IonQ, Inc.

Hello, and welcome to the IMQ first quarter 2025 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please send to a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. But now I turn the conference over to our host today, Jessica Hawken-Allen. Ma'am, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to IonQ's first quarter 2025 earnings call. My name is Jessica Hawken-Allen, and I am a member of the investor relations team here at IonQ. I'm pleased to be joined on today's call by Niccolo DeMasi, IonQ's chief executive officer, Peter Chapman, our executive chairman, Thomas Kramer, our chief financial officer, Jordan Shapiro, our president and general manager of quantum networking, and Dean Kastman, our Senior Vice President of Engineering and Technology. By now, everyone should have access to the company's first quarter 2025 earnings press release issued this afternoon, which is available on the investor relations section of our website at investors.ioncube.com. Please note that on today's call, management will refer to the adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. While the company believes this non-GAAP financial measure provides useful information for investors, the presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. You are directed to our press release for a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to its closest comparable GAAP measure. During the call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our 10-Q that we have filed with the SEC today. We undertake no obligation to revise any statements to reflect changes that occur after this call, except as required by law. Now, I will turn it over to Peter Chapman, Executive Chairman of IONQ.

I'd like to begin today's call by covering some of the high-level themes. First, allow me to say that I've been delighted with the seamless transition to Niklo as our CEO. We have been able to divide and conquer this quarter to accomplish a tremendous amount, precisely as I had hoped and our board envisaged. I was delighted to represent INQ in both Japan and Korea for World Quantum Day. We signed an MOU with GQUAT, a division of AIST in Japan. to work towards bringing our quantum compute to this great new market. We also signed an MOU to begin an exciting partnership with Toyota Susho and with Intellion in Korea to begin work on quantum networking in space. At NVIDIA's GTC, we showcased progress with AstraZeneca and ANSYS, where we demonstrated a 12% simulation time improvement using their engineering design software. IMQ's path to tens of thousands and ultimately millions of qubits is to photonically interconnect qubits across a network to run applications across multiple QPUs acting as one large single quantum computer. This has been our plan since the company's inception. Quantum computers offer potentially game-changing solutions to many of today's largest problems. But like many new technologies, there is a dark side, too. With a large enough quantum computer, one of the earliest known quantum applications is factoring prime numbers. Factoring prime numbers, or more specifically, the difficulty for classical computers to do so, is the basis for much of today's technical infrastructure to encrypt data widely used to secure the Internet and other digital systems. Computers are used as the books and records for modern life, and quantum computers will put that all at risk. As we work towards building such a quantum computer, we have the responsibility to provide solutions to protect society from the negative aspects of quantum. With our previous acquisitions of Entangle Networks, Cubitech, and a majority stake of ID Quantique, We announced our intention to be the leading player in quantum networks and to build the next generation of the internet that is quantum safe. Our interest in distributed quantum computing using photonic interconnects is highly synergistic with our plans for quantum networking and the quantum internet. And our interest in quantum networking is highly synergistic with quantum computing. To build the next generation of the internet, all the same pieces of hardware need to be developed. From building inter-satellite communications, from satellite to the ground, frequency down conversion to our commercial fiber across the ground, routed by quantum optical switches to their final destination, and in military applications, all the way over the air to drones on a battlefield. This is our vision. Under Niccolo's leadership, We have today decisively accelerated our quantum computing roadmap, as well as our capabilities to create the quantum internet. INQ's architecture and ecosystem allow unique synergies with today's edition of what I believe is the world's leading quantum memory solution. I am proud of the pace at which Niccolo has commenced his tenure as CEO, and his ability to bring out the best of our leadership the board, and indeed INQ as a rapidly growing public company. It's with this context that I will give the floor over to Niccolo to discuss today's latest announcement.

