IonQ (IONQ) 2026年第三季法說會：營收激增 336%，調升財測指引

重點摘要

• IonQ 公布 2026 年第三季營收達創紀錄的 1.738 億美元，年增 336%，創下連續第六個季度營收改寫歷史新高的紀錄。
• IonQ Platform 營收達 9,030 萬美元，年增 127%；SkyWater 晶圓代工服務在收購完成後的兩個月內貢獻了 8,350 萬美元。
• 該公司將 2026 全年營收指引從 4.5 億至 4.6 億美元上調至 5.05 億至 5.15 億美元。管理層亦預期 2026 年量子運算營收成長率將超過 110%。
• 截至本季末，剩餘履約義務達 12 億美元，其中 6.89 億美元來自 IonQ Platform，4.79 億美元來自 SkyWater。
• 調整後 EBITDA 為負 1.336 億美元。管理層預期隨著整合工作的推進，第四季虧損將較上一季改善。
• IonQ 表示，2027 年 Superion 256 的產能已售罄。該公司正在擴大系統製造產能，並已開始排入 2028 年的訂單。

核心財務數據

業務與營運表現

在全球部署以及 Tempo 與 Superion 256 系統合約的推動下，量子運算仍是 IonQ Platform 成長最快的產品線。IonQ 表示，2027 年 Superion 256 的產能已售罄，而市場需求已開始排入 2028 年的訂單簿。

商業客戶約佔 IonQ Platform 營收的 65%，國際客戶約佔 35%，多產品客戶約佔 40%。其中一個例子是與南韓 SDT 簽署的一項價值 3,300 萬美元的協議，涵蓋一套 Superion 256 量子電腦與量子網路記憶體解決方案。

IonQ 已晉級至美國國防高等研究計劃署（DARPA）「量子基準測試倡議」的 C 階段。該公司表示，它是唯一進入最終階段的離子阱技術參與者，該計畫的潛在價值高達 3 億美元。

該公司還特別強調，計劃在輝達（NVIDIA）的加速量子研究中心部署 Superion 256。管理層預期該系統將支援 GPU 與 QPU 混合工作流程的研究，並預計於 2027 年初期安裝階段進行部署。

量子感測亦帶來額外動能。IonQ 獲得 DARPA 一筆價值 2,800 萬美元的合約，初步採購 25 具次世代原子鐘，並附帶另外 100 具的選擇權。該公司在 7 月至第三季末期間共簽署了九份感測合約。

SkyWater 在計入 IonQ 合併財報的兩個月內貢獻了 8,350 萬美元營收。若扣除與 IonQ 相關的營收，其量子晶圓代工營收年增超過 30%。此外，IonQ 亦延長了與 D-Wave 的協議，並與一家新的量子晶圓代工客戶簽署了多年期合約。

SkyWater 已加快內部製造進度。IonQ 表示，整合後的營運使 256 量子位元晶片的晶圓批次交付量提高 12 倍，並將下線試產（tape-out）週期縮短逾三倍。該公司預期，更高的代工產能利用率和製造規模將隨著時間推移支撐利潤率改善。

在量子安全方面，IonQ 表示收購 Elicity 為其增加了約 100 家企業客戶以及基於身分的微分段能力。此前，IonQ 在收購 ID Quantique 後已增加 125 家量子安全客戶。管理層預期軟體與經常性營收在安全產品組合中的重要性將日益提升。

管理層指引

IonQ 將 2026 全年營收指引從 4.5 億至 4.6 億美元上調至 5.05 億至 5.15 億美元。管理層表示，這將使 IonQ 成為首家公佈年度 GAAP 營收達約 5 億美元的純量子運算公司。

該公司目前預期 2026 年量子運算營收成長率將超過 110%，高於先前的成長展望。

針對第四季，管理層預期調整後 EBITDA 將較第三季虧損的 1.336 億美元有所改善。公司並未提供具體的第四季調整後 EBITDA 預估區間。

邁入 2027 年，管理層計劃優先推動具獲利能力的成長。相關措施包括嚴守定價紀律、提高銷售生產力、推進收購整合、據點合理化以及後勤系統整合。公司表示，這些措施旨在不損及其成長軌跡的前提下進行。

