11/13/2025

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Hello, and welcome to the Blaze Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand has been raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11. is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Veronese Palzynski, Investor Relations.

speaker
Veronese Palzynski
Investor Relations

Before we begin the prepared remarks, we would like to remind you that earlier today, Blaze issued a press release announcing its third quarter 2025 results. Earnings materials are available on the Investor Relations section of Blaze's website. Today's earnings call and press release reflect management's views as of today only. and will include statements related to our competitive position, anticipated industry trends, our business and strategic priorities, our financial outlook, and our revenue guidance for the fourth quarter of 2025 and full year 2025, all of which constitute forward-looking statements under the federal securities laws. Actual results may differ materially from those contained in or implied by these forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with our business. For a discussion of material risks and other important factors that could impact our actual results, please refer to the company's SEC filings and today's press release, both of which can be found on our Investor Relations website. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today and, other than as may be required by law, we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. Information discussed on this call concerning Blaze's industry, competitive position, and the markets in which it operates is based on information from independent industry and research organizations, other third-party sources, and management estimates. These estimates are derived from publicly available information released by independent industry analysts and other third-party sources, as well as data from Blaze's internal research. These estimates are based on reasonable assumptions and computations made upon reviewing such data and Blaze's experience in and knowledge of such industry and markets. By definition, assumptions are subject to uncertainty and risk, which could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the estimates. During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered as a supplement to, and not a substitute for, measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. For a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures discussed during this call to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to today's press release.