Thank you, Peter, and thank you all for joining us today. Let me begin by saying I've had a fantastic first 70 days at INQ. I want to sincerely thank all of our shareholders, customers, and team members for their warm welcome and enthusiastic support. I've now completed my listening tour of all stakeholders, and I'm pleased with the reinforcement of our technical and commercial priorities this has provided. In short, INQ is focused on being the leading quantum computing and networking company. Our top two priorities in 2025 are delivering on revenue expectations for the year and delivering AQ64. We have some amazing people at INQ globally in all functions, but particularly our physicists and engineers who have worked hard on our systems and are now reaching the inflection point they have always envisioned. We will always prioritize and ensure that at all times the world's greatest quantum talent makes a tome at IonQ. I want to warmly welcome our newest colleagues in Geneva, Switzerland and Seoul, South Korea at IDQuantique. We closed our purchase of our majority stake on April 30th and we are excited to have the IDQuantique pioneers and leading practitioners of quantum networking headed up by Grégoire Ribordy as part of the INQ family. In order to coordinate our roadmap and global quantum internet strategy, we today congratulate our colleague Jordan Shapiro on his promotion to become INQ's first president and general manager of quantum networking. Jordan has been instrumental in both our Cubatek and IDQuantique acquisitions, and we look forward to his continued strategic contributions to our growth. We are indeed in the business of quantum. and believe that running applications and delivering commercial advantage for our customers is our North Star. As many of you have seen, we've had a busy quarter expanding our ecosystem and delivering on yet more global firsts. Peter outlined our expanding traction in Asia this quarter. I would add to these achievements our selection by DARPA for its quantum benchmarking initiative. We are all proud that in Q1, we sold the Forte Enterprise System to EPB of Chattanooga, Tennessee. EPB and its visionary CEO, David Wade, have been pioneers of bringing new technologies to their constituents. Most well-known, perhaps, is their blisteringly fast fiber, which was well ahead of its time and continues to provide the local economy with a foundation for growth. EPB already has a quantum network powered by our Cubatech team. Last month, EPB purchased half of the compute capacity of a Forte Enterprise system for $22 million, bringing our latest quantum computer to their city and customers. This makes EPB the first commercial customer with both a quantum network and computer. We look forward to working with EPB and their broader ecosystem, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to pioneer energy grid distribution optimization, as well as support entrepreneurs building their startups in Chattanooga on INQ's quantum computer and quantum network. We celebrated National Quantum Day at the New York Stock Exchange last month and unveiled two quantum machine learning breakthroughs from our applications teams for the industrial AI sector. Our own internal research in quantum AI is showing very encouraging signs of improving prediction accuracy in large language models, as well as using quantum data analysis with sports data to highlight performance gaps. Today we're also proud to announce two exciting acquisitions. that accelerate our commercial quantum computing roadmap, extend our leadership in quantum networking, and position INQ to play a key role in creating the quantum internet. I consider today's acquisitions to fundamentally evolve the chessboard in quantum even more in our favor, increasing INQ's leadership in the business of quantum. We laid out a roadmap when we went public to become the leader in quantum computing by scaling our systems using our unique quantum networked multi-core architecture. Our organic investments in this interconnect led to our AFRL contract last year, an expansion worldwide in quantum networking by Incubatech and IDQuantique. We're delighted today to announce the proposed acquisition of Boston-based LightSync. LightSync's founders built the first ever quantum repeater capable of extending the range of quantum networks, a key technology enabling the quantum internet. LightSync's core mission is to use this same memory technology to build the world's best quantum interconnects that link IonQ's quantum processors at high speed. LightSync