風險與關注焦點

• 以調整後 EBITDA 衡量，IonQ 仍處於虧損狀態，並持續在研發、商業化與製造產能方面投入重金。
• 整合 SkyWater 在第三季產生了約 4,000 萬美元的一次性一般及行政費用（G&A）。管理層亦指出，仍有重疊的系統與營運據點需要進一步進行整合工作。
• Superion 256 在 2027 年的產能目前已售罄。管理層稱此為暫時現象，並表示產能將會擴大，但具體執行仍取決於整機系統製造規模的擴張與試車運轉。
• 第三季淨利主要受到 8.96 億美元非現金認股權證估值收益的推動，管理層表示這並不反映實際的營運表現。
• 政府計畫的時間與價值、未來的系統部署以及製造擴產，仍受執行進度及其他前瞻性不確定性因素影響。

分析師問答精選

量子安全變現：管理層將 Elicity 形容為 IonQ 安全策略的加速器。收購的平台使 IonQ 能夠評估客戶網路並落實基於身分的微分段。管理層預期營收將由硬體與高利潤率的經常性軟體組成，並認為資安的潛在市場規模最終可能超越量子運算。

20 億美元融資的用途：IonQ 表示，所得款項旨在支援長期研發、人才、製造與商業擴展，而非用於特定產品推出。管理層指出，此次募資使備考現金增至 37 億美元，並提供了未來數年的投資能力。

與輝達的合作關係：IonQ 將成為輝達波士頓研究中心的首家量子系統合作夥伴。雙方計劃共同研究 GPU-QPU 混合工作流程及量子應用。管理層表示，成功的初步部署有望擴大 IonQ 接觸更多資料中心與銷售通路的機會。

製造產能：管理層表示，2027 年產能售罄反映的是強勁需求，而非永久性的生產上限。IonQ 計劃擴大內部製造能力，並可能隨著產量提升考慮第三方委外製造。該公司強調，與塊狀光學元件系統相比，電子控制與晶片型離子阱應能降低複雜度。

雲端與地端部署需求比較：管理層表示，量子運算即服務（QCaaS）與客戶自建系統的需求均在增長。雲端存取提供較高的利潤率，並支援教育訓練與較不複雜的工作負載，而某些 GPU-QPU 混合應用及主權運算需求則需要地端系統。

技術策略：IonQ 仍致力於離子阱運算技術，而非涉足多種硬體架構模式。管理層指出，DARPA 的驗證、可製造性、部署穩定性以及求解速度表現，是其維持該研發重心的理由。

完整法說會逐字稿

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完整財報電話會議逐字稿

管理層陳述

Operator

Welcome to the IonQ Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Hanley Donofrio, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hanley Donofrio

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to INQ's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. My name is Hanley Donofrio, and I'm the Vice President of Investor Relations for IQ. I'm pleased to be joined on today's call by Niccolo de Masi, IonQ's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Inder Singh, Inc's Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the company's third quarter 2026 earnings release issued this afternoon, which is available on the SEC's website and on the Investor Relations section of our website at investors.inq.com. Please note that on today's call, management will refer to non-GAAP financial measures.

While the company believes these non-GAAP financial measures provide 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. A -- you are directed to our earnings release for a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS to the closest comparable GAAP measures.

During the call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements, including those regarding our guidance for 2026. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties. Therefore, you should not put undue reliance on those statements. We refer you to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, and our quarterly reports for a more detailed discussion of those risks and uncertainties. In -- 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 Niccolo de Masi, Chairman and CEO of Ion Q.

Niccolo de Masi

Thank you, Hanley, and good afternoon, everyone. ING is entering a new phase of growth. We have built a globally unique quantum platform spanning computing, networking, sensing and security and supported by vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities. Our focus is on translating those advantages into broader customer adoption, commercial scale and long-term shareholder value. Our third quarter results are proof of our strategy in action. We delivered record third quarter revenue of $173.8 million, up 336% year-over-year.

