IonQ jumps over 10% after NVIDIA research center deal and quantum breakthrough

IONQ shares jumped about 11% before the bell on September 23, to $45.29, after two announcements landed together: a real-time quantum error-correction decoder result, and word that IonQ's Superion 256 system will be the first on-premise quantum computer installed at NVIDIA's Accelerated Quantum Research Center. Investing.com put the premarket gain as high as 11.8% and attributed it mainly to the decoder news.

The NVIDIA piece is a deployment, not a new joint lab. The system is slated for installation at NVDA's own research center in 2027, connected through NVIDIA's NVQLink interconnect with workloads orchestrated through CUDA-Q, for hybrid software development and large-scale system prototyping. The decoder handles error correction in real time on conventional CPUs at up to 408 logical qubits and 31.5 million quantum operations. Those results come from simulated circuits rather than a hardware demonstration, which is worth keeping in mind when reading the "breakthrough" framing.

The move spilled across the group. 24/7 Wall St. had QBTS up 5% and RGTI up 4%, while TipRanks, at a different point in the premarket, reported IonQ up about 14% and both peers near 6%. TipRanks also cited a Strong Buy consensus on IonQ with an average price target of $71; that figure predates today's news rather than reacting to it. The rally coincides with Quantum World Congress 2026, which runs September 23 to 25 in Maryland.

IonQ has also been building out a South Korea presence. Per TipRanks and GuruFocus coverage, it signed a multi-year agreement with SDT Inc. to supply a Superion 256 system and a quantum memory module, with SDT building a manufacturing and system-integration facility in Gumi.

What to watch: whether the NVIDIA installation holds its 2027 schedule, whether IonQ shows the decoder running on hardware, and whether the sector's gains hold once the conference headlines pass. Quantum stocks tend to trade together on news flow, so a pullback could be as sector-wide as the rally.