was spun out of Harvard University research and AWS by its remarkable co-founders, Mihir Bhaskar, Bharat Makhilezi, and David Lavonian. The team is deeply impressive and will make an immediate contribution towards achieving our technical milestones by its quantum memory IP expertise and architecture. LifeSync owns or controls over 25 patents and patent applications, which will add to INQ's robust patent portfolio upon closing of the transaction. A key synergy for INQ is that LifeSync's technology is expected to accelerate INQ's existing photonic interconnect activities and enable our commercial systems to scale to tens of thousands and eventually millions of qubits. The LifeSync architecture is uniquely powerful and will underwrite our quantum computing leadership for decades to come. The parallels are strong, so I would not be surprised if in the fullness of time, LightSync becomes as accretive for INQ as Mellanox has been for NVIDIA. Equally exciting and importantly, LightSync technology will also power the future quantum internet by allowing repeaters to ultimately be spaced over 100 kilometers apart. Last year, a pioneering paper of theirs was published demonstrating over one second storage time. and over 35 kilometers of deployed fiber. Our commitment to creating the quantum internet underlies our second announcement today. As Peter previewed in his opening remarks, today we unveiled the continued expansion of our networking vision to incorporate the most vulnerable portions of our world's modern communications. Our Cubetech team members began forging a path for us in this direction organically once they formally became part of INQ. Peter signed a pioneering MOU with Intellian last month to begin work on quantum key distribution, also known as QKD, in space. Having seen the tremendous reception from our government agencies, researchers, and commercial customers, we recognize the need to accelerate our quantum computing capabilities in the vital frontier of satellite communications. China has announced progress on QKD in space and is imperative for economic and national security that we lead in all dimensions, theaters, and segments of quantum networking. To accelerate our organic plans for quantum networking, and someday also quantum computing in space, we announced the planned acquisition of Colorado-based signals platform, Capella. This acquisition will bring INQ a platform of capabilities for signals, communications payloads, and top secret contracting expertise. Capella's well-known leader, Frank Baquez, will head up INQ's quantum space initiatives, as well as bring an injection of top secret cleared personnel, of facility security clearance, and strong three-letter agency relationships around the globe. INQ systems are already leading the world in manufacturability and cloud access. Today's expansion brings INQ new growth factors for our customers to benefit from, as well as complimentary expertise and world-class team members. I couldn't be more proud of our team's effort in my first 70 days and the speed at which we've been able to bring these unique networking and computing accelerants into the fold. Moving on now to Q1 financials at a high level, we're pleased to have delivered a solid quarter and start to 2025, above the midpoint of our revenue guidance range for Q1. Thomas will cover our results and details in our guidance in a few minutes, but I'll say up front that the geopolitics of our age are a net benefit to INQ. We ended the quarter with just shy of $700 million in cash equivalents. We have a fortress balance sheet and are investing to win and truly become the leader of quantum. Our investments are not only to accelerate our quantum computing and quantum internet roadmaps, but to ensure that INQ is the only ecosystem any customer needs in the business of quantum. Every commercial customer, researcher, student, and government lab that learns on INQ, we expect will stay on INQ. Our early mover advantage will compound as our ecosystem breadth and depth grows relentlessly. I look forward to updating you later in the year as we close and integrate today's acquisitions. Whether on the ground or in space, INQ solutions are poised to be there and lead. We believe our now near boundless photonic interconnect scalability provides INQ customers with the winning quantum computing and internet ecosystem, not just this decade, but we expect for the entire 21st century. I am pleased to now hand you over to my colleague, Jordan Shapiro, to say a few words about our quantum networking plans.

