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00:00Niccolò Di Massi joins me in the studio and it's so interesting to be digesting your numbers
00:05via INQ because we're forever going, quantum's coming, coming, but next decade, next two
00:10decades.
00:11Here and now, numbers are really surprising people to the upside.
00:14What's driving it?
00:16I've said for a long time it's here and now.
00:18That's our slogan at INQ, quantum is now.
00:20We were the first quantum company in history to reach eight figures of revenue, we're the
00:24first to hit nine figures of revenue, my aspiration is to be the first to hit ten figures of
00:28revenue later in the decade.
00:30It's actually our whole business is inflecting, so quantum computing, quantum networking,
00:35quantum sensing, quantum security, we've just seen customers in the market coming towards
00:39us.
00:40Those customers though, who are those customers?
00:42Because we've seen you do government contracts, for example, with potential there, but who
00:47wants your technology in-house right now?
00:50Absolutely.
00:51So we announced last night, yesterday, that 60% of our customers are commercial, they're
00:56very global in nature.
00:57A lot of them are taking multiple products from us.
01:01So we talked about how in both in Switzerland, and in Illinois, and in Tennessee, we have
01:06customers taking quantum networked computers.
01:09We have quantum sensing customers also on both sides of the Atlantic.
01:13And I'd say that quantum security is obviously something that, you know, the Davos that was
01:17the last month, it's tip of the tongue now, because people are realizing that the asymmetry
01:21of brands being tarnished, companies being kind of existentially hacked, is, you know, avoidable
01:28with relatively modest investments with INQ, quantum key distribution, and post-quantum
01:33cryptography.
01:35Talk to us about what, therefore, you're solving for them.
01:37In the era of security, for example, everyone's deeply worried about what encryption is going
01:41to fall away because of quantum computing.
01:43How are you servicing some of those customers that are already buying your technology?
01:47Yep.
01:47So quantum key distribution, and we recommend layered security.
01:50So we offer multiple layers of post-quantum cryptography, if you will.
01:55Some of it's in the hardware.
01:56We call it quantum key distribution, and that is literally switches routers that fit on fiber
01:59optic cables, protect your data center, protect the core of your systems.
02:03Then there's a software solution, post-quantum cryptography.
02:06We recommend both to cover as much of your customer base, your employees, your data center
02:10as possible.
02:12And I've been saying consistently that, you know, the era of quantum is coming sooner than
02:15people think, and it's coming exponentially faster than people think, because it's not
02:19just Moore's law.
02:20Every time we add a large little qubit, it doubles the compute space.
02:22So it actually is going to race away at an exponential path on kind of a monthly, quarterly
02:28basis, not an every two years basis.
02:31It feels as though, in many ways, Agentec AI is doing the same thing.
02:34It's coming slowly, slowly, all at once.
02:36So what is the tipping point for you that shows that quantum is there all at once?
02:40I think this earnings call is clearly a tipping point in the sense that over the $100 million
02:45gap revenue mark for the first time in any company in quantum history, we've just guided
02:49to do approximately double that in 2026.
02:52And we've said that organic growth last year was 80%.
02:55We said organic growth in 26 will be even higher than 80%, right?
02:59And so if you carry on doubling, it doesn't take long till, you know, you are a really
03:03sizable business.
03:05Although I will point out that, look, there was a day when, you know, business like NVIDIA
03:09had revenue like ours.
03:10And now they are truly enormous.
03:12And it's all happened in five years, right?
03:13So these exponential curves can get large really quickly.
03:18And I think that there was realization that, look, you know, as we keep investing, and we're
03:23investing not just for INQ, we're investing for the whole U.S. quantum industry.
03:26We just spent $1.8 billion, you know, announcing acquisition with Skywater.
03:30It's the U.S. quantum foundry.
03:32We're going to be using our capital to invest for the whole good of, frankly, the Western
03:36world, the U.S. and our allies, because we see this as a geopolitical race that we want
03:40to make sure that we prevail in as a nation.
