IonQ is committing $15 million over five years to open the Tennessee Quantum Communications Research Center in Chattanooga, a partnership with EPB, the city's municipal fiber and power utility. The center will house what the two companies describe as the first commercial Quantum Memory unit installed inside a live, operating fiber optic network.
A Quantum Memory device stores and forwards quantum states long enough to synchronize communication between distant quantum systems without breaking the fragile entanglement they depend on. Researchers consider that capability a prerequisite for linking separate quantum computers into larger networks and, eventually, a broader quantum internet. IonQ Chairman and CEO Niccolo de Masi described the new lab as a step toward that longer-range architecture.
EPB will supply the live network as a testbed and lead commercialization of whatever the lab develops, while IonQ staffs the facility with its own scientists as part of the five-year, $15 million commitment. The arrangement mirrors the roles the two companies already play at the existing EPB Quantum Center, where EPB operates its EPB Quantum Network and hosts an IonQ Forte Enterprise system being prepared for commercial deployment.
IonQ and EPB project the new center will support roughly two dozen jobs, including research scientists and trainees, and generate an economic impact of two to three times the initial investment for the wider Tennessee Valley region, citing analysis from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's Center for Economic Research.
Tennessee officials, including Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly and Deputy Gov. and TNECD Commissioner Stuart McWhorter, also weighed in, framing the state's existing fiber infrastructure and the companies' prior EPB Quantum Center work as groundwork for a broader push into commercial quantum communications. Neither company set a public timeline for the lab's first Quantum Memory milestones or for when the technology might reach commercial customers.