Thank you, Niccolo. I look forward to taking on a larger role in shaping the future of INQ and the quantum industry as a whole. We have a fundamental strength in quantum networking at INQ, being the only quantum computing company that planned on utilizing it to scale from day one. which has led to a clear advantage as we recognize the early commercial potential of this field. Quantum networking will naturally be the foundation of the quantum internet, which will be a watershed achievement in creating a worldwide, ultra-secure communications grid. We've made several crucial acquisitions of some of the most advanced quantum networking companies in the world. First, Entangle Networks. followed by Cubatech, then a majority stake in IDQ, now LightSync and Capella. I was involved in the conception and execution of each acquisition. Now I am excited to take the next steps towards the quantum internet by connecting our customers' quantum computers and data centers together to transmit secure communications and allow for massively powerful blind quantum and distributed compute. Now, I'd like to hand the call over to our CFO, Thomas Kramer.

Thank you, Jordan, Peter, and Niccolo. It has been a truly exciting quarter on the commercial front, and our financials are no exception. Let's walk through this quarter's financial results in more detail. As Niccolo mentioned, we had a solid quarter, recognizing revenue of $7.6 million, beats the midpoint of the guidance we previously provided. Moving down the income statement, our total operating costs and expenses for the first quarter were $83.2 million, up 38% from $60.5 million in the prior year period, but within our plan for the year. To break this down further, our research and development costs for the first quarter were $40 million, up 23% from $32.4 million in the prior year period. Recall that we are investing heavily in R&D and growing our R&D headcount to support a roadmap and customer commitments. Our sales and marketing costs in the first quarter were $8.6 million, up 28% from $6.7 million in the prior year period. This increase was due to us growing both our marketing and our sales teams as we continue investing into our commercial efforts. Our general and administrative costs in the first quarter were $23.8 million, up 70% from $14 million in the prior year period. These increases were primarily driven by an increase in payroll-related expenses. All of this resulted in a net loss of $32.3 million in the first quarter, compared to $40 million net loss in the prior year period. Accounting for warrants can be confusing, so we have always pointed out the impact they have on our results. This Q1 loss includes a non-cash gain of $38.5 million for the first quarter related to the fair value of warrant liabilities. This is a pure accounting artifact that is not representative of the operating performance of our business. These results also include growth in stock-based compensation expense related to our headcount growth, which was $33.3 million for the first quarter compared to $22.1 million in the prior year period. We saw an adjusted EBITDA loss for the first quarter of $35.8 million compared to $27 million loss in the prior year period. As Nicola mentioned, we are making additional investments to accelerate our roadmap as well as entering new segments of the market, and we expect to continue to invest in the ecosystems that support our customers. Given our expansion, we are also prioritizing bringing acquired entities up to U.S. public company reporting standards. All of this means we expect to see an increase to our cost basis for the year. We envision this increasing our adjusted EBITDA loss, previously projected $120 million, by approximately 35%. Turning now to our balance sheet. Cash, cash equivalents, and investment as of March 31st, worth $697.1 million. Continuing on to our financial outlook, we are reaffirming our revenue guidance for the full year, 2025, and expect revenue for the second quarter of between $16 and $18 million. Back to you, Nicola. Thanks, Thomas.

We at INQ have begun 2025 with strong momentum. To recap, We announced a fantastic accelerant to both our quantum networking and quantum computing roadmaps, the proposed acquisition of Boston-based LightThink, whose quantum memory is leading globally and whose team are almost all Harvard researchers. We announced a proposed acquisition of Colorado-based Capella, bringing I&Q a platform of capabilities for QKD in space, top secret contracting expertise, and building the quantum internet. We've successfully sold another cutting-edge 4D enterprise system, which will be used to establish the first quantum computing and networking hub in partnership with EPB. And we have moved on to the first stage of DARPA's quantum benchmarking initiative. Forte Enterprise now offers global access and increased quantum computing capacity through AWS, empowering customers with real-world business-oriented solutions. Our technical excellence shined at NVIDIA's GTC, where our collaboration with ANSYS outperformed classical methods for real-world applications. while our AstraZeneca partnership advances drug discovery, demonstrating Quantum's impact in multi-billion dollar markets. Closing our acquisition of IDQuantique solidifies our global dominance in quantum networking. I'm privileged to lead INQ with the support of our talented team as we advance the quantum revolution and our commercialization leadership. I'm also highly confident the acquisitions announced today will evolve the chessboard of Quantum significantly even more in INQ's favor. ensuring a long-term leadership in both quantum computing and creating the quantum Internet. INQ now benefits from an accelerated path to tens of thousands of qubits and a clear path to millions of qubits. Long-distance quantum repeaters allow the quantum Internet to be built. Operator, please hand the call over now for Q&A.

Yes, thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw it, please press star then 2. This time we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. And today's first question comes from David Williams with Benchmark.

Hey, good afternoon everyone. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on all of the success here this quarter for the entire team there. Maybe first, if we're kind of thinking about these acquisitions that you've made and the recent acquisitions, but also the ones that you've just closed, can you maybe give us any update in terms of the revenue we should expect from that or maybe any of the cost structure that we should think about for our models there?