03:42It feels as though it's a geopolitical race when it comes to AI, generative AI as well.
03:46I'm assuming you're talking about U.S. versus China in particular.
03:49Go to the generative AI opportunity for quantum, because what everyone is seeing, I mean, as
03:55you say, the numbers on NVIDIA have been inflecting and are extraordinary at the moment, even though
03:59the market doesn't particularly like it on the day.
04:01I'm interested in what quantum computing can do in terms of the energy needs, the power
04:05needs, some of the other bottlenecks that we're worried around AI.
04:07For sure.
04:08So, look, there are a lot of quantum algorithms we're already demonstrating.
04:12Quick, time to solutions on.
04:13And I talked about time to solution yesterday.
04:15We're faster than everybody else in the market because we have higher fidelity in our machines.
04:19Talk about that.
04:19Why?
04:20Oh, we picked a scientific pathway 30 years ago.
04:23We were the first to build the world's first quantum logic, 8995.
04:27We've been building on that ever since.
04:28It's kind of like ASML.
04:29Been plugging away the same thing for 30 years.
04:31Eventually, everyone realizes that these engineering improvements are really stacking up.
04:35That's what we've been delivering on.
04:37And so, we've been running applications for five years.
04:39Machines turned on eight years ago.
04:40We've been on the public cloud since 2020.
04:43So, we're all about open ecosystem.
04:44We want everyone to use our software, hardware, sensing, networking solutions, and so on, and
04:50computing solutions.
04:50And as we keep unlocking applications, more and more customers are realizing that we're
04:56providing advantage now.
04:58In financial industry, in their particular vectors?
05:00Pharmaceutical, material, financial services, of course, defense and intelligence.
05:05Also, logistics.
05:06If you have scale, right, and a complex business, we can help.
05:11And if you have scale and we can help even 1%, 10%, 15%, 5% improvements, these are really
05:18material to a big business and a big, meaty problem.
05:20If you have scale, you might already be using IBM at the moment.
05:25And IBM's talking a lot about its quantum offering and the fact, by 2029, they have a
05:28really useful quantum computer that you can be using.
05:31How do you think about the competition?
05:33Because at the moment, you say, look, you're building for the entire industry here.
05:36Yeah.
05:36So, IBM's a vertical stack.
05:38They make their own hardware as well.
05:40You know, we're providing a foundry in what we call merchant supply services for both
05:43ourselves and the whole industry.
05:44We supply atomic clocks, we supply photonic interconnects, and we supply quantum chips
05:49effectively in foundry in a trusted, secure environment.
05:52You know, absolutely, there are competitors out there.
05:56We fancy our chances, given that we've raised $3.5 billion in the last year.
05:59We're investing prodigiously in R&D.
06:02We also have the pedigree.
06:03And, of course, we have a complete platform, which is unique.
06:05Nobody else is doing every bit of quantum and stitching these solutions together.
06:09And so we're winning bigger engagements.
06:11And customers are coming back and buying more and more of a roadmap on a multi-generational
06:16basis.
06:17Typically, you know, it might be winner takes all.
06:20But in the tech world, it's winner takes a lot or winner takes most, right?
06:24So, you know, we will continue to invest aggressively.
06:27And we will continue also to make sure that strategic acquisitions are part of our growth
06:31strategy.
06:31Although we've talked about the fact that we've done a lot in 2025.
06:342025 will be, you know, mostly powered by organic growth.
06:38You know, nevertheless, I think when you look at the future of quantum, you can see that
06:43the chances of it running through our systems, which are the lowest in cost for the unit of
06:48power with the fastest time to solution.
06:50So you get answers that are accurate much faster than everybody else.
06:53And we talked on our call yesterday about how our time to solution compared to some other
06:57companies in the marketplace can be a thousand times faster.
