If you had invested $10,000 in IonQ (IONQ -4.49%) stock three years ago (and held on for the ride), you'd have more than $120,000 now. That's a hefty profit in a relatively short amount of time.
But imagine if your investing time horizon was 20 years or more. Can investing $10,000 in IonQ make you a millionaire?
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Checking off the millionaire-maker boxes
Several stocks have been able to grow $10,000 into $1 million in the past. Those stocks typically shared some common denominators that apply to IonQ today.
Perhaps most importantly, millionaire-maker stocks are often early leaders in new markets with huge opportunities. This description fits IonQ to a T. The company is a pioneer in quantum computing. It has built an impressive customer base that includes AstraZeneca, General Dynamics, Hyundai, and T-Mobile.
Quantum computing definitely presents a massive growth market. McKinsey & Company projects a total addressable market of $87 billion by 2035. I think that could be just the tip of the iceberg.
Millionaire-maker stocks tend to have blazingly fast revenue growth early on. IonQ checks this box, too. Its revenue compound annual growth rate is a sky-high 175% since 2021, assuming the company hits its 2025 guidance.
Granted, IonQ is not yet profitable. However, many stocks with millionaire-maker potential aren't in their early stages. The good news, though, is that IonQ's overall financial position looks solid. The company has nearly $1.7 billion in cash and equivalents with zero debt.
Compelling advantages
Early leaders in hot new markets don't always emerge as the biggest winners over the long run. However, IonQ has several compelling advantages that could improve its chances significantly.
For one thing, its technology is arguably the best available right now. IBM (IBM -1.51%) is one of IonQ's most formidable rivals. Yet, IonQ offers 36 quadrillion times larger computational space than IBM's best quantum systems. Its technology holds exponential advantages over IBM in logical qubits (error-corrected quantum bits) supported and fault tolerance. IonQ's systems outperform IBM's hands down in multiple benchmarks with real-world applications.
IonQ's acquisition of Oxford Ionics also gives it a big leg up over competitors. This deal paves the way for IonQ to dramatically increase qubit density on chips. Squeezing as many qubits as possible onto a single chip is critical to building more powerful quantum computers.
Does IonQ have the vision necessary to dominate the quantum computing market? Again, the answer appears to be "yes." The company's roadmap targets the development of quantum systems that support 2 million physical qubits and 80,000 logical qubits, with error rates of less than one in a trillion logical operations, by 2030. I also like that IonQ is pioneering quantum networking, which connects multiple quantum devices.
Can $10,000 invested in IonQ grow to $1 million?
But can a $10,000 investment in IonQ really grow to $1 million? I think it's possible, but the odds against it happening over the next two decades or so are admittedly daunting.
IonQ's market cap currently stands at around $20 billion. To turn $10,000 into $1 million would require the company to be worth $2 trillion. Only five companies on the planet have market caps that large today.
However, I don't think it's completely out of the question that IonQ could be worth $2 trillion or more at some point in the future. The potential applications for quantum computing in artificial intelligence (AI), communication, cryptography, and simulation are mind-blowing.
If quantum computing fulfills its promise and IonQ leads the way, this could be a millionaire-maker stock. And even if it isn't, it just might make patient investors a lot of money over the long term.