We believe that all of these moves that we have made will fundamentally strengthen our ability to grow our revenue into the future in manners that are similar to what you've already seen. And we will also believe that we are going to do this in a manner that is accretive. We have good gross margins. In an interim period, of course, when we make investments, we will have to continue to fund them in some cases where there are when they have expenses that exceed revenues, but at the same time, this is a relatively modest amount compared to these three great companies that we have announced that we will be acquiring. We did say on the previous call that the revenue guidance for the year included organic and inorganic sources, but we expect that these will be fundamental to delivering revenue into the future as well.

Great, thanks. Appreciate the color there. And then maybe secondly, if you can just kind of help me understand the quantum internet and how you maybe envision that playing out longer term into the future. Thanks.

Yeah, so, you know, a major piece today, we've got at the moment EPB in Chattanooga and also with SK Telecom, there's existing networks, quantum networks, which are being used commercially. The problem with those networks, if you will, is that they didn't have a repeater. They don't have the technology at the moment to go more than roughly 20 miles. And then after 20 miles due to signal loss, then what you need to do is to build a repeater. That's where the quantum memory comes in. So the quantum memory from LightSync will allow us to build networks that extend over great distances. Like as an example, our Our hope would be to connect up Chattanooga to Oak Ridge National Labs. That's about 100 miles away. So with today's technology, you would need roughly four repeaters, five repeaters to be able to hit that distance. So LightSync suddenly will allow that to happen in the near future. So that was a critical piece of the puzzle. The other one is in the other acquisition, which is space-based. So, you know, ultimately what you need to do, and you're seeing this now in China, and also the EU has announced a project to start to build this as well, which is to build quantum networks in space from satellite to satellite, and ultimately from satellite to ground station. And so in protecting that with a QKD network as well. And with the acquisition of Capella, it gives us an environment, if you will, to be able to get the hardware working there. Obviously, in space, it's in a very different environment than in your average data center. So it's a harsh environment in making sure. And Capella has the experience for building hardware that works in that environment. And with the goal, ultimately, to take our experience there and then to sell it to other communication satellite companies that want to protect their communication infrastructure. So in some sense, the ID Quantique gave us access to real-world environments in South Korea with SK Telecom. With Cubitech, it gave us access to EPV's network in a real-world environment. And now with Capella giving us access to a real-world environment and space. And so all these things, it's one thing to get it working in a lab. It's another thing to get it working in a busy city with trucks driving over your fiber and all the rest of that. So all these things are about building out the capability and making sure they work in the real world.

Great.

Thanks so much for the help and all the color and the best of luck on the work.

Thanks. Thanks, David. Thank you.

And the next question comes from Quinn Bolton with Needham.

Hey, guys. This is Shadi on for Quinn. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on all the exciting announcements. Starting with the LightSync announcement, you guys highlighted the importance of the quantum repairs, but just curious if there was any other technology or IP that drove the acquisition.

So there's actually multiple aspects here, which is we said it was synergistic to quantum the quantum compute side. And the things that we've done with photonic interconnects before required two photons to come together at exactly the same time. And with this, with quantum memory, it allows the photon to be held for some period of time and to be matched up with the other photon to be able to do entanglement. And so this will also not only for quantum repeaters, but also for our compute strategy in doing distributed quantum computing. So it will increase the throughput of the connectivity of the systems and the error rates that we get therein. And so it's significant kind of from both sides of the house, both from the quantum networking and also from the quantum compute side.

I'd say it's all sides of the house. It works on the ground, it works above the ground, helps our computing roadmap, helps our quantum internet roadmap. So it's really quite a Remarkable synergistic fit for us.

Got it. Yeah, lots of interesting stuff there. And then my follow-up is on the development with EPD. Sounds like the two of you had an established quantum network, which ultimately led to the development of the quantum center. So just curious if IQ can quantify the number of quantum networks it currently has, and then if you're able to talk about who or how many different providers these networks spend.

