Horizon Quantum Holdings Ltd.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Horizon Quantum first quarter 2026 report, conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker, Katherine Bailon. Please go ahead. Thank you.

Good morning and thank you for joining us on Horizon Quantum's first quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call. My name is Katherine Bailon and I am vice president of investor relations at Horizon Quantum. Joining me on today's call are Dr. Joe Fitzsimons, our founder and CEO. and Greg Gould, our Chief Financial Officer. Before the market opened today, Horizon Quantum issued a press release with results for its first quarter ended March 31st, 2026. You can access a copy of the release in the investor relations section of our website at horizonquantum.com. Today's call is being broadcast live over the web and can also be accessed through the investor relations section of the Horizon Quantum website. Before we get started, I'd like to caution you that any non-historic statements that I or the management team make during this call will constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S. federal securities law, including the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You are cautioned that these statements involve material risks and uncertainties, including the risks Horizon Quantum has identified in its most recent annual report on Form 20F and other filings with the SEC and that we typically cite in our press releases that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. Except as required by law, Horizon Quantum expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial or product pipeline projections or other forward-looking statements whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. These statements made on this conference call contain time-sensitive information and are accurate to the best of Horizon Quantum's knowledge only as of the date they are made today, May 5, 2026. This discussion includes non-GAAP financial measures. These measures are calculated by management and do not have any standardized meanings under U.S. GAAP. These non-GAAP measures supplement GAAP measures, but should not be viewed as substitutes for GAAP measures. We have included a reconciliation of GAAP measures to non-GAAP measures as a table at the end of our earnings press release issued this morning. And with that, I will now turn it over to Horizon Quantum founder and CEO, Dr. Joe Fitzsimons.

Thank you, Catherine, and good morning, everyone. we appreciate you joining us on the earnings call today um on the call i'd like to highlight uh five key points um we've the first one is that we have grown our hair count rapidly from a year ago uh with a few more additions in the current quarter we believe this will uh we believe we'll be staffed to execute on our roadmap secondly in the march quarter we deepen two hardware partnerships and we expect to continue to add and deepen other hardware relationships in future Third, in our software stack, we've made progress moving upwards in abstraction with our language, Beryllium, expanding its feature set and improving stability. Combined with our other languages and tools, we expect Beryllium to make it easier for developers to create quantum applications to tackle real-world problems. Fourth, with our software stack, we are also tightening integration with quantum hardware, which we believe is critical to enabling quantum advantage. And fifth, we are grateful to our new partners and our public shareholders who have provided us with enough capital for the foreseeable future to blaze a path as a public quantum software company. But before we get into detail on the quarter, as this is our first earnings call as a public company, I want to take a few minutes discuss how we think about quantum computing at Horizon Quantum and why we believe we are well positioned to grow as the quantum computing industry evolves and pushes towards quantum advantage. I'll then walk you through our R&D and business highlights for the quarter before handing you over to our Chief Financial Officer, Greg Gould, to update you on the quarterly finances. So, in my view, the promise of quantum computers is to be better computers. They are, after all, computers with an extra trick. They have the ability to harness interference between different computational branches. And that makes them unique. The reason I first got into quantum computing, because I believe that there was a chance that quantum computing might mirror the trajectory of conventional computing. And 22 years on, I believe that more strongly than ever. And this historical perspective informs our approach to harnessing quantum computers to do real work. And make no mistake. beyond press releases, beyond proof of concept experiments, is of paramount importance that the quantum industry reach a point where software running on quantum computers is producing results that create real value. That's why our mission is to unlock broad quantum advantage by building the software infrastructure to solve the world's toughest computational problems. Today, the process of creating programs that harness quantum processing is laborious And it requires formulating algorithms to take advantage of quantum computing's peculiar ability to extract information from multiple possible branches of a computation through quantum interference. The industry has largely settled on three approaches to this problem. The first is what you might call an education approach, where the hope is that developers can be taught enough about how quantum computing works that they will be able to formulate their own quantum algorithms. While some beautiful educational material has been produced, which has been very helpful in attracting students into the field, the reality is that much of the progress in quantum computing algorithms is still made by people with many years' experience. The second approach is based on libraries, where pre-written