Quantum Computing Inc.

Quantum Computing Inc.

5.88
EUR
-0.01
(-0.17%)
-0.06EPS
Nov 18Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptMarch 2, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, greetings, and welcome to the Quantum Computing Inc. Fourth Quarter 2025 Shareholder Update Call.

At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad.

Please note, this conference is being recorded. Following management's remarks, the call line will be opened for questions.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Roz Christian with IMS Investor Relations.

Roz Christian

Thank you. I want to welcome everyone to the Quantum Computing Inc.

fourth quarter and full-year 2025 shareholder update call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements based on our current expectations and projections regarding future events, and are subject to change based on various important factors.

In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this call. For more details on factors that could affect these expectations, please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

On the call today, we have Dr. Yuping Huang, CEO and Chairman, and Chris Roberts, CFO.

The team will provide an update on the business, followed by a question-and-answer session. With that, I would like to turn the call over to management.

Please go ahead, Yuping.

Yuping Huang

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Quantum Computing Inc.' s fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings call.

2025 was a transformational year for QCI. We made meaningful progress advancing our strategy to build a vertically integrated photonics and quantum optics platform capable of supporting scalable commercial applications across AI, high-performance computing, cyber security, and remote sensing.

Over the course of the year, we achieved several key milestones. We completed and opened our thin-film lithium niobate photonic chip fabrication facility, marking an important step towards domestic, scalable production of high-performance, specialized photonic integrated circuits.

We continued to expand our foundry services business, which has now begun to generate early revenue and customer engagement, and we are in planning phase for our second fabrication facility, which is what we call Fab 2. We strengthened our leadership team and board, adding experienced director and executives with deep expertise in scaling advanced technology companies and driving both organic and inorganic growth.

I was appointed CEO effective January 1, 2026, after serving as interim CEO since May 2025. We welcomed Chris Roberts as our new Chief Financial Officer, and Eric Schradt as a new independent board member.

Each brings deep expertise and execution focus as we scale the business. Importantly, we recently completed the acquisition of Luminar Semiconductor, Inc., or LSI, which enhances our design, fabrication, and packaging capabilities, and accelerates our path to scalable manufacturing.

LSI also contributes a established customer base and steady revenue to the combined organization. Those accomplishments reflect the steady execution of our long-term strategy and position us well as demand for energy-efficient, room-temperature photonic and quantum solutions continue to grow.

Turning into the fourth quarter, revenue in the quarter reflects early contributions from our foundry service business and increasing customer engagement across our product portfolio. As many of QCI operates Fab 1 as a rapid prototyping facility dedicated to thin-film lithium niobate photonic integrated circuits in support of our quantum machine development roadmap.

This facility is not intended to serve as a large-scale commercial production foundry. It does generate revenue by providing foundry services to our customers, but mainly functions as a internal innovation engine that feeds validated designs and process knowledge into downstream manufacturing partners as technologies mature.

Fab 1 enables rapid design, fabrication, test iteration cycles for advanced photonic devices centered to QCI's quantum architectures. It allows us to explore novel thin-film lithium niobate-based components, validate system-level concept, and de-risk emerging designs ahead of volume manufacturing.

Fab 2 is intended to provide a domestic, vertically integrated processing capability to support QCI's internal technology roadmap, particularly the development and scaling of our photonic quantum machines and quantum-enabled systems. It will focus on producing specialized quantum and nanophotonic chips, and will complement, not compete with, the broader silicon photonics ecosystem.

We expect to engage external foundries as partners as technologies scale. By combining internal vertical integration with external foundry partnerships, QCI aims to strengthen supply chain resilience, accelerate innovation, and support the responsible scaling of advanced photonic and quantum technologies.

In December 2025, we announced the acquisition of LSI, which closed in February 2026. This subsidiary brings an existing customer base and additional semiconductor capabilities that expands our addressable market and strengthen our ability to deliver integrated photonic solutions at scale.

Integration efforts are underway, and we are focused on aligning teams, processes, and customer programs to accelerate growth in 2026 and beyond. From a product perspective, we continued advancing our quantum authentication and networking technologies, as well as our Dirac platform and remote sensing initiatives, which remain areas of strong interest across government and commercial customers.