Yeah, this is Jordan. We today have four quantum networks, including VR acquisition of ID Quantique. And these are serving defense, the US Air Force that we're building. They're serving EPB in the enterprise and energy sector. They're serving SK Telecom and Singtel in South Korea and Singapore, respectively, both in the telecom sector. So a diverse set of customers. and a diverse set of use cases building on top of these quantum networks.

And those are commercial quantum aspects. Obviously, the company itself has other quantum networking up and running internally as well.

Awesome. Thanks for all the color, and congrats on the progress.

Thank you. Thank you. And our next question comes from Tyler Anderson with Craig Hallam Capital.

Hi, guys. This is Tyler Anderson on for Richard Shannon. And congrats on the quarter. So I know LightSync has really good diming quality and error correction capabilities. And I believe they can connect to neutral atoms and ion traps. Could you highlight which modalities they're able to connect to and for which capability you plan on integrating your PICs for? Is this the frequency conversion and then With the error correction capability with your capabilities, is this going to be a Gen 2 device when it comes out?

Great question. This is Dean Kastman.

Hi, Dean.

The diamond kind of memory is based off of diamond silicon vacancies. Those vacancies have long coherence times, which is what makes them kind of attractive for both the computing as well as the networking side. they have been able to mature that technology over the last, I would say, three to five years to where they have been, as you said, been able to look at integrations with multiple modalities. So any modality that needs a photon to be able to transmit over fiber, the overall quantum memory can be used with. And so there is a frequency conversion component to make that work, But the frequency conversion technology that they have is very well matured, it's very robust, and it's very performant. And so at this point, we're looking to leverage both the frequency conversion technology as well as the core quantum memory capabilities into all of our product work, our computing, our photonic interconnects, as well as the networking side.

And if you remember last year at AR Perel, We won a contract to go do a frequency conversion piece and also the optical switch, so just other pieces of the story. And those two were one of the things that we would do with that is to make it work with multiple modalities. So obviously with ions in our modality, but also other modalities as well.

All I would add to that is you raised a strategic question, obviously, behind, I guess, the question up front, which is, you know, licensing standalone business plan is obviously probably different than what it is as part of INQ. So we're going to be prioritizing, of course, our machines and our technical roadmap. You know, I think it's sort of priority one and two will be that, priority three or four, you know, we'll discuss whether or not we want partnerships, you know, with other modalities But most interestingly with LightSync beyond our own quantum computing roadmap is, of course, some of their existing customer partnerships on the networking side and quantum internet side. And a number of those are confidential, but you should assume that they run into the same sorts of customers that Jordan just mentioned a few seconds ago with ID Quantique. They also run into some of the three-letter agency players from Capella. Really quite happy with the strategic flexibility we're getting from this deal as well as the optionality and acceleration we're getting from them as well.

Awesome. And then just very quickly, so I can ask a follow-up, is this going to be a Gen 1 or 2 device for repeater?

I'm not right now ready to speak to the generation of the hardware. We have to go through integration activity of their technology with ours. We already have work internally, and so it's not something I'm speaking to at the moment. How are you defining Gen 1 and Gen 2?

Error correction? Can you guys hear me? Error correction?

Understood. I think we're still communicating that larger product component and the different generations in our upcoming discussion on our networking roadmap.

Great. And then could you highlight how Capella's signals improve your platform? And just noting, I've seen deployments with IDQ and the EU. I'm not sure if you highlighted that one as well, but I believe those are ground stations. And then just noting that the hearing today, highlighted the need for these space capabilities. Could you describe the size and the growth of the space-based network opportunity?

We'll defer, this is Jordan, we'll defer to kind of how we described last quarter, the networking opportunity, which we believe and McKinsey believes, if you read the recent McKinsey report on quantum networking, is just as large as quantum compute. And so we expect some of that to be, you know, land-based, some of that to be space-based.

And I'll just add a little bit, too, which is Capella has an application today which is revenue generating. And, you know, it's commercial, but it's also military. And the military side would like to have secure communications. That would be an added benefit to their capability. So our first kind of, not only will this give us access to an environment to get the hardware to work in space, but it would also give us our first application and first customers to actually validate this in our real world application that's revenue generating.