quantum programs are called to accomplish particular tasks with these calls stitched together with classical compute. The approach, well, this approach works perfectly well when what you want to do is already available through one of the growing number of quantum libraries. But it falls short if no library addresses your particular problem or if customization is needed. It also misses out on the opportunity for compounding speedups that are possible when such primitives are combined as part of a larger quantum program rather than accessed as as classical programs, sorry, excuse me, rather than accessed in a classical program in a kind of black box manner. The final approach is based on professional services. This makes sense for a small number of high value use cases, but given the rarity of quantum algorithms expertise and the amount of work necessary to tackle each new problem, relying on this approach will likely substantially limit the rate of uptake of quantum computers. At Horizon Quantum, we're pioneering a new approach to this problem, using the creation of quantum algorithms as a compilation task rather than as an R&D project. Our long-term goal is to bridge the gap between classical and quantum computing by automating the acceleration of classical code on quantum computers. This means automating the construction of quantum algorithms to construct high-level quantum programs and then compiling and executing these on quantum computers. Doing this would essentially abstract away the quantum mechanics for developers not interested in those details, allowing domain experts in the fields that most sound to benefit from quantum computing to harness these systems in their work without having to become experts in quantum computing themselves. If we can achieve this, we expect it to significantly increase the breadth and depth of quantum computing use in enterprise. To achieve this goal, we need to overcome the fact that quantum computers are not yet living up to their full potential. Rather than being better computers, current generation quantum computers are much less capable than their classical counterparts. They are much more like the computers of the 1940s and 1950s rather than contemporary HPC systems. Most quantum computers still lack the ability to implement basic computing functions, including general control flow, allowing for the implementation of loops and subroutine calls, and are instead limited to executing static circuits. Fortunately, there are compelling reasons to believe that quantum computing has reached something of an inflection point. First, there is now strong evidence that quantum computers of multiple modalities are difficult to simulate. This does not necessarily mean that they are solving valuable problems, but it is an important first step. If we could simulate these systems with conventional computers, there'd be little point in building them. It also has the advantage of putting the ball firmly in the court of software. Secondly, quantum error correction is becoming a reality, with convincing demonstrations of multi-round error correction reducing the error rates below those of the constituent qubits. This is critically important for enabling the kind of long quantum calculations that are necessary to create a broad quantum advantage. Thirdly, the anticipated overhead of error correction has plummeted with the discovery of asymptotically good codes driven by progress in quantum LDPC codes. This means that the scale and complexity of the quantum computer needed to tackle a given problem has dramatically shrunk. Finally, there are now four distinct qubit modalities that have proven an ability to scale and offer viable and independent paths to full tolerant quantum computing. So software has never been more important to the trajectory of the industry. However, these systems are largely still being programmed with quantum assembly languages that are not too dissimilar from the microcode of the 1940s and 50s. If we want to reach our goal of using quantum computers to accelerate classical code, we need to close the gap between the software infrastructure modern code for conventional computers expects, the abstractions provided by programming languages and operating systems, and the capabilities of quantum computers. So we have essentially been attempting to speed run the history programming languages and system software learning what we can from the development of classical systems. So first we built Hydrogen to act as a single portable quantum assembly language that we could build upon that could describe programs both for today's systems but also for future quantum computers. Hydrogen is designed to be maximally expressive. so that code written in hydrogen can express anything a mature quantum computer would be able to do, independent of architecture or instruction set. And we built a compiler and execution stack to be able to take code written for these future systems, these future more capable quantum computers, and execute it on the current generation systems. And I would say that firmly places us in the 1950s. Next, we built Helium. Helium's an imperative basic-like quantum programming language designed to make it easier to express complex programs. Helium includes features such as dynamic memory allocation, IO management, and the ability to construct quantum circuits that implement functions written in C, bringing 1960s and 1970s technology into the quantum computing software stack. Most recently, we previewed Beryllium, an object-oriented quantum programming language. Barillium is intended to allow developers to start abstracting away quantum mechanics. We've designed Barillium such that a developer can define classes which exploit quantum processing to represent and manipulate various kinds of data. And when these classes are later used to represent that kind of data, by that developer or by another, they can spend their time thinking about how they want to manipulate that data rather