This was the strongest quarter in IonQ's history and our sixth consecutive quarter of record revenues. At IQ platform, we delivered $90.3 million of GAAP revenue from our leading quantum products. This revenue scale is a record for the reporting quantum industry in its own right. We saw an especially strong quarter in quantum computing with new contracts signed across the globe, for our sixth generation Superion 256 systems. We have, in fact, sold out all of our 236 capacity in 2027.

In our first quarter of operations with Sky water, we delivered an additional $83.5 million of GAAP revenue from our onshore foundry, home to the industry's most advanced and diverse quantum manufacturing capabilities. At SkyWater Quantum Solutions revenue from within the Quantum ecosystem grew meaningfully as we added new customers and expanded with existing ones. This underscores that Sky water is the foundry partner of choice for the industry.

Our results show the progress we are making translating our technology leadership into commercial adoption. We are moving from R&D into the productization and scaling phase of our growth curve as we scale go-to-market execution and serve customers around the world. Andrew will shortly take you through the financial results in more detail. I'm incredibly proud of the full team's hard work driving the momentum we are experiencing across our entire business.

I will focus my remarks today on 3 areas that demonstrate how we are turning our strategy into results. First, how our technology leadership is translating to independent validation and growing commercial demand. Second, our expanding platform is addressing customer needs and unlocking new growth opportunities. And third, our vertically integrated manufacturing is strengthening our ability to scale deploy and grow our market share.

Turning to Slide 5 of our investor presentation. Earlier this year in February, I named DARPA's Canam Benchmarking Initiative Stage C, as 1 of our ambitions for 2026. I am proud to say that INQ has achieved this historic milestone. We are the only trapped ion company that's advanced to the final stage of this program. with an associated program value of up to $300 million.

Stage C is envisaged to put multiple generations of our superior quantum computers in the hands of the Department of War. DARPA's benchmarking initiative is centered on understanding when a business focused on its bottom line will choose the Quantum computer over a classical one. We believe that our advancement to Stage C reflects a fundamental principle that has guided INQ's technology road map and vertical manufacturing integration.

What matters most is how quickly and cost effectively, a Quantum computer delivers a useful answer. More than a year ago at our 2025 Analyst Day, we made time to solution, 1 of our core metrics. Cost to solution is equally critical and is why we released our third-party validated industry-leading bill of materials for fall tolerant systems.

We have always focused on designing systems to be deployable at a cost that will promote mass market adoption. We designed to deliver true economic utility for our ecosystem of end users.

As you can see on Slide 6, this quarter, we also demonstrated powerful commercial momentum for our computers. Since launching our Superion product line in September, we have experienced strong global demand. and are now working to further expand capacity. Initial Superion 236 partners include NVIDIA and Florida International University in the U.S. It also includes the University of Cambridge and Horizon Quantum in Europe and STT in South Korea.

INQ is building the Quantum ecosystem to meet global demand. The PURION 256 will be the first on-premise quantum computing employment at the NVIDIA accelerated Quantum Research Center, connected directly to NVIDIA's AI supercomputing infrastructure. I have long said Quantum will be adopted through hybrid workflows with GPUs and QPUs working side by side. NVIDIA's historic partnership with INQ demonstrates how our technology is robustly positioned for integration into advanced scalable computing environments that will drive broader quantum adoption.

Turning now to Slide 7. Hardware leadership is the foundation of impactful applications as NVIDIA showed, leading hardware attracts an ecosystem and the ecosystem turns hardware into a platform. That is our strategy. to decisively lead in quantum hardware and make it easy to access and build upon.

INQ chanocomputers are available on all 3 major public clouds, AWS and Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. This quarter, we brought another Forte enterprise system online. In 2027, we expect to add multiple tempo systems expanding our cloud capacity several times over and making our present most powerful systems available on demand around the globe. We also support all major Quantum development frameworks. -- including Kiskit,-Penny Lane and video QQ, Classic and several others.