I think you're spot on that the geopolitics of today's world favor everything INQ is doing. People need sovereign systems. They need local systems. And that's true across all oceans with all friendly governments that we're working with. LightSync is going to help, by the way, our business, you know, I think from my perspective, as you defined it, throughout Gen 1 and Gen 2, right? They're going to be an integral part of our scaling system, you know, henceforth. And you can assume that there is a, you know, a detailed integrated technical roadmap that exists behind the scenes and we'll be revealing more of in due course.

Awesome. Thank you, guys. I'm going to hop back in the camera.

Thank you. And once again, please press star, then 1 if you would like to ask a question. And the next question comes from Alex Platt with DA Davidson.

Yeah, thanks for taking my questions, and congrats, Jordan, on the new role. So I just had two. I guess first, just any updates you could sort of give us on tempo and around the technical roadmaps.

So this is Dean. So the tempo design and development is continuing. Right now, we're actively working on our performance metrics that Niccolo alluded to at the very beginning of the call, our definite work on AQ and fidelity to try to hit those internal targets on those platforms. We're going through engineering design and build of the tempo system. And right now, we're on target for our current delivery plans that we have out there in the market.

Okay, great. That was great. Thank you. And then I guess just secondly, if you could just maybe expand more on the life-sinking Capella acquisitions, maybe how they help accelerate the timeline on some of your sort of longer-term ambitions beyond what you've already mentioned. I mean, quantum networking, internet, I guess, should we view this as you splitting focus on that and quantum computing? Or I guess, is like the networking and internet side maybe the largest opportunity that's sort of achievable in the near term, and that's sort of where the majority of focus is right now.

Alex, this is Jordan, and thanks for the kind words and for the question. The story here is everything is coming together and converging, which is the interesting thing about these acquisitions. The synergies are between compute and networking on ground in space, right? And that is this vision of the quantum internet that we're working towards. So it's this idea that you can connect your quantum computers and and have the compute technology, have the repeaters to take those over large distances, to take them into space as needed. And that's the story that we're looking towards. And it's a balance between both compute and networking, which we view to be incredibly strong markets. And we're making headway in both.

And I'll have to admit, it's a little confusing, and we maybe haven't done a great job at this. Last year, we announced that we were doing quantum networking, but it required two quantum computers to be built. So we announced it as a networking project, but we actually built two quantum computers to network the two quantum computers together. So you're busily pushing the compute side so that you can do the networking. And so networking in this case sometimes means distributed quantum computing across multiple QPUs. or in QKD, where you don't need a quantum computer at either end, and you're doing key distribution. And so sometimes we talk about it, and, you know, you might not give enough detail that says, we'll put it under the label of networking, but actually requires us to build a quantum computer sometimes, depending on the customer.

Yeah, so all I'd add to that is, look, I mean, the business's focus on quantum computing remains, right? So we're determined to be the ultimate ecosystem there. We've expanded our ecosystem to do quantum networking, obviously organically and inorganically. As Jordan mentioned, the quantum internet requires pretty much all the pieces that we've assembled. You need the nodes to be computers. You need repeaters to have any kind of distance between the nodes. You need QKD to be able to actually send information securely. Of course, you need to be able to do that as an integrated communications network on the ground and in the heavens. We continue to lead in our breadth and depth of quantum as a business, and we see growing opportunities in computing and growing opportunities in networking, both short-term, medium-term, and long-term.

That was great. Thanks, guys, and congrats on the quarter.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And we have a follow-up question from Tyler Anderson with Craig Hallam Capital.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my follow-up again. The pulled an acquisition of IDQ, does that benefit your guidance for the year? I recall it was September.

Sorry, can you repeat that?

I recall the latest date was September.

So, our guidance for the year has

included both organic and inorganic growth. We continue to think that we have abilities to both outperform over time, but also that what we're doing right now is fundamentally making us stronger for what's going to be 2026 revenue picture.

This is Jordan.

I just add September was our latest date that we thought the acquisition closed and we had kind of baked in in our internal estimates as a weighted average of what we expect a company like ID2Q to contribute. And so this is always basically to plan for INQ.

