Amazon Prime Boss Named CEO of IonQ

(Fortune.com) Peter Chapman, formerly engineering director at Amazon, has been named the chief executive of IonQ, a College Park, Md.-based quantum computing startup backed by GV, the venture capital arm of Alphabet, parent of Google. The quantum computing technology developed by IonQ, called the “ion trap” approach, uses charged atoms suspended in a vacuum chamber as the particles on which to run computations.
There are about half a dozen other technological approaches to quantum computing vying for preeminence these days. The ion trap method differs from the most popular approach—the silicon chip-based “superconducting qubit”—preferred by the likes of IBM, Google, Intel, and other tech giants. Honeywell, the industrial conglomerate, is one of the few companies pursuing the ion trap approach along with IonQ.
Chapman had worked at Amazon as an engineering director since 2014. He headed a 260-person technology team that handled “delivery experience” for Amazon Prime, the company’s super-popular subscription business.