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Q3 was a breakout quarter for Blaze, defined by strong execution, commercial traction, and expanded global visibility. We delivered a solid quarter with revenue of $11.9 million, up 499% from Q2. We further expect the Q4 revenue to double from here. To support this acceleration following the close of Q3, we secured a $30 million investment from Polar Asset Management Partners to scale commercialization and the next generation chip development as we scale into 2026. Together, these results mark a step forward from validation to scale, demonstrating growing customer adoption and investor confidence in Blaze's strategy and solutions. We strengthened our ecosystem through two new key partnerships. First, we announced a collaboration with Technology Control Company, or TCC, Second, we formalized a partnership with Reach Digital, the digital transformation arm of Reach Group, a subsidiary of international holding company or IHC, one of the largest investment holding with market capitalization of $240 billion. Blaze's presence on the global stage continues to expand. We participated in the world's most influential innovation forums, the Milken Institute Asia Summit 2025, the JITEX Global 2025 in the Middle East, and the Web Summit 2025 in Europe, each reinforcing Blaze's growing role in shaping the future of efficient and deployable AI. Together, these achievements reflect a company executing with discipline and scale and demonstrate validation of the Blaze hybrid AI platform through active deployments across key industries and geographies. They also validate the next chapter in AI's evolution, a new paradigm we call practical AI. This marks a turning point for the industry, from large models to practical outcomes, and from dependence on the cloud to sovereign AI infrastructure that organizations can now own and control. We call this next phase practical AI, AI that is useful, deployable, and sustainable at scale. First, practical AI is business-driven and outcome-focused. It solves problems that improve safety, productivity, and efficiency, helping customers optimize costs and create value across sectors such as smart infrastructure, defense, and industrial automation. Enterprises are prioritizing energy-efficient, cost-calible inference while governments are investing in sovereign AI infrastructure that they can own and operate end-to-end. Second, it is hybrid by design. It combines heterogeneous compute, our graph streaming processor, alongside GPUs and CPUs, giving customers flexibility to choose the right fit hardware for each deployment, balancing performance, cost, and efficiency from cloud to edge. Third, it is efficient. Practical AI delivers a clear total cost of ownership advantage, achieving better performance per watt while reducing energy consumption and maintaining responsiveness. Efficiency defines the economics of AI at scale, enabling sustainable and sovereign deployments that work in the real world. Together, these principles, business driven, hybrid and efficient, define what practical AI means to our customers and partners. Let me highlight a few programs that illustrate our progress. First, Starshine Hybrid AI Infrastructure, a $120 million collaboration with initial shipments in Q3 2025 and continuing through 2026. The partnership will focus on building AI infrastructure for smart city development, industrial automation, and public services across Asia. Second, TCC, the Saudi Arabia Sovereign AI Infrastructure, announced in September. This partnership positions Blaze as a technology enabler of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030. TCC is working with us to build hybrid AI infrastructure. Together, we are developing energy-efficient AI systems to accelerate adoption across the kingdom's public safety and infrastructure sectors. Third, Jota Smart Infrastructure, Our AI-powered public safety rollout across India continues to advance. We are fulfilling Yorta's purchase order and expect initial deliveries completed this year. Fourth, new partnership with Reach Group, announced recently at JITEX Global 2025, strengthens Blaze's position in the Middle East through collaboration on practical AI solutions and regional infrastructure initiatives. Beyond these programs, we continue to expand our engagement worldwide through workshops with data center providers, sovereign operators, and system integrators, while advancing proof of concept work in next-generation smart radar, facial recognition, and vision AI. Together, these initiatives strengthen Blaze's position as a practical, sovereign-ready AI platform partner, helping governments and enterprises deploy AI securely, efficiently, and at scale. On the technology front, Q3 was about execution. We continued the commercial rollout of the Blaze AI platform, integrating hardware, software, and orchestration into one unified stack that simplifies deployment and accelerates time to value. The platform's orchestration layer gives customers' flexibility for model packaging, deployment, and optimization across diverse environments. In hybrid AI infrastructure, Blazor's GSPs and GPUs work together, complementing each other to boost inference, performance, and power efficiency. At rack scale, this combined architecture delivers up to 2.4 times higher performance per rack and up to three times better power efficiency, enabling greater performance per watt and lower total cost in real-world deployments. At Gitex Global 2025, we showcase these capabilities in live demonstrations from city safety analytics and incident detection to autonomous mobility, including ruggedized systems that operate reliably in environments up to 70 degrees Celsius. We are also continuing development of our next generation chip, working closely with ecosystem partners to extend our leadership in low-power programmable AI. Next, we have strengthened our capital position. Earlier this week, we announced a $30 million private placement investment from Polar Asset Management Partners, reinforcing confidence in Blaze's long-term strategy and market opportunities. This new funding provides flexibility to advance commercialization to fulfill customer programs and accelerate next generation platform. It positions us to accelerate the future of silicon development, expand ecosystem partnerships, and continue executing with financial discipline. Looking ahead, we expect continued growth momentum in Q4 and into 2026. Our priorities are clear, KL deployments expand revenue through integrated AI solutions, and advance development of our next-generation GSP architecture. In 2026, our focus turns to global expansion of practical AI, delivering solutions that are efficient, scalable, and sovereign capable. We will deepen partnerships to drive adoption across key sectors such as urban AI, infrastructure build-out, defense, and retail. Our strategy centers on hybrid AI deployments that combine the strengths of Blaze's GSPs and GPUs across heterogeneous environments, enabling secure, energy efficient and programmable AI infrastructure. Blaze is helping leading this shift towards real world, sustainable and sovereign AI that bridges innovation with impact and turns technology into tangible progress for industries and societies. We reported revenue of $11.9 million for the third quarter, reflecting strong execution and continued growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Harminder to walk through the financial highlights and our outlook for the remainder of the year.