This is an open ecosystem that we contribute to, leverage and which provides choice for our customers. Of course, like NVIDIA, we also developed extensive proprietary software that runs close to our hardware. This strategy creates value in 2 ways: -- through applications we develop with our customers and partners, and through the platforms that partners build on our platform.

We continued this past quarter to demonstrate pioneering breakthroughs where our quantum technologies deliver the significant improvements that create a compelling backdrop for customer adoption. With our partner, CCRM, we began development work in viral vector manufacturing. This is a costly step in producing mini cell and gene therapies, where much of the product is lost during purification and 1 where Quantum can help today.

With Synopsys, we are collaborating on some of the most computationally demanding quantum mechanical calculations in chip design with the goal of integrating quantum computing into the Synopsys Quantum ATK platform. Our leading Quantum computers are also where customers and partners choose to run their own applications. HSBC recently shared results from an application tested on our Forte Enterprise computer. -- which was first launched in 2024.

They showed an improvement in prediction accuracy over classical approaches in identifying emerging trade corridors. In another example, Israel natural gas lines used IQ Forte to run their quantum optimization model for natural gas transmission. Our open platform, simple software layers and easy cloud access are, in turn, building a global development community for IQ.

Just last month, we hosted a global hackathon that drew developers from over 80 universities in 37 countries who completed more than 4,400 runs on IMQ's Cloud. They generated more than 1 million lines of open source machine readable code. Some teams were using Quantum computers for the first time and still built working projects in 48 hours. We are making quantum computing accessible everywhere and driving a fast feedback loop.

The developers working with AI can accelerate even further. Turning now to Quantum Security on Slide 8. I -- we see another huge and important opportunity to build on our technological leadership and address an increasingly urgent large and global customer lead. As we build increasingly powerful quantum computers, every single step forward pulls in the time line for Q2. Our leadership in quantum algorithms is bringing it closer also.

In September, we published the world's first complete end-to-end fault-tolerant resource estimate for running Shore's algorithm against 256-bit elliptical curve cryptography. QA is now inside the planning horizon for CEOs, CISOs, CTOs and network security leaders in both enterprise and government. I want to pause here to emphasize how much more retention Quantum Security is receiving than even a couple of quarters ago.

In nearly every conversation we have with our customers, we are pressed on how we can help them stay safe, not only now but in the era of quantum computing. I believe we are, in fact, entering a new era of perpetually elevated cyber threats by virtue of not only AI, but the potential for combined LLM quantum attacks. Our unique understanding of Kornacomputing and networking is why now is the moment for INQ to lead in Quantum Security also. Customers choose INQ's Quantum security platform for 3 reasons.

First, we understand better than anyone, what Quantum computers can do and how they will do it. because we build the world's most powerful quantum computers. Second, we protect customers today by de complain encryption from their network, minimizing disruption to their existing infrastructure. And third, our crypto agile solutions evolve with customers as post-quantum standards change.

My vision is a single security platform that protects customers against today's threats and carries them safely through the rapidly emerging AI-driven attacks and into the combined LLM Quantum era. As you can see on Slide 9, our acquisition of Elicity is central to executing on this proposition. Enterprises face 2 overlapping priorities: containing attacks that operate at machine speed and preparing to protect sensitive information against future quantum threats.

The urgency of this transition is underscored by June 22, White House executive orders. Elicity's Zero Trust platform provides identity-based micro segmentation with 100 established enterprise deployments and trusted CECL relationships. Customers often initially come to INQ for either security computing, networking or sensing. However, our integrated capabilities allow us to address significant additional needs as those relationships evolve. Over 40% of our I&Q Platform segment revenue in Q3 was generated from customers buying multiple products.

As our road maps continue to develop and converge, we see a strong opportunity to deepen customer relationships, reach new enterprise buyers and drive additional revenue growth across the platform. Turning to Slide 10. In Q3, we were pleased to close our acquisition of Sky water, making INQ arguably the largest global quantum merchant supplier. -- and the only vertically integrated public pure-play quantum company.