than about how the underlying processing is achieved. Object-oriented programming languages are also special in that code reuse is a primary design goal. By allowing developers to build upon each other's work and each other's abstractions, they can create a strong network effect. where each module or library written unlocks new abstractions for the next developer, allowing them to accomplish more with less code. So for us, Brilliant is a key milestone, not just because it brings 1980s technology into the quantum computing stack, which, in my view, gives us a substantial technological lead, but because it enables developers to begin abstracting away quantum mechanics and to reuse code via libraries potentially unlocking the strong network effect. We believe that advancing our technology stack and working closely with the hardware manufacturers to unlock the full potential of their systems is the shortest path to achieving broad quantum advantage and capturing long-term value in quantum computing. Since software built through our tools is deployed through our infrastructure and executed through our stack, Our business model is centered on a combination of usage-based fees for cloud-based system and annual licensing for on-premises deployment. I'd like to leave you with three thoughts on this. One, we believe that software infrastructure is the key to unlocking the full potential of quantum computing, enabling broader use cases and more rapid uptake than would otherwise be possible. Two, we are focused on building that software infrastructure in a way that is hardware agnostic from the perspective of the developer, allowing them to focus on building software rather than trying to guess which hardware modality will ultimately win out. And three, ultimately, we are a software company, so we expect our margins and our CapEx to look completely different from hardware companies. Now, turning to the quarter, The first quarter of 2026 has been a rather eventful one for us. In January, we had the inauguration of our quantum computing testbed, including the first testbed system, Ember One, officiated by Singapore's Minister of Digital Development and Information, Josephine Cho. The Ember One system is based on a Rigetti Novera 9-qubit superconducting processor, an OPX1000 microwave controller tracked from quantum machines and a Maybel big fridge dilution refrigerator. It was integrated from parts in-house at Horizon Quantum, which I believe makes us the first quantum-focused software company to begin operating quantum computing hardware rather than relying solely on cloud-based systems. This allows us to more tightly integrate our software stack with the hardware without having to pass through third-party software layers on the way down. We believe that tight integration between software and hardware are critically important to achieving quantum advantage in the near term. Notably, this quarter we completed our business combination with DMY Square Technology Group, becoming a public company in the process and listing on NASDAQ. While this was a fantastic moment of celebration for the team, we are all keenly aware that we have only reached the starting line of a new race. The transition to being a public company, we have built out our board of directors. It's extremely gratifying to see the level of experience they bring. Danielle Lambert was the VP of human resources at Apple, where she helped to build out the teams behind iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple retail stores, among others. She later played Pivotal Road in the founding of Nest Labs before its acquisition by Alphabet. Peter Wee is the chief financial officer of Grab, a prominent Southeast Asia super app. He previously served as CFO of LegalZoom.com prior to its IPO and as CFO of MyLife.com. Earlier in his career, he held several financial leadership roles at Activision Blizzard. Jill Turner has more than 20 years of experience in global human resources leadership roles at Fortune 500 technology companies. She's currently a CHRO of Broadcom and previously held executive positions at Honeywell and Lumen Technologies, formerly CenturyLink. Harry Yu is currently a member of Broadcom's Board of Directors. Previously, he was a lead independent director of INQ. He's also an experienced public company officer, having held CFO roles at Accenture and Oracle, and an EVP role at EMC, among others. In anticipation of the closing of the business combination, we increased our headcount, particularly in R&D, where we saw a twofold increase in headcount compared to the same quarter in the prior year. We believe this headcount increase will both help accelerate our technological development and will allow us to work with a greater number of hardware companies. since historically our ability to take on new collaborations has been limited by the capacity of our science and engineering teams. Compared to the prior year quarter, we have also added key hires in GNA in preparation for becoming a public company, including Greg Gould as Chief Financial Officer, Catherine Bailon as VP of Investor Relations, and from May 11th, Catherine Fitzsimons as Chief Legal Officer. With these headcount additions, we are nearing a state where we believe we have the team necessary to execute on our plans. In the first quarter of 2026, our R&D efforts have included a focus on the continued development of Beryllium beyond its initial preview form, first shown last December, to a more feature-complete and stable form. We have also focused on integrating our first test system, Ember One, into Triple Alpha in anticipation of making it available to external users later in the year. A key part of our strategy is to try to ensure that our software stack is the best way to program quantum computers no matter the underlying technology. We track approximately 40 leading hardware manufacturers and seek to collaborate with companies where our software stack can increase the capabilities of their hardware