07:00It can even be 10,000 times faster.
07:01And that's what commercial customers are seeing, real utility when they come to pay
07:05us for computational engineering through to pharmaceutical advancements.
07:09Customers of ours that want to be five years ahead of their competitors, they are flocking
07:13to us, as is talent in the industry, because they know this is really working with a low
07:18risk glide path to full fault tolerance.
07:20Let's talk about flocking and talk real numbers here, because we like to use NVIDIA as an example.
07:27But NVIDIA had, say, $4 billion of net income per year three years ago, and it now has $120 billion.
07:35What are your numbers at the moment?
07:36Where do you see your numbers going?
07:38Yeah, I mean, look, I think that there's plenty of room between the $60 billion they reported
07:44yesterday for their quarter and the 60-something million that we reported, right?
07:48I think everybody recognizes that the next leg up in computing is going to heavily involve
07:54quantum processing units.
07:55We believe it's going to be at the edge and on-premise, and we can also supply a complete
08:00data center solution, so through the cloud, and we sell all of those solutions today, and
08:03we have been for a number of years.
08:06I think there's going to be hybrid workflows.
08:08So we had a partnership last year with NVIDIA and AstraZeneca and Amazon Web Services over
08:14computational drug design.
08:15You're going to see more and more of that happen on a monthly, quarterly, annual basis
08:19and speed things up by factors of 10, hopefully someday factors of 100, factors of 1,000.
08:26There are parts of what quantum computing does that will never replace banner ad, microsecond
08:31latency for banner ad correlations.
08:33They're very good at that.
08:34We're focused on actually turning problems that take the world's fastest supercomputer between
08:39100 years and 1,000 or 1,000 billion years and making those things happen in hours and
08:44days, and so I would like to remind all of our friends in all governments where quantum
08:49is increasingly a top-five priority, right?
08:51I mean, President Trump is a big supporter of quantum, and we are grateful for his support,
08:56Secretary Wright, Secretary Hegseth, Secretary Lutnik.
08:58Everyone is on the same hymn sheet around the fact that this is existential because we're
09:03turning problems that you can't solve into ones you can, and ultimately it's a massive
09:07job crater too, right?
09:08There's no one working on problems you can't solve with supercomputers that have GPUs in them.
09:13And QPUs are working on problems they'll never solve.
09:15So by definition, it's all job creation.
09:18You have a great way of having green light, green light, green light.
09:21What are the bottlenecks?
09:23What are the areas of regulatory risk?
09:25Or indeed, perhaps just things that hold back the growth that you currently are talking about?
09:30Well, look, I think the main obstacle to mass market quantum computing is similar to what
09:36it was for AI, which is people need to learn to use it in their workflows.
09:39So these forward-deployed engineers, training programs, we do a lot with universities because
09:45we want people to learn on the INQ ecosystem, stay on the INQ ecosystem.
09:49And there is, of course, a growing employment opportunity here.
09:53INQ, when I first met them in 2019, had 35 people, right?
09:58When we close Skywater, hopefully later than a year, we'll be over 3,000.
10:01So it's a factor of 100 growth in five, six years.
10:04Yeah, of course.
10:05All sorts of jobs, software, hardware, you know, you name it.
10:07Is the talent there in the universities that you need?
10:09You know, people rise to the occasion.
10:12And that's the beauty of capitalism and labor markets in general is people see money opportunity,
10:17they train, they learn, they do postdocs and PhDs that are relevant.
10:20We take mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, you know, you name it.
10:24We have PhDs in almost every bit of the science sphere because we also need domain expertise.
10:28So it's not just quantum computing, but it's how do you apply that to protein folding?
10:32That's useful for, you know, solving different pieces of the cancer conundrum, for example.
10:38And the same is true in material science and pieces of defense intelligence.
10:40So we really have a huge need.
10:43And I bet the next few years the number of people working in quantum will grow by another factor of
10:4710.
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