Guy water is powerfully accelerating our business in just 6 months of working together, we delivered 12x more wafer lots and more than 3x faster tape-out cycles for our 256 cubic ships.

By bringing manufacturing in-house, we are strengthening our ability to control production time lines accelerate product development and scale more efficiently. We proudly serve the broader quantum ecosystem through our trusted fab, full IP protection and secure domestic U.S. manufacturing capabilities. Dye water is flourishing as part of IQ.

In just 2 months together, we launched Sky water Quanum solutions built around repeatable technology platforms with repeatable Canam products that customers can build on. To start, we have developed SP9 and SC250, which together support all quantum modalities. We also developed RH 90, a radiation hardened platform for satellites and defense systems.

We are proud to have signed long-term agreements to support D-Wave and co-lab with Sky water's trusted fab solutions. Less than a month after launching our Quantum Foundry Solutions at our Investor Day in September, we began shipping these wafers to customers. This early progress shows how we can translate our manufacturing capabilities into commercial opportunities.

Over time, we expect this approach to support greater efficiency economies of scale and improved margins. Advancing all of this at once takes 2 things: exceptional talent and the capital to invest with conviction. We have both. In October, we raised $2 billion at a premium to our share price, bringing us to $3.7 billion in pro forma cash on our balance sheet. INQ has now extended its lead as the best capitalized pure-play quantum company in the world.

Our financial strength gives us the flexibility to build the quantum ecosystem. We will continue to invest in the technologies, robust manufacturing capabilities and commercial infrastructure needed to scale our business to profitability.

Importantly, we are focused on making those investments with discipline, building a strong foundation for operating leverage, sustainable growth and long-term shareholder value. With that, I will hand the call over to my colleague, Inder.

Inder Singh

Thank you very much, Nicolas, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining for what is now the sixth quarter in a row as Nicolas said, we are now again reporting another record-setting quarter and the highest revenue quarter in the history of the company.

In Q3, we reported revenues of $173.8 million, which represents 336% year-on-year growth. These results exceeded even our own internal modeling, really driven by strength across the board, and we were happy to see the closing of Sky water which enables us to now offer a vertically integrated company, not just a platform company to our customers.

As you're aware, we recently further strengthened our balance sheet with a successful raise of an additional $2 billion of capital, which allows us to have the financial firepower to invest in innovation, maintain our lead and continue to drive this business forward.

Our pro forma cash balance now stands at $3.7 billion. Let me remind you of what we previewed at our Investor Day on September 8 that we will now report in 2 segments: ING platform and SkyWater Foundry Services.

Please refer to Slide 16 of today's investor deck, where you can see these 2 new reporting entities. Just as we have been giving you color on IMQ's business in the past, going forward, we'll plan to give you color on the Sky water side as well. To be clear, we are still running this company as 1 P&L, and we're investing in allocating capital across the business. Let me now share with you the key drivers of our revenues for the quarter. I'll first discuss the IQ platform and then the Sky water segment. For the ING business, which is the world's leading quantum platform, our Q3 revenues were $90.3 million, representing 127% year-on-year growth.

This growth was fueled by strength in quantum computing, which remains our fastest-growing product line, where global deployments of our fifth generation tempo quantum computers are the principal driver. It was also driven by global deployment of our quantum sensing and space-based products.

Last quarter, I told you how much more important security was starting to become for us. With our acquisition of Elicity, we can now deliver an even more complete portfolio of solutions in the quantum cybersecurity space, which uniquely positions us to help protect our customers' crown jewel assets before Q&A happens that Niccolo talks about.

As you know, our leading quantum cybersecurity business, which we built with the acquisition of ID anti and further investment has given us key future cybersecurity technologies -- and since we acquired ID Quintiq, we have added 125 new quantum security customers into that business. Now with Elicity, we have direct access to approximately 100 more. nearly doubling the number of customers.

And our aim is to keep driving our world-leading position in quantum cybersecurity and preparing for what is becoming inevitable, I think in most people's mind. As I mentioned at Investor Day, the cybersecurity TAM, which we are now addressing of course, is positioned to not only grow strongly, but even has the potential to become bigger than the quantum of gating TAM over time.

