IonQ said this on 2024-07-22. The Ledger scores it on 2025-12-31, against criteria fixed on 2026-08-27.
Resolved Not verified
reach five 9's (99.999%) in logical two-qubit gate fidelity by the end of 2025
investor relations announcement, IonQ, 2024-07-22
Resolves VERIFIED if IonQ published, by 31 Dec 2025 (plus the 30-day grace period, i.e. by 30 Jan 2026), an independently reportable result of >=99.999% logical two-qubit gate fidelity using small-distance QEC codes, matching this specific figure -- not to be conflated with the same announcement's separate >99.9% NATIVE two-qubit gate fidelity target, a different and less stringent number. NOT_VERIFIED if no such result was published. PARTIALLY_VERIFIED if a result close to but short of five nines (e.g. four nines) was published and reported as the headline achievement instead.
Sources that will settle it: https://ionq.com/news, https://investors.ionq.com, https://thequantuminsider.com, arXiv preprints from IonQ's technical team, 2025.
Evidence gathered from the pre-registered resolver sources only. The tracked target, as stated in IonQ's July 2024 roadmap announcement, was 99.999% (“five nines”) LOGICAL two-qubit gate fidelity using small-distance quantum error-correcting codes, by the end of 2025.
Inside the window (31 Dec 2025 plus the 30-day grace, i.e. by 30 Jan 2026) IonQ did publish a two-qubit gate result: on 20–21 October 2025 it reported a gate error of 8.4(7)×10⁻⁵ — about 99.9916% fidelity — using Electronic Qubit Control without ground-state cooling, demonstrated on prototype systems in IonQ's R&D labs (arXiv:2510.17286; IonQ newsroom; The Quantum Insider, 21 Oct 2025). That is a PHYSICAL (native) gate fidelity. No error-correcting code is involved, and it is measured on prototype hardware rather than a deployed system. It is a real advance, it was reported as a world record on the physical axis, and it comfortably clears the same roadmap's separate >99.9% native target — but it is not the claim tracked here. No result at or above 99.999% logical two-qubit gate fidelity with small-distance QEC codes appears in any named resolver source inside the window.
On the PARTIALLY_VERIFIED branch, recorded so the reading is auditable rather than assumed: the criteria offer that branch for “a result close to but short of five nines (e.g. four nines) … reported as the headline achievement instead.” The desk reads it as scoped to LOGICAL fidelity, because the sentence immediately before it forbids conflating the native figure with the logical one. A four-nines PHYSICAL result is a different measurement, not a near miss on the same one, so the branch does not fire.
This is a statement about a dated claim and its deadline, not about the people who made it.
Evidence: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.17286, https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/10/21/ionq-achieves-99-99-two-qubit-gate-performance/, https://www.ionq.com/blog/accelerating-towards-fault-tolerance-unlocking-99-99-two-qubit-gate, https://investors.ionq.com/news/news-details/2025/IonQ-Achieves-Landmark-Result-Setting-New-World-Record-in-Quantum-Computing-Performance/default.aspx.
Open this claim in the Ledger, with every other claim and the scorecards. How the Ledger judges a claim.