IonQ has received a $28 million contract modification from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to accelerate production of its Evergreen-05 optical atomic clocks. The agreement, awarded under DARPA’s It’s About Time program, includes an unexercised $30 million option that could bring the total potential value of the award to $58 million.

The initial $28 million award covers manufacturing development and the delivery of 25 Evergreen-05 units to U.S. government customers. If DARPA exercises the additional $30 million option, IonQ will deliver 100 more units, bringing the total order to 125 atomic clocks. To support this ramp-up in manufacturing, the company plans to invest $15 million in dedicated production space, specialized equipment, testing capabilities, and support personnel.

Designed for mission-critical defense and security applications, the Evergreen-05 clock supports precision radar, secure communications, and geolocation capabilities across land, maritime, and airborne platforms. The shoe box-sized device measures five liters in volume, offering high-precision timing stability in a compact form factor. It delivers timing stability of 50 femtoseconds at one second and nanosecond holdover over 10 days, which projects to a timing error of less than one second over 30 million years. Compared to traditional active hydrogen masers, the Evergreen-05 provides superior phase noise performance and short-term stability at one seventy-fifth the volume.

The core technology behind the Evergreen-05 originated with Vector Atomic, a California-based startup funded by DARPA starting in 2019 under the Robust Optical Clock Network program. IonQ acquired Vector Atomic in October 2025 to strengthen its presence in quantum positioning, navigation, and timing solutions.

“We added Vector Atomic to the IonQ family because their clocks and sensors are the best in the world,” said IonQ Chairman and CEO Niccolo de Masi. “DARPA’s investment under the It’s About Time program confirms that we made the right choice.”

The project relies on a long-standing research partnership between DARPA and the development team behind the timekeeping system.

“DARPA has been a partner every step of the way. That initial support was critical to prove the core concepts of our clock,” said Marty Boyd, director of IonQ’s timekeeping division and co-founder of Vector Atomic. “We joined IonQ to accelerate and scale up delivery of our commercial products, and DARPA’s continued support gives us the opportunity to do that.”