Jülich and eleQtron Inaugurate JION Trapped-Ion Quantum Computer

Sept. 3, 2026 — Forschungszentrum Jülich and Siegen-based start-up eleQtron have officially inaugurated the quantum computer JION. Developed in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), JION will be made available to research institutions and industry through the JUNIQ user infrastructure, enabling hybrid computations with Jülich’s supercomputers. NRW Minister-President Hendrik Wüst and NRW Science Minister Ina Brandes hailed JION as a technological milestone.

Inside the computer: Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Lippert, Director of JSC, and Prof. Dr. Kristel Michielsen, Director of JSC, Dr. Michael Johanning, CTO of eleQtron, Prof. Dr. Astrid Lambrecht, Chair of the Executive Board of Forschungszentrum Jülich, Minister Ina Brandes, Minister President Hendrik Wüst, Jan Leisse, CEO of eleQtron, are standing in the room with the JION ion-trap quantum computer. Credit: Forschungszentrum Jülich / Kurt Steinhausen.

The inauguration ceremony at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) of Forschungszentrum Jülich focused on a shared political, scientific, and technological breakthrough. Minister-President Wüst and Minister Brandes emphasized the importance of JION for North Rhine-Westphalia as a research and industrial hub. The ceremony served to underline the close collaboration between politics, research, and industry. As a symbolic part of the ceremony, a computing operation was performed publicly on JION for the first time.