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Dhinakar, and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start with a few highlights. We reported $11.9 million of revenue, beating the upper end of our guidance by $400,000. We beat our Q3 adjusted EBITDA loss guidance by $2 million, coming in at $11.1 million. This reflects better than expected execution and stronger operating discipline across the business. And we closed a $30 million financing with Polar Asset Management Partners. I will now move on to reviewing our financial performance for the third quarter of 2025 in more detail and provide guidance for the fourth quarter. The results that I'm sharing today demonstrate our shift from customer validation to growth at scale. This quarter, we delivered our strongest quarter yet with revenue of $11.9 million, which was a sequential increase of 499%. I'm pleased to report that revenue surpassed the upper end of our prior guidance range by $400,000. Approximately $10.4 million of the third quarter revenue was driven by the initial shipments of servers under the Starshine contract into the Asia Pacific region, which we expect to collect in full before the end of the year. Gross margin was 15% this quarter compared to 59% in the second quarter of 2025. As I noted in my remarks last quarter, as expected, Initial gross margins related to the Starshine contract would be impacted by the higher component of third-party hardware in the system. Going forward, we're working with Starshine software teams to replace most GPUs in these servers with Blaze GSP cards. This is expected to result in lower average selling prices for customers and improved margins for Blaze in the quarters ahead. We continue to fulfill the Euro purchase order and anticipate that the initial approximately $6 million of revenue contribution to complete this year. Let's now turn to our third quarter operating expenses, which I will discuss on a non-GAAP basis to exclude stock-based compensation charges. Research and development costs of $6 million were down slightly from $6.4 million in the second quarter and represented a year-over-year increase of 7%. Sales and general and admin costs totaled $8.5 million, largely flat versus the prior quarter, and an increase of $3.6 million year-over-year. Blaze remains disciplined on costs as the business grows. Our third quarter adjusted EBITDA loss was $11.1 million, down 1.8 sequentially, and marginally up from Q3 of last year. This reflects better than expected execution and stronger operating discipline across the business. Reported net loss in the third quarter of $26.3 million was lower than the $29.6 million net loss for the second quarter. Both include significant non-cash adjustments related to stock-based compensation and fair value charges. The reconciliation between gap net loss and adjusted EBITDA is included in our earnings press release. We are very excited about our November 10th announcement of a $30 million private placement financing by Polar. This investment positions Blaze to continue its trajectory of delivering results from contracts in hand, converting pipeline opportunities into new business, and advancing its chip roadmap. We welcome Polar as a long-term anchor investor in Blaze. We have also taken advantage of recent strong trading volumes to exercise our right to sell common stock to B. Reilly under the committed equity facilities signed in July this year. These initiatives have resulted in a significantly improved cash balance of over $60 million today. And combined with expected inflows from current customer contracts, we believe we're strongly positioned to fund our operations well into the second half of next year. I will now share outlook for Q4 2024. Total revenue for the fourth quarter is expected to be between $21.1 million and $23.1 million, almost doubling our third quarter performance. We anticipate adjusted EBITDA loss to be in the range of $15.6 million to $18.6 million, reflecting the variable nature of next-gen chip costs. The share-based charge and weighted average shares outstanding estimates are provided in our earnings press release. Looking ahead, our pipeline opportunities based on the current generation of silicon remain robust. Approximately $160 million from the IOTA and Starshine deals are expected to support our revenue projections over the next six quarters or so. Our partnership with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's technology control company is progressing well. We anticipate initial revenues from delivering ruggedized AI boxes capable of operating in harsh high temperature environments and professional services to begin in 2026. We expect our recently announced partnership with Reach Digital to significantly enhance our profile as a provider of practical AI solutions. The Blaze hybrid AI platform is resonating well in the market, and we look forward to providing further updates on customer progress. Let me highlight upcoming events for the financial community. Blaze will be at the Craig Hallam Alpha Select Conference in New York on November 18, and at the Wells Fargo Annual TMT Summit in California on November 19. We look forward to seeing you at these events. Thank you, and with that, we'll now open the line for questions.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

One moment, please. Our first question comes from the line of Alexander Platt with DA Davidson. One moment. Our first question comes from the line of Kevin Cassidy with Rosenblatt Securities.

speaker
Kevin Cassidy
Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

Kevin Cassidy Hi. Congratulations on the results and the really strong revenue growth. You know, tied in with the Starshine project, how many more quarters do you think it'll be if you spin the third-party hardware?

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

Hey, Kevin, this is Amanda. So your voice is a little cracky, but let me just repeat what I understood you to ask, which is how many more quarters before we start to shift to a GSP-heavy server. Was that right?

speaker
Kevin Cassidy
Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

That's right. When can gross margins start to expand again?