Okay, and then I may have heard you wrong on this, so correct me if I'm wrong, but did I hear that EPB purchased half of the computing power? Is that correct? Just a yes or no, and I'll have a follow-up. Okay, and so then, so with that, and we're talking about the quantum network and they're purchasing a computer, so then would that be another computer to be purchased to be connected over the network? And if so, do you have a timeline on that?

So, you know, you have insightfully, you know, to have a quantum network for quantum computing, not not QTD, you need to have two. So Chattanooga now has one, and it'd be nice if somebody else had a second one within distance of Chattanooga, you know, within distance now within repeaters. Up till today, that distance had to be roughly 20 miles, but now it could be several hundred miles away. So I don't have a timeline for that, but clearly, you know, I think there's lots of people, and us included, who would like to see the United States have a demonstration of quantum network using quantum computing and doing distributed quantum computing. And so both locally and nationally and many government agencies I think would like to see that. China has already made great progress there, both in space and in the ground, and we're in the middle of doing catch-up. So we don't have an announcement today, but it's a great insight. Just like anything else, to do quantum networking for compute, you need to have a computer at either end. So having one phone is not useful. Two phones is very useful.

Hey, Tyler, this is Thomas. What this also does is that it's part of our distributed data center strategy. It means that we can service our customers from our data center in College Park, Maryland, or in Seattle. Or we can now also do it out of Tennessee. This gives us additional failover support and capacity.

And we have been traditionally constrained on capacity because we have not had enough compute available for customers. So it's exciting to be able to bring on not only here, but also in Basel to bring on new systems.

Great. And then just one last follow-up, and I'll let you guys be. So for this Quantum network opportunity, would you agree that this is going to be mainly labs, academics, and critical infrastructure to start before we see broader adoption?

No, I'll jump in on that one. No, we're now starting to see some of the leading companies in the world to start seriously looking at building networks with QKD to secure them. As you saw in my introductory notes, is as we get closer to breaking encryption, this will become something that everyone will have to do. And so what we have seen, and we're not very good at this as a species, is sometimes being able to predict how quickly something pops into existence. I don't think many people expected OpenAI to do what they did, and suddenly it was here. And so my guess is that There will be a breakthrough in breaking encryption, and then everyone will go, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do? So leading companies now are starting to invest in kind of building out a quantum network. And so we see great potential there.

And, Tyler, this is Jordan. Of the four deployments of quantum networks that I mentioned, three of those are enterprise. So that should give you some impression of it.

Yeah, look, just in general, we're not in the business of sort of theory and R&D here on its own for the sake of it, right? So everything we do here is commercial. Everything we do here has customer demand. We announce significant contracts. We announce what we can. Obviously, we don't announce what we can't and what is confidential or protected for national security reasons or otherwise. But I think it's safe to say that what we're building at INQ doesn't exist anywhere else, even though pieces – might, we've stitched this together, you know, rapidly as a whole, as a intact vision, and we're a big enough company to pursue all of these growth factors in parallel, right? So nothing's, you know, the exclusion of anything else, and it's not splitting focus. It's all an integrated whole here. And the company's headcount's obviously grown from about 35 people when I first met Peter to, you know, around about 800 today, right? And so as our balance sheet grows and our headcount grows, of course, the vision has expanded a long way. But we're excited about the inbound interest that we receive. We're also, of course, watching moves of big tech companies, you know, and bigger tech companies alike as they watch what we're building here turn into a reality that will pressure, you know, core business lines for some of them and create new markets for all of us that we intend to lead in.

Awesome. Well, thank you, guys. I'm very happy we're saying repeater on the call. Congratulations on everything, and congratulations, Jordan.

Thank you.

We'll see you at the next launch. Looking forward to it.

Thank you. And this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Nicola DeMasi for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Well, I want to thank everyone for joining us on our call today. And, of course, I want to thank our team for all of their hard work and our shareholders for their support. We look forward to speaking with you soon and updating the entire financial community on our next earnings call.

Thank you and have a good afternoon.