We're beginning to see more and more CEO-level discussions, begin with a discussion of security, which tells you that this is becoming the top of their priority list. Let me also touch on sensing, which was strong in the quarter and yet is another TAM that we've talked about at Investor Day.

You all know traditional GPS systems have proven to be vulnerable or inaccurate, and therefore, our sensing products are also taking on a higher degree of relevance, especially for defense customers. provides position, navigation and timing, which are increasingly being gamed and our sensing portfolio provides not only accuracy but also resiliency for P&T. As just 1 example, this quarter, we were proud to be awarded a $28 million DARPA contract, which starts with 25 of our next-generation atomic clocks.

This contract also has an option for the customer to buy another 100 for mission-critical applications, including radar, secure communications and precision and geolocation. We also won contracts with Mist and the naval research laboratory. We are pleased to see this momentum continue. And as we have now signed 9 sensing contracts just since July, I'm pleased to see that this is, again, another cylinder that is firing for us.

Once again, this is an addressable TAM that is separate from our others, and we are uniquely positioned to address it with the solutions we have. As I've done in prior quarters, let me share some further color on the drivers of our revenue, which I'll talk about IQ first and then the Sky water segment.

For the ING segment, in Q3, commercial customers represented roughly 65% of revenue. International customers were roughly 35%, and multiproduct customers comprised 40%. We're very encouraged by these trends in the IQ platform business. These trends tell us that customers are putting our solutions to work in real-world applications around the globe, and are increasingly turning to ING for more than 1 product.

As an example of our multiproduct strategy, in this quarter, we signed a $33 million contract with SDT of South Korea for a superior 256 quantum computer as well as a quantum networking memory solution. In this deployment, we will anchor a hybrid Quantum classical data center in South Korea, similar to other deployments.

And as Nicolas mentioned, this is 1 of the value propositions where our CPU sits next to a GPU cluster, allowing for hybrid computing. Let me now talk a little bit about Sky water and the drivers of Sky water. And of course, I would remind you that Sky water closed at the end of July, -- so the numbers that I will share represent 2 months' worth of financials from Skywater.

Additionally, I'll also remind you that when we consolidate IMT segment and SkyWater, we eliminate any intercompany revenue for work done by Sky water's foundries for IQ's segment Superion products. Therefore, all of my remarks exclude any intercompany revenue. The Sky water segment delivered $83.5 million for the quarter, exceeding our expectations -- and we are very, very pleased with what we're seeing on the ground with the team as the integration. A few of you asked in the past, would we retain the customers that are in the Quantum Fabry there, for example. I'm delighted to report that not only did we maintain our customer base in that foundry, we grew it. Importantly, we extended our agreement with D-Wave for a multiyear period.

Our goal as a company is to continue to be the leader in the products and the platform that we offer to our customers, of course. But also our efforts are to support the broader ecosystem of Quantum. As yet another example, we signed a first-of-its-kind multiyear agreement with a new Quantum foundry customer, Coad, which was co-founded by Nobel Laureate Professor, John Martinez.

Both of these examples are a testament to the fact that we believe we can not only retain but also grow the Quantum Foundry business within the Sky water segment. As an indicator in Q3, the Quantum foundry within SkyWater saw revenues grow by more than 30% year-on-year, excluding any revenue from I Triwater not only brings us to the quantum foundry, but also a set of highly secure and differentiated manufacturing capabilities.

And we are leveraging that for critical national defense applications, especially for government customers, where security and secure manufacturing are important. So beyond Quantum, SkyWater brings us these advanced technologies, which are unique and differentiated. This quarter, we accelerated 1 of those advanced imaging to meet growing demand for major defense primes supported by the Department of War and others.

These advanced technologies, we intend to leverage in the coming quarters and years. to differentiate us even further with our solutions, which make us more sticky in our customers' minds, especially government and at security customers.