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so we expect in the latter part of the second half of next year. So work's been going on with both software teams to create this orchestration layer that allows workloads to seamlessly go across both the GSP and the GPU. So as we start to shift, as we start, as that work completes, the servers that will start to shift perhaps in the second quarter onwards will have more GSP components in them.

speaker
Kevin Cassidy
Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

Okay, great. And I'm always interested in your next generation performance Silicon, can you give us any hints on what you're targeting with that and what will be some of the improvements?

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

Sure, I can take this. So as you know, in the key markets that we're in, majority of the customers we're actually capturing at the business outcome level. And our software is quite coming to life as well, the whole platformization, orchestration layer. Now what this is helping us is taking all of this customer demand and feedback into the definition of the next generation chip. Certainly it will be addressing the existing video, image, visual workloads, but also we're expanding it outside of this into other areas to help us capture a wider set of workloads. So it is a time expansion for us when the silicon comes in. But the good part right now, because we're platformizing and our software is playing a role, it already helps us understand what the customer's needs are. And by adding this next-generation silicon, it further improves our margins. But including things like language models, et cetera, are part of it also. There are newer kinds of AI that are emerging by being programmable and having the flexibility of our architecture, we're able to address all of that.

speaker
Kevin Cassidy
Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

Okay, great. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Craig Ellis would be Riley securities.

speaker
Craig Ellis
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

Yeah, thanks for taking the question and congratulations on the momentum in the business guys. I wanted to start getting a card just following up on comments regarding TCC and reach. Is it possible for you to help us scope the size of those two deals, and if not in their entirety, help us understand how material they might be to 2026.

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

Sure, happy to. So the interesting thing is both of these are in the Middle East. So let me address the size of the opportunity, not getting into each opportunity size, but the market is rapidly growing there. a lot of thirst for AI solutions and particularly practical AI solutions that can help their cities become safer, the defense entities and so on. So fortunate to have been working with TCC specifically in the Saudi region and this is all part of the Vision 2030 where they have a pretty big, we were collaborating on AI solutions there. and reaches in UAE. So we have solid partners in both these countries. And each of these, as we solidify the contracts, we will start announcing them to the market. I don't know if anybody wants to add.

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

No, no, you cover. I just want to make one very important point. I mean, the proof points about Blaze technology, and particularly where we are able to exist in very harsh thermal conditions, we were the only solution that was able to still continue to do high performance compute at the edge, up to 75 degree centigrade temperatures. At a cost of, you know, you can of course put a system together and have lots of extra cooling. And these are the kind of things that are now resonating really well with customers.

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

Exactly. The temperature grade testing was done and we passed in flying colors and as Amin mentioned, and they picked the hottest month of the year, which is September, So we were literally on the rooftop testing these. So all of those results are helping us get into the commercialization phase, which is the next.

speaker
Craig Ellis
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

That sounds like it's very compelling proof points for your partners, and it should translate well into what your sales can do in other areas with that deployed. So a follow-up question. given the momentum that you have with each of those partners, should we expect there to be meaningful revenue recognition next year, or will we be in a planning and deployment phase that would precede sales and activity? Just trying to understand when these start to really tip towards revenue generating partnerships for you.

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

So Craig, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, I certainly expect that the TCC relationship will start to contribute towards 2026. The exact timing of that, of course, will depend on how the solutions are deployed. Reach Digital is a relatively recent engagement. However, what we're starting to see is that as certain solutions are deployed with one customer, I think the pace at which some of those other customers in the same industry or same vertical and how quickly they adopt, you know, should accelerate.

speaker
Craig Ellis
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

That's very helpful. And then just building on that point and going back to Starshine where we are into development from early development, what are, what are, your customers learning about the advantages of the system and how is that impacting the pace at which they're choosing to move forward?

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

So certainly hybrid AI is very popular, which is how we complement GPUs that plays GSP for the best business outcome and better cost and better operational expenses. So this is certainly resonating plus Blaze is programmable and therefore the workloads that can seamlessly move across GPU and GSP is another advantage. So these are the key learnings and they're applying it to real problems such as smart infrastructure, agriculture and so on. So this relationship is growing well.