In the fourth quarter, we also unveiled our photonics-based reservoir computing system, Neurawave, at Supercomputing 2025. Neurawave represents a significant milestone as it is designed to integrate with existing computing infrastructure and address emerging AI workloads with improved energy efficiency.

We also announced a strategic collaboration with POET Technologies to develop next-generation high-speed thin-film lithium niobate modulator-based optical engines designed to support AI network infrastructure. Importantly, we continue to expand our global reach through continued industry engagement.

We recently participated in many conferences, which just in the fourth quarter included Optical Quantum Industry Summit, Supercomputing, and Q2B Silicon Valley. Finally, during the year, we formalized and communicated a focused, multi-year technology roadmap, which is available on our website.

This roadmap is centered on scalable room-temperature photonic and quantum products, systems, and solutions. Our vision is to bring quantum technology into real-world applications.

That means putting the power of quantum technology into the hands of people by moving it out of the laboratory and into enterprise, government, commercial, and consumer environments through chip-integrated, low-power, deployable systems. At the core of our roadmap are three capabilities that define our platform: capture, compute, communicate.

Capture information through quantum sensing and photonic data acquisition; compute through photonic and quantum processing systems, including our Dirac platform and photonic AI capabilities; communicate through quantum-secured networking, authentication, and encryption technologies. This framework aligns our product development, manufacturing strategy, and go-to-market efforts around delivering practical, scalable, quantum-enabled products and systems.

Importantly, this roadmap represents our transition from a development-stage company to a commercial, manufacturing-driven platform business. We are evolving from a technology innovator into a company capable of delivering repeatable, high-performance photonic and quantum hardware at an industrial scale.

Our differentiation remains clear. Unlike cryogenic quantum systems, our platform is built on thin-film lithium niobate photonics, enabling room-temperature operation, lower power consumption, smaller form factors, and lower total cost of ownership, which we believe are critical for broad adoption.

As we progress our chip manufacturing capabilities over time, we expect to support global deployment of chip-integrated quantum systems across high-performance computing, telecom, defense, space, and enterprise markets. Our roadmap is designed to move QCI from innovation to industrial-scale production, positioning us to deliver practical quantum technologies that are accessible, scalable, and commercially viable.

Overall, we exited 2025 with a strong balance sheet supported by significant capital raised during the year, a growing commercial foundation through foundry services and product development, a expanded technology platform following the integration of LSI, and a clear path toward scaling revenue through a combination of semiconductor services and quantum-enabled products. Like many companies across the broader technology, AI, and quantum sectors, we have experienced recent volatility in our share price, which we believe reflects broader market conditions rather than any change in our underlying business performance or long-term outlook.

Our focus remains squarely on executing our strategy, advancing our technology roadmap, and building a sustainable commercial business. We believe the long-term fundamentals for photonics, quantum technology, and AI infrastructure remain strong, and we are well positioned within these trends.

With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Chris Roberts.

Chris Roberts

Thank you, Yuping. Revenue for the fourth quarter totaled approximately $198,000, compared to $62,000 in the prior-year quarter.

The year-over-year increase was driven primarily by hardware sales and services associated with our Fab 1 facility, which began contributing revenue during the fourth quarter. As we previously mentioned, we completed the acquisition of Luminar Semiconductor, Inc.

in February 2026. We expect this business to begin contributing revenue in the first quarter of '26.

Operating expenses for the fourth quarter totaled $22.1 million, compared to $8.9 million in the same quarter last year. The increase in operating expenses is the result of substantial growth in personnel for research and development, engineering, manufacturing, and sales and marketing as we position the company for long-term growth.

M&A expenses in the fourth quarter also contributed to the higher expenses. We are scaling our organization across the board to support this expansion, including all functional areas of the company.

As a result, SG&A is expected to grow in the near term as we invest in the resources and personnel necessary to advance our technology and execution capabilities. The company reported a net loss of $1.6 million for the fourth quarter, or $0.01 loss per share, compared to a net loss of $51.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024.

