US quantum computing and networking company IonQ has appointed Paul Dacier as its new chief legal officer, replacing Stacey Giamalis who is leaving to pursue other opportunities.
Dacier joins from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, where he was a partner in its corporate governance litigation and crisis law and strategy practice groups in Boston. At IonQ, he will be responsible for all legal matters.
College Park, Maryland-based IonQ makes quantum computing systems that are used by the likes of Amazon Web Services, Nvidia and Astrazeneca.
Niccolo de Masi, CEO of IonQ, said: “Paul has an incredible track record of counselling technology companies during periods of significant growth, both organically and through sizeable acquisitions.
“His robust legal experience and understanding of our industry will bolster IonQ’s efforts to accelerate our quantum computing, networking and applications business, driving value for our customers and shareholders. We are confident Paul’s addition to our team will support the execution of IonQ’s ecosystem strategy as we build on our recent momentum.”
Dacier arrives after a year-and-a-half at Quinn Emanuel, having previously been general counsel at agri business Indigo. Prior to that he spent more than 26 years as GC at IT services and consulting company EMC.
He said: “IonQ has proven itself as an industry leader, delivering tangible value for customers today while remaining at the forefront of innovation for the future. I look forward to working with IonQ’s talented team to build on the company’s impressive trajectory of growth in the quantum era.”
Giamalis, meanwhile, will remain on at IonQ in an advisory capacity for up to 90 days to ensure a smooth handover. Prior to joining IonQ, she was CLO at cloud-computing business PagerDuty and CLO of Google’s Apigee business.
De Masi added: “I would also like to express my sincere thanks to Stacey for her many contributions to IonQ throughout her tenure.”
In other recent US tech moves, earlier this month nuclear energy innovator NuScale Power hired Shahram Ghasemian as its first CLO, while in June, AI-powered customer experience platform Genesys lined up Allen Chiu as its next CLO, replacing Jim René who was retiring at the end of last month.
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