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

May I just add one more comment on that, which is the affordability side. If you have a server which is full of GPUs, I mean, it's the reason why margins are low, but also the customer affordability is impacted. As we start to replace those with Blaze GSPs, the selling price of that server comes down significantly, and our margins, of course, increase because we don't have to necessarily pass all of that benefit on. And that's where we'll see probably an acceleration of adoption of solutions in the back end of 2026.

speaker
Craig Ellis
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

It's a very good point. And ROI is one of the things that I've always found quite resonant with the solution that you're providing. Lastly, for me, I think the last time we spoke in a forum like this, we were talking about a pipeline that would have been quantified at about $725 million. Is that still the right way to look at the pipeline and any color on where there might be candidates for conversion as we look across the fourth quarter and into early 2026? Thanks, team.

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

So, the pipeline still remains robust. As you know, it's a living beast. The ones that we expect to convert, we've already talked about. Obviously, we continue to ship on our Starshine contract. We continue to work with IOTA. You'll have seen an announcement that enhances the relationship with IOTA into the Middle East. Whether that hits 2026 or so on will depend on how fast we work together. But we feel very strong that... Confident that the pipeline remains strong and it's based on currently shipping product and the more deployments that we start to make then then as I said the Conversion should accelerate and we should add more customers that are not in the pipeline today from those verticals Into that pipeline. So we'll talk about that more when we do our annual results next year

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

And to your point, the whole ROI is the key metric of what's driving this acceleration. As we engage with one customer and they're seeing the ROI clearly, they can land and expand within the customer, but also these same solutions are relevant across the entire geography, and we're getting that momentum as well.

speaker
Craig Ellis
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

Excellent. Thanks, guys.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Richard Shannon with Greg Hallam.

speaker
Richard Shannon
Analyst, Craig-Hallam & Co.

Well, great. Thanks, Finneker and Harmandir, for letting me ask a few questions. I think my first two questions are going to be interrelated. And the first one, Harmandir, I'd love for you to just repeat one of your last comments in your prepared remarks. I think you mentioned something around $160 million from, I believe, Yotta and Starshine of revenue over the next six quarters. Can you verify that I got that right? And I assume that next six quarters includes fourth quarter that we're in now to the first quarter of 27. Is that accurate?

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

That's accurate. It's basically the $120 million and the $56 million that we announced a few months ago. And we're starting to deliver on those. And yes, it includes Q4 of this year. It starts from Q4 of this year.

speaker
Richard Shannon
Analyst, Craig-Hallam & Co.

Okay. And my second question is following up on the prior commentary you've had on your calendar 26 revenues. I've got my notes right here that's You talked about at least $130 million for next year. Is that a number you're iterating, or would you change that anyway?

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

So we're not changing that at the moment, Richard. Okay. But we feel confident that the minimum is $130 million, yes.

speaker
Richard Shannon
Analyst, Craig-Hallam & Co.

Okay, perfect. Let's see here. Maybe a question on OPEX. You mentioned your guidance here for an increase in EBITDA loss. You mentioned that's related to the next-gen chip development here. Maybe give us a sense of the degree to which these elevated expenses will continue into next year.

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

So I'll start on the numbers, and then maybe, Dinuka, you can add a little bit more on. So as a Fabless company, we benefit from actually the core of the GSP, that design, which is around which we have all of the IPs. that customers are seeing the benefits from, that core design remains constant across our roadmap. That's number one. So the internal costs of getting additional features, making maybe a chip bigger, et cetera, are disproportionately low. They don't expand linearly, if you see what I mean. What we're then left with is the external costs of getting third-party IP of just having a partner put that IP into our chip. And then, of course, the largest expense is the foundry itself. Those costs, we don't disclose how much those are. They're just commercially sensitive, but are typically paid over a 20 to 24-month period, generally back-end loaded. And we write these costs off through our P&L. So it's the reason why in Q4, for example, I've got a slightly wider range on my adjusted EBITDA just because certain costs will, particularly IP and so on, we have to pay before we can actually start the work. The NRE is generally spread over time. So it will have an impact on 2026, which we've accounted for. We've been very fortunate in the past of having strong relationships with partners that allow us some favorable payment terms, and we'll continue to pursue those.

speaker
Richard Shannon
Analyst, Craig-Hallam & Co.

