Archer Materials completes $7M placement and launches strategic partnership with IonQ

Archer has received commitments for $7.0million via a two-tranche Placement, with strong support from new institutional investors, and will enter into a 3-year strategic partnership with global quantum leader IonQ, providing Archer access to the IonQ Quantum Cloud to develop quantum algorithms, applications and solutions.

This agreement accelerates Archer’s strategy to establish sovereign quantum computing capability in Australia. Funds will be used to support the implementation of Archer’s strategic agreement with IonQ, sovereign quantum computing initiatives and general working capital.

Archer Materials signs $1.5M cloud deal with major US quantum platform

Archer Materials has signed a three-year Quantum Compute Agreement with IonQ, the NYSE-listed quantum platform whose customer list already includes Airbus, Lockheed Martin, AstraZeneca and the US Air Force Research Lab.

The agreement gives Archer three years of access to IonQ’s Quantum Cloud and its Forte-class system, with the newer Tempo-class hardware to follow. Archer’s engineers get an IonQ specialist team alongside them, and Archer’s customers get compute hours to build applications.

Bringing quantum computing to Australia

The agreement with IonQ includes a joint commitment to assess deploying an IonQ quantum computer physically in Australia. This has the potential to transform Archer from a graphene qubit hardware developer into a potential sovereign quantum services operator.

 “The strong support we have received through this equity raising is a clear endorsement of Archer’s quantum strategy. This funding positions Archer to execute the strategic agreement with IonQ and advance the Company’s other projects to the next stage. This outcome reflects investors’ confidence in our technology and our team’s capability to advance our business and quantum technologies. With funding now secured, we can commence our plan to establish sovereign quantum computing capability in Australia.” says Dr Simon Ruffell, Chief Executive Officer of Archer.

Assessing the sovereign quantum computing opportunity

The Australian Government has a national quantum strategy, and CSIRO estimates a A$6 billion domestic market by 2045. Archer is the only ASX-listed pure quantum name, which gives it a natural position if a sovereign compute capability gets built onshore.

Archer and IonQ will jointly assess data centre suitability and engage customers across government, defence, banking and research sectors where data sovereignty rules prevent workloads moving offshore.

Archer’s quantum machine learning fraud detection gains a better platform

During the initial simulation and benchmarking phase of its CSIRO-supported QML fraud detection project, the team developed and tested a quantum neural network, using a public financial fraud dataset. Archer’s quantum machine learning (QML) model caught 118 of 148 frauds with one false positive in the June test. The software ran on IQM’s 20-qubit Garnet machine through AWS Braket, which was useful proof but limited hardware.

IonQ’s Forte and Tempo systems are commercial-grade quantum hardware with 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, a world record set in 2025. Moving the QML work onto that infrastructure gives Archer a materially better platform to pitch to Australian banks who care about precision fraud detection and cannot send transaction data offshore.

This could make the fraud prevention software side a commercially viable product as the QML model would no longer rely on rented cloud minutes.

Qubit demonstration continues to progress

Alongside this new software computing channel, Archer continues towards a working qubit demonstration in Q3 2026, with full-wafer graphene runs underway.