The decrease in net loss this quarter was primarily due to a gain of $7 million from the mark-to-market of the derivative liability, plus interest income of $13.6 million. For the year ended December 31, 2025, the company reported a net loss of $18.7 million, or $0.11 per share, compared to a loss of $68.5 million, or $0.73 per share, in the year ended December 31st, 2024.

As Yuping mentioned earlier, we continued to strengthen our balance sheet during the fourth quarter. In October, we announced that QCI entered into securities purchase agreements with a group of institutional investors for the purchase and sale of 37 million shares of common stock in a private placement, resulting in gross proceeds of $750 million before deducting offering expenses.

That brings the total of capital raised in 2025 to $1.55 billion. As a result, we ended the year with cash and cash equivalents of $738 million and investments of $783 million on our balance sheet, roughly $1.52 billion in total.

Our interest income for the 2025 year was $20.7 million, a substantial increase from $423,000 in 2024. As of December 31st, 2025, total assets stood at $1.6 billion, up from $154 million at year-end 2024.

Stockholders' equity rose to $1.6 billion at 2025 year-end, reflecting our strengthened financial position. Now, I'll turn the meeting back over to Yuping.

Yuping Huang

Thank you, Chris. As we look ahead to 2026, our priorities are clear: scaling our foundry services business and increasing customer engagements; advancing our product portfolio toward broader commercialization; successfully integrating LSI and capturing synergies across our platform; and continue to execute with discipline while preserving capital.

We are building a differentiated technology platform based on room-temperature, low-power photonic and quantum solutions, and we believe QCI is uniquely positioned to address growing demand for energy-efficient computing, secure communications, and advanced sensing technologies. We appreciate the continued support of our shareholders, customers, and partners, and we look forward to updating you on our progress through 2026.

Thank you. With that, we will now open the call for questions.

Operator, please go ahead.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session.

If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue.

You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys.

One moment please while we poll for questions. Once again, please press star one if you have a question or comment.

The first question comes from John McPeake with Rosenblatt Securities. Please proceed.

John McPeake

Thank you, Yuping and Chris. Congrats on closing the LSI acquisition.

Yuping Huang

Thank you.

John McPeake

Just wanted to make sure you guys could hear me for a second there.

Yuping Huang

You

John McPeake

great. You have a step function revenue change happening here.

Could you just remind us of the LSI revenues, how we should think about that going forward? Also, their expenses a little bit as we try to take a stab at updating our models here.

First question.

Yuping Huang

Chris, would you take this question?

Chris Roberts

Sure, I'd be happy to. John, I've seen a couple of analyst reports.

Let me back up. As we're not in the habit of giving revenue guidance, I want to make clear that we're not doing that now.

However, I understand the question and there've been several analyst reports that have indicated that or projected that revenue would be in the $20 to $25 million per year range, and I think that's a reasonable estimate right now. In terms of costs, we have some work to do with LSI.

This is a company we acquired out of the Luminar technology bankruptcy and they had a different shared services model. We're reconstructing some things.

Probably not going to be profitable at this scale, but we're working on realigning and integrating the businesses. We really don't want to be too specific at this point because we're trying to grow both the core LSI business and the QCI business and develop synergistic products.

There's a lot of spending that's going on around there. I think it's safe to say that we'll be investing a fair amount of money in growing the business.

We're not going to be trying to squeeze every nickel out of profitability in the near term.

John McPeake

Okay. That's fair enough.

I just have a follow-up on TFLN number two. You got some fabs with LSI.

Could you give us a sense, do you think you're going to be able to colocate with one of those fabs? When should we think about the expenses, the capex, etc.

kicking in for TFLN 2? Maybe, I don't know if you can gauge what that might be, typically of the size you're thinking about.

That's all I got.

Chris Roberts

That's a really good question, John. In terms of colocating, let me take this in steps.

The current facility we have for Fab 1 is about 9,000 9,600 square feet, and it's not possible to put Fab 2 in the same area.