Okay, great. One last question for me on some part of the line. Tineker, you've announced a number of partnerships and contracts in the last number of months here. All of them are kind of based in Asia, Southeast Asia. which is interesting and noteworthy here. So I'd love to get a sense from you to the degree to which this is a core focus for you. What's kind of your advantage and what's driven your success there so far? And then to what degree should we expect you to announce Western World or even U.S.-based partnerships and customers in the near future? Thank you.

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So Asia and Middle East are areas where there's a lot of new smart city developments, et cetera, particularly in the Middle East, as well as Asia has a lot of camera infrastructures that are trying to upgrade. So naturally there's a good amount of business that's happening there. But our pipeline does span US as well as North and South America as well as Europe. In fact, and we will, as we are able to announce, we will, but we're in smart retail kind of use cases in the Americas, and also smart restaurants where they're looking at using video analytics for better margins and so on. So there are other practical AI use cases that we are part of our entire platform, hardware plus software, that is undergoing POCs. And as we solidify and we start booking revenue, we'll be sure to announce deals in the U.S. as well.

speaker
Richard Shannon
Analyst, Craig-Hallam & Co.

Okay, great. Thank you, guys.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Gail Luria with DA Davidson.

speaker
Gail Luria
Analyst, DA Davidson

Yes, thank you. Glad I was able to get through. Sounds like you're on track, track for this year, on track for next year. You're building up the book of business, mostly through relationships. So I wanted to ask, in terms of the conversion of the pipeline, is the strategy going to continue to be mostly focused on the partners that you're accumulating, or is there more of a thought to also having more direct sales as you have opportunities with bigger customers?

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Gil. I can start, and Hamid can add. Most of the large customers that we're engaged with there is, as they deploy, there is repeat business there, there is an expand of scope within those customers itself, and these are pretty large customers. So that opportunity exists. And more importantly, or equally important, the use case that we are perfecting with this one particular customer is relevant across the geography. Like what we do in Saudi Arabia is relevant for, let's say, UAE, Qatar, and others. So there is an expansion within the geography as well, especially the example that Harminder gave. We are able to withstand harsh temperatures, outdoor settings, and deliver smart infrastructure use cases, and there's massive construction that's happening there. So there is both within the customer and across. And some of these engagements, and which are at various stages of POCs, et cetera, are with large direct customers And while we can't name them today, as these get solidified, we will. So the answer is we have both channel as well as direct.

speaker
Gail Luria
Analyst, DA Davidson

So you've mentioned it now two or three times, so I have to ask, how hot was it on the roof in Saudi?

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

It went to almost, I think, north of 80 degrees centigrade, I think is what we, and yeah, it was very hot.

speaker
Gail Luria
Analyst, DA Davidson

Well, that's some commitment on your part. That's founder mode. Appreciate it. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Scott Searle with Roth.

speaker
Scott Searle
Analyst, Roth Capital Partners

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just to quickly follow up on the qualified pipeline, I don't think you gave a number, but I'm wondering if you could just provide directionally, has it continued to increase and the diversity of that pipeline? Has it continued to expand? I would imagine, given some of the announcements that you've made, it's getting a little bit more diverse. And also, as part of that, looking at some of those qualified opportunities, are these more GSP-heavy deployments out of the gate? So we would expect, as you convert and deploy, that these should have higher gross margins at the start of the contracts, and then I had a follow-up.

