Company: IONQ
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0000950170-25-059289
Chunk: 38

Company: IonQ, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 38
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together with our compensation consultant) assists our compensation committee in the execution of its responsibilities by providing information on corporate and individual performance, market data, and management’s perspective and recommendations on compensation matters.

Except with respect to his own compensation, our President and Chief Executive Officer will make recommendations to our compensation committee regarding compensation matters, including the compensation of our executive officers. Our President and Chief Executive Officer also participates in meetings of our compensation committee, except with respect to his own compensation, which is decided by the independent members of our board of directors on the recommendation of our compensation committee.

Role of Compensation Consultant

Our compensation committee is authorized to retain the services of one or more executive compensation advisors from time to time, as it sees fit, in connection with performing its duties.

To assist us in executing our executive compensation strategy and guiding principles, assessing current executive total compensation levels against competitive market practices, developing a compensation peer group and advising on potential executive compensation decisions for 2024, our compensation committee engaged Meridian Compensation Partners LLC (“Meridian”), a national compensation consulting firm, during 2024. Our compensation committee provided Meridian with instructions regarding the goals of our executive compensation program and the parameters of the competitive review of executive officer compensation packages that it was to conduct. In particular, the compensation committee instructed Meridian to analyze whether the compensation packages of our executive officers were consistent with our compensation philosophy and competitive relative to market practice. The compensation committee further instructed Meridian to evaluate the following components to assist the compensation committee in establishing 2024 compensation: base salary; target and actual annual incentive compensation; target and actual total cash compensation (base salary and target incentive compensation); LTI compensation; target and actual total direct compensation (base salary, annual incentive compensation and annualized LTI grant value); and beneficial ownership of our common stock.

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Meridian provides no other services to us other than those related to executive and non-employee director compensation matters on behalf of the compensation committee. Our compensation committee has assessed the independence of Meridian, taking into account, among other things, the factors set forth in Exchange Act Rule 10C-1 and the NYSE listing standards, and has concluded that no conflict of interest exists with respect to the work that Meridian performed and performs, for our compensation committee. Use of Competitive Data To assess the competitiveness of our executive compensation program and to assist in setting compensation levels, Meridian analyzed market data for the compensation peer group approved by our compensation committee, as well as the best-available pay