John McPeake

It's just

Chris Roberts

the space isn't there, it's not really set up that way. What we're looking for is a larger facility.

Whether we end up doing a build-to-suit or acquire an existing facility and modify it, we're looking we're exploring multiple options. We're not likely to incur large costs this year because we have a lot of design and evaluation work to do.

The larger costs would be two and three years out.

John McPeake

The

Chris Roberts

cost really hard to estimate at this point in time. Obviously, it's going to be several hundred million dollars to build any kind of sizeable fab.

It's too early right now to be able to give you a hard number. We're still in the design and development phase, and we've engaged some experienced design firms and we're just beginning the process.

I don't have a hard number for you at this point. Nothing substantial is likely to happen in terms of capex outlays this year.

John McPeake

Okay. That's helpful.

I think for us, thank you. I'll pass it along.

Chris Roberts

Sure thing.

Operator

The next question comes from Mark Michaelis with Lake Street. Please proceed.

Mark Michaelis

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.

I just want to go back to the Luminar acquisition that was made. You mentioned $20 to $25 million of revenue.

Can you help us out in terms of that 2026 revenue versus 2025? Is it at least growing, or how should we think about that?

Chris Roberts

We are expecting some growth. It's a little early at this point to say how much, but we can say the initial customer reaction to the acquisition has been positive.

We QCI acquiring Luminar brings stability and substantial financial resources to the business, which their existing customer base greatly appreciated. We have been working closely with the Luminar sales team to reassure their customers and drive some additional business.

We're hoping to at least stabilize and hopefully grow the business this year.

Mark Michaelis

Okay.

Yuping Huang

Max, if I may, I wanted to add that, in fact, right now we're about four weeks into the acquisition, we have already seen very good momentum.

Mark Michaelis

That's good to hear. Doesn't sound like nothing really to do on Fab 2 in 2026.

If we look out this year, what are the critical or the crucial milestones you guys are looking to hit, if you can help share, sort of maybe from an internal perspective of you guys?

Yuping Huang

Yep. The first one is to successfully integrate Luminar Semi.

I think we have made pretty good progress so far, I'm actually very pleased with where we are now. As Max, we are a quantum company, but all of our products and technology are based on optics and photonics.

What's nice is that our team members across the US already speak the same language, and the synergy is already high. In fact, in some areas, the synergies are higher than what I initially expected.

Several cross-site collaborations are already underway, and the combined, larger team is pursuing large-scale opportunities that would have not been possible without us joined forces. For 2026, the number one task is that we successfully integrate the team now that with our head count doubled, and with our product portfolio largely expanded.

The second is that we will continue to push our quantum product portfolio. As I said on the call, we are really focused on transitioning from a technology innovator to a company capable of scalable manufacturing of quantum products based on photonics and our integrated circuits.

As we outlined in our roadmap that we have published online, we do have plan to roll out several products across computing, sensing, AI, and our thin-film lithium niobate chips. The third would be that, we hope to continue to grow our team so that we can move up to the system-level engineering for quantum devices.

We are very happy to have now lots of engineers and manufacturing technicians join us from the Luminar Semi acquisition. The next step is that, now we have the expertise in many aspects now in the same room, how fast we can move to the manufacturing of quantum products above the subsystem level, above the component level.

Chris Roberts

Thank you.

Yuping Huang

Thank you, Max.

Operator

The next question comes from Antoine Legault with Wedbush Securities. Please proceed.

Antoine Legault

Thank you for the question. Yuping, as you mentioned, the various, potential addressable markets, across you mentioned quantum computing, sensing, AI, and thin-film lithium niobate, where do you see the largest, the most immediately addressable markets or use cases, and which market or submarket are you most excited about this year?

Yuping Huang

For this year, I think thin-film lithium niobate is an area that I feel particularly excited. As you may recall, we constructed our fab last year and then we commissioned all the tools last fall.

Since then, we have made prototype chips. We have also utilized our resources to develop and refine recipes and the fabrication processes.

Now, we are really in the phase of locking down the processes and we're ready to ramp up the manufacturing. All of our current products now are designed to utilize this integrated photonic chip technology, which will make our products smaller, powerful, ready to be produced at scale.