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

Okay, so the pipeline... The way we look at the pipeline, there is a gross pipeline, which is a significant pipeline. When we first qualify opportunities, we say, okay, what's the likely outcome over the next two to three years from this customer or from these groups of customers? And then what changes for us is depending which customer is working faster or slower through the POC process. It allows us to put a higher percentage weighting, if you like, in terms of when things will close. So when I stand back, there is the 725 number, anything that was not imminent was already out of that number. What I have not done yet is some of the new engagement that we've got. We've got some high level indications of what these might mean for us over the next couple of years. But when we do our annual results announcement next year, you know, we'll provide a lot more detail around conversion and so on. The second thing to say is the Starshine deal is one of the, probably the only one in the pipeline where we are doing within the same box replacement of a GPU. And that's where the margins are low and they'll become higher. If you look at some of the other deals that we've got, our servers are coexisting with the GPU server in a data center. That server is full of Blaze cards and it has Blaze software on it. For example, the other one we talked about, 15% of that being software revenues. It kind of depends, but more, Starshine happens today, happens to be the only one where we are at this low margin going up to higher margin.

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

So the only other thing I'd add is that besides the existing smart infrastructure and defense, the industrial automation is something that's coming up. You asked us about trends and which areas. And the kind of adoption that's happening is including the software platformization, the software layer that we have. And that means higher margins as well for us in those outcomes where we participate with the customer at the business outcome level. So those are all helping us at the platform level, consuming our software plus our Blazor service.

speaker
Scott Searle
Analyst, Roth Capital Partners

Very helpful. Thank you. And if I could, just a question on the competitive landscape. You guys have done a good job of not only from a product standpoint, but developing the ecosystem around it, which is driving that opportunity set. I'm wondering what you're seeing out there as you're going to customers. Is the competitive landscape getting a little bit more competitive or thinning? Guys have certainly been able to go out and raise capital, but I think they lack the ecosystem development around that. So just kind of wondering what you're seeing out there in the trenches in terms of the competitive landscape.

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

Thanks That's a very Good observation that software is very important because it solves the end application and in that category Customers typically prototype on GPUs when it comes to actual deployment CapEx and optics budgets are very critical especially in the world of in the physical world you know and therefore Complementing Blazor servers is the way to go. That's how they achieve their CapEx results and within operational margins. And coming to competition, the productized solutions that exist, pretty much there's a couple of names, I think a handful of names we come across. And customers, the places we're winning, it's because of are the combined advantage that we bring to the table in terms of TCO advantage, helping them with the CapEx and OpEx, and fully productized. So in that area, we don't come across, because we're at the business outcome level, that's where Blaze gets picked.

speaker
Harminder
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, the key word there, Scott, is programmability. There are other competitive solutions that might do one or two things, and what we've realized is that whilst there may be a place for that in certain parts of the market, but the kind of customers that want to deploy AI at scale want it to be a customizable, programmable solution. So no longer are we having a conversation, how many tops do you have on your card? It is, can I run my real world application at a cost that makes sense for me? And if you're, by the way, a Tier 2 cloud service provider who's making zero money today by running all of your infrastructure on GPUs, well, working with Blaze, you now have a chance, more than a chance, of providing services to customers and making money. Great. Thanks so much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. I'll now hand the call back over to CEO Dhinakar Munagala for any closing remarks.

speaker
Dhinakar Munagala
Chief Executive Officer

Before we close, I wanted to share a few quick highlights of this quarter. We delivered $11.9 million in revenue, beating the upper end of our guidance and marking a 499% sequential increase. We're confident that Q4 revenue will reach nearly double our Q3 performance, reflecting strong momentum heading into 2026. Excluding non-cash adjustments, we beat our Q3 adjusted EBITDA guidance by $2 million, reflecting stronger execution and operational discipline across the business. We began initial shipments under the Starshine contract into the APAC region, which we expect to collect in full before end of the year. And we closed a $30 million investment with Polar to accelerate commercialization, next generation chip development, and expansion across key markets. Finally, I want to recognize our team for winning the second place at the Milestone Systems Developer Summit in Copenhagen today with our emergency first responder, VLN. It's a great example of how Blaze technology is making cities safer and smarter through innovation. You can find the award-winning video demonstration on our Blaze AI YouTube channel. And thank you for our customers, partners, and investors for your continued confidence. We're proud of what we've achieved this quarter and even more excited about what's ahead. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This does conclude today's program, and you may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

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