systems or enable developers to build more complex software for these systems. Ultimately, our goal is to ensure that no matter which system architecture takes a lead in quantum computing, you'll be able to program it with triple alpha. At present, we're fortunate to see more interest from hardware manufacturers than we have capacity to service. Though we believe the increased hiring in our science and engineering teams will help alleviate this bottleneck. And so we prioritize collaborating with companies where we believe there's a strong potential to take a leading role in the path to large scale error corrected quantum computing. In the first quarter, We announced that Horizon Quantum had partnered with two additional quantum computing hardware companies. In particular, we're delighted to be working with Alice and Bob to streamline the development and deployment of full-tolerant quantum software. A first step in this process is to integrate their emulators into Triple Alpha to allow developers to interact with emulated versions of their planned quantum processors. We're excited about this collaboration in particular due to the potential of Alice and Bob's 2-bit approach to offer a shortcut to full-tolerant quantum computing and one that is potentially very hardware efficient. We're also delighted to be working with AQT to further develop quantum computing applications. This will involve integrating AQT's simulators and trapped ion quantum processors into Triple Alpha. We expect the collaboration to provide an opportunity to deepen support for and integration with trap-line systems within our software stack. Finally, I want to turn back to our testbed. Working directly with hardware has significantly accelerated progress, particularly in the development of a real-time execution stack, which would not be possible via standard cloud APIs. Tight integration between hardware and software is critical to achieving quantum advantage, and having direct access to a dedicated superconducting system has been a significant boon to our R&D efforts, enabling us to push further down the stack, enabling pulse-level programming and pulse-level optimization within our stack. Although there are many quantum computing modalities based on different underlying physics and different physical systems, at a very, please forgive this, but at a very coarse level, these can be divided broadly into two categories in two different ways. So the first categorization is that you can think of systems that need extreme cooling and microwave control on the one hand, and systems requiring optics and high vacuum on the other. While this doesn't tell you much about the characteristics of the underlying quantum system, it informs the requirements that are, excuse me, the requirements are important for informing facilities and operations requirements. So understanding how to operate these systems, developing the capabilities for operating each of these systems, more or less enables you to host and to operate other systems of the same category. The second characterization is between solid-state qubits versus atomic or photonic qubits. The first are essentially manufactured qubits, for which the parameters can be controlled during fabrication process, but which suffer from limits of precision and defects. The second category, so atomic and photonic qubits, are essentially perfect, uniform, indistinguishable quantum systems, but where the parameters are dictated by nature rather than by design. Since we took the decision to stand up a testbed several years ago, we had in mind a roadmap that would take us through three different systems. The first will be a small-scale superconducting system, since that was the most common modality in industry. And there is a maturing open-stack ecosystem, which allows for a cost-efficient entry point. This system would act as an exemplar of the first category of qubit modalities, according to both categorizations. The second system was intended to be a moderate-scale exemplar of the second category, being either a trapped ion or neutral atom system, with a modest number of qubits. The third system was anticipated to be best in class across all modalities and was expected to be the only one capable of reaching quantum advantage. Over the last two years, we've spoken to a variety of hardware manufacturers building both trapped ion and neutral ion systems. And in Q1, we entered into an agreement with IonQ for them to provide a 256 qubit trapped ion quantum computer. Importantly, the anticipated qubit count and fidelity of the system are expected to put it on the cusp of quantum advantage for at least some chemistry problems. As a result, this system will satisfy the criteria we had looked for in the two remaining planned testbed systems, allowing us to accelerate our roadmap with a single system rather than two. While the system is a significant expense, which we expect to recognize relatively over time, we believe that operating a multimodal testbed puts us in a strongly differentiated position to develop the most capable tools for programming quantum computers across all modalities. We're committed to operating in a fiscally responsible manner, such that we have the runway necessary to execute on our plans. Jurisdictions in which we operate have provisions for significant support for R&D activity, including by our refundable tax credits, which we take into account in cash flow planning, and which we expect could offset some of the costs associated with testbed operations. In our filings, we've disclosed plan for a second testbed system to be installed in calendar year 2027, and we believe with this new IonQ system, we're on track to achieve this. With these developments in mind, I believe we're well positioned to advance our software stack and position Triple Alpha as the most capable tool for harnessing the full potential of quantum hardware. And now I'll turn it over to Greg to discuss our financial performance in more detail.