I'm very excited to see what could happen with the thin-film lithium niobate production line. In the meanwhile, now we are ramping up our quantum communications development and commercialization following the sale of a system to a top-five US bank last year.

I believe that quantum communications, because this technology really address a network security issue that concerns almost everybody. If we can lower the enter point for this quantum technology, it could be one of the very first quantum technology that can be adopted by large population.

Antoine Legault

Thank you. That's very helpful.

Last one for me, if I may. I know you recently completed the acquisition of LSI for just over $100 million.

You clearly still have a lot of cash on the balance sheet and you have the ability to pursue strategic M&A. Are there any particular areas of interest or focus on the M&A front as you look ahead to 2026?

Thank you.

Yuping Huang

Yep, we have been following a very disciplined approach to M&A. Our strategy has been that the acquisition should accelerate our roadmap as we published on our website and while being able to help build our customer base.

The Luminar Semi acquisition has been a move along this direction because it really help fill some technology gaps that we had. I think the next move of us is to accelerate our roadmap on the scalable manufacturing.

We hope to quickly establish mass production capabilities for some of our quantum machines.

Operator

Okay. The next question comes from Edward Woo with Ascendiant.

Please proceed.

Edward Woo

Congratulations on the Luminar acquisition. My question is, is that going to make you guys much more exposed to international business?

Chris Roberts

Let me take this one. At the present time, the bulk of the customer base is domestic.

There's a lot of US government contracts and business in the aerospace and defense field. Your I think your larger point is that photonics technology has a global market.

We will look at opportunities overseas. We do source supplies and parts from overseas.

In terms of pursuing a large overseas market, that will come in time, but in the near term I would anticipate that the bulk of our revenue is going to be from domestic sources, certainly for the next few quarters.

Edward Woo

Great. Thanks for answering my questions, and I wish you guys good luck.

Thank you.

Chris Roberts

Thank you, Ed. Appreciate your support.

Operator

The next question is from Troy Jensen with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed.

Troy Jensen

Hey gentlemen, congrats on a great '25. Just maybe

Chris Roberts

a

Troy Jensen

question here for you. My belief, you guys are probably a couple years away from commercializing a photonic space, kind of quantum computer, all-in.

Near-term, there's a lot of other cool applications in sensing. Could you talk to us a little bit about what you're doing there?

Is this an area that can inflect quicker? Maybe, do you guys have exposure to security applications, too, with quantum?

Thank you.

Yuping Huang

Thank you, Troy. I believe that general-purpose quantum computing is still some time further down the road, and this applies to all the approaches in terms of the practical utilities.

On the other hand, I believe that there are some applications where specialized quantum computers can be find significant utilities without having to construct gate-based, large-scale quantum computers. This is actually a area that we have been working on in our Dirac series quantum optimization machine, where we have seen that in many use cases, they already establish appreciable quantum advantages there.

In terms of the remote sensing at QCI, we mainly commercialize our proprietary technology in single-photon detection added by the noise rejection by what we have developed over the past 10 years using nonlinear optics and our way of using time-gated photon detection to reduce the background noise. Far, we have commercialized a photonic vibrometer, which can measure very small amplitude vibration remotely.

In the meanwhile, we have worked with NASA, as we announced in the past, to explore some quantum sensing technology suitable for space deployment and in some cases for earth science applications. We are continuing such research and development.

Now, with the addition of Luminar Semi team, we are looking at other optical sensing and quantum sensing opportunities by utilizing their laser technology, their detector technology, and their very strong optical packaging capabilities. This is what we're working on the sensing side.

Troy Jensen

Gotcha. All right, guys.

Good luck this year.

Yuping Huang

Thank you, Troy.

Chris Roberts

Thank you.

Operator

I would now like to turn the floor back to management for any closing remarks.

Yuping Huang

Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining and participating in today's call.

I encourage you to follow us on our social media channels, where we regularly post updates and insights into our business and technology. Should you have any questions, please reach out to the investor relations team.

Have a good rest of your day. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.