A significant investment by Norway's sovereign wealth fund in IonQ (IONQ.US), a global leader in quantum computing, may mark the beginning of a major wave of capital allocation to the sector by large active asset managers, according to Antoine Legault, a senior analyst at Wedbush Securities. The fund's management arm, Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), disclosed new long positions in several quantum computing companies during the fourth quarter of 2025, targeting IonQ, Rigetti (RGTI.US), and D-Wave Quantum (QBTS.US)—three leading US-listed quantum entities—with the largest exposure directed toward IonQ.

In a recent client research note, Legault stated, "Beyond substantially increasing its initial stake in IONQ, we also observed that Norges Bank added new investments in Rigetti and D-Wave Quantum during the quarter. This indicates the sovereign wealth fund anticipates robust future growth in the quantum sector, akin to the current AI boom, with multiple potential winners emerging. Furthermore, over the long term, multiple successful technological approaches within quantum computing are likely to develop—a view we share."

According to the latest holding report from the Norwegian government, the sovereign wealth fund manages assets totaling $2.2 trillion, maintaining its position as the world's largest fund of its kind, overseen by Norges Bank. Based on its recent 13-F filing, the bank held approximately $200 million in IonQ shares, $39 million in Rigetti shares, and $4 million in D-Wave Quantum shares as of the end of the fourth quarter.

Legault noted that while these positions remain modest relative to the respective market capitalizations of the quantum companies and the bank’s total assets under management, they represent a strategic bet by an influential, large-scale asset manager on the long-term growth potential of this cutting-edge technology. He emphasized the landmark significance of Norges Bank’s investment in the three leading US quantum computing companies, suggesting it could serve as a catalyst for other major active asset managers and Wall Street institutions to enter the field. To date, compiled data indicate that the sector has been predominantly driven by retail investors and passive ETF flows.

Legault added, "Overall, despite recent volatility in quantum computing stocks, we maintain a constructive long-term outlook on the technology and its addressable market. We reaffirm our 'Outperform' ratings on IONQ, RGTI, and QBTS."

The era of "quantum supremacy" is approaching as IonQ announces the achievement of 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, and IBM deploys a classical decoder for quantum error correction on commercial AMD FPGAs, achieving nanosecond-level real-time response. Industry experts predict that critical milestones such as industrial quantum advantage and quantum supremacy could be reached within three to five years. The proximity of these technological inflection points is transforming quantum computing from an academic topic into an urgent matter of national security. Practical quantum advantage is expected to emerge first within two to five years, likely in the form of narrow-scenario applications, hybrid computing models, and verifiable benefits.

Nicolò Demars, CEO of IonQ, recently stated that major breakthroughs and transformations in quantum computing are rapidly approaching, heralding the imminent arrival of the quantum supremacy era. As quantum hardware improves in qubit count and gate fidelity, the concept of quantum supremacy refers to a critical threshold where a quantum processor completes a well-defined computational task at a speed unattainable by classical supercomputers within a reasonable timeframe.

Quantum computing systems leverage principles of quantum mechanics, such as superposition and entanglement, to offer a new computational paradigm capable of vastly outperforming traditional binary computers in specific domains. According to a statement from Google on December 9, its Willow quantum chip demonstrated remarkable performance in benchmark tests, completing a standard calculation in under five minutes—a task that would take a conventional supercomputer 10 to 25 years.

Although still in its early stages, quantum computing is advancing rapidly, and Norges Bank has identified a significant investment opportunity. From a technological perspective, the field is transitioning from a high-noise, early error-correction validation phase. The focus has shifted from increasing physical qubit counts to reducing errors below the threshold for effective correction and stabilizing logical qubits for long-term operation.

A report from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) highlights that mainstream approaches are increasingly adopting fault-tolerant architectures, with key error-correction components demonstrated across leading qubit technologies. The most ambitious public roadmaps aim to deliver hundreds of logical qubits by the end of the decade, though significant progress risks remain.

The path to large-scale commercial application depends not on the sheer number of quantum chips but on the ability to run sufficiently deep circuits using error-corrected logical qubits with predictable success rates. This requires stable logical qubit counts, extremely low logical error rates, scalable error-correction measurement and control systems, and sustainably engineered solutions.

For instance, IBM’s public roadmap targets a fault-tolerant system by 2029—codenamed Starling—featuring approximately 200 logical qubits capable of executing around 100 million quantum gates. Such scalability is essential for generating reproducible commercial value across a broader range of problems.

IonQ’s operations are closely tied to controlled entanglement. Achieving large-scale commercial quantum applications requires not only the ability to entangle qubits but also high-fidelity, parallelizable, calibratable, and stable entanglement gates integrated into real-time error-correction cycles. Entanglement serves as the fuel, while error correction and control systems act as the engine and transmission.

IonQ employs trapped-ion technology, utilizing Mølmer–Sørensen (MS) gates to generate entanglement by coupling internal ion states with collective motion modes via pulsed operations. The company has conducted systematic benchmarking on its Forte system, demonstrating all-to-all connectivity across a 30-qubit chain and application-oriented metrics, including algorithmic qubit (AQ) benchmarks. These efforts reflect IonQ’s progress in engineering entanglement operations toward higher usability.

Broadly, the most significant advances in quantum physics over the past 12–18 months have shifted from increasing physical qubit counts to enabling practical error correction. Google’s recent publication in Nature is widely regarded as a key milestone: within the surface code framework, the system entered a "below-threshold" regime where increasing code size further reduces logical error rates. This physically validates the feasibility of fault-tolerant quantum computation, moving beyond theoretical promise.

In financial markets, Norges Bank’s exposure to the three leading US quantum computing companies represents a landmark development. Although quantum computing technology remains nascent, its rapid advancement has not gone unnoticed by the fund. The bank’s increased stake in IonQ, in particular, signals a strategic endorsement of long-term technological optionality within the risk budget of a major institutional investor.