And for SkyWater CMOS foundry, which many of you are familiar with, of course, Q3 performance was also strong. In that business, we have a very stable, predictable revenue stream with a multiyear take-or-pay supply agreement with Infineon. This gives us a solid base of revenue in an area where we see potential for future growth.

And we intend to drive growth by investing and allocating capital through parts of that, that makes sense for us to drive further. And as you all know, as you lift the utilization rate in the foundry, it also helps expand the margins of that foundry. Let me now turn to RPS, which are our remaining performance obligations.

In Q3, I'm pleased to report that we ended the quarter with $1.2 billion of RPO. And even as we use some of the RPOs to deliver our record setting quarter. This RPO number, of course, now includes both the ING segment and the SkyWater segment. POs for the IT segment grew from $485 million to $689 million in Q3, lifted by approximately $20 million of new contracts signed in the quarter and of this $290 million, approximately $180 million came from very strong quantum computing sales. especially of our next-generation Superior 256 quantum computers and the fact that we advanced the Stage C, as Niccolo mentioned.

SkyWater added a further $479 million to RPOs in addition to the IMT segment, which now includes Sky water's contracts, both long term and short term. The combined $1.2 billion RPO provides us excellent visibility into our business. Because this is our first quarter with SkyWater, we are sharing these additional details with you.

On a go-forward basis, we anticipate continuing to record our view, of course, even though we may or may not provide this level of detail. Moving now to discussing expenses and where we're investing. GAAP operating expenses for the quarter were $606.9 million, and on a non-GAAP basis, $306.6 million.

As I have said in prior quarters, R&D is and will remain our primary focus of investment in order to ensure that our market-leading positions with our products are invested in with a long-term lens. And R&D helps to make that happen. On a year-to-date basis, R&D remains our largest investment area as we have invested more than $425 million so far to maintain our world-leading Quantum innovation position.

For Q3, on a non-GAAP basis, we invested $96.8 million into R&D. As we have also said in recent quarters, go-to-market is also important as an investment area for us because we have many more things to offer to our customers. I'm pleased that we now have the go-to-market engine we need. As demand accelerates as more products come online that we can offer as demonstrated, frankly, in Q3 by the signings that we had and the strength of the RPOs that we're talking about.

Let me now turn to SkyWater because it was a busy quarter for us with the close of SkyWater, and a number of things have to be done when you acquire a company that large, as you can imagine. We are focused on investing in all of the people, processes, tools, technologies needed for SkyWater to succeed and for -- in overall to drive effective solutions for our customers and efficient manufacturing. As a result of the acquisition, G&A this quarter included approximately $40 million of onetime costs.

These are excluded from adjusted EBITDA. But nonetheless, as you do these iterations, you will invest to, frankly, drive efficiency further down the road. In the quarter, we had to also look at purchase price accounting as well as marking Sky waters assets fair value, as you always do in an acquisition and closing the quarter on a combined company basis.

Yes, it was a busy quarter for everyone, but a very strong record-setting 1 again. No doubt, we are now positioned to deliver end-to-end solutions to our customers. And the work doesn't end here on integration. We are uniquely and very, very enterprise-wide focus on driving M&A integration across the business with Sky water, especially as well.

Turning now to adjusted EBITDA for Q3, which was negative $133.6 million. reflecting the integration investment concentrated in the quarter. Looking forward into the fourth quarter, we expect our adjusted EBITDA to improve compared to the third quarter. As compared to the third quarter we just reported, of course.

The current S&P Global Capital IQ consensus estimate of negative $127 million for Q4 and doesn't seem unreasonable to us. This expected improvement reflects our commitment to profitability and to our diligent integration activities which we are going to drive across our business, including the companies that we acquire for.

Net income attributable to IQ for the quarter was $564 million. which included an $896 million noncash gain from the mark-to-market valuation of our warrants. As a reminder, that gain does not reflect the operating performance of our business. I'm very pleased and excited about all of the accomplishments that Nicolas talked about and that we have recorded in the last few years and especially about our future ahead.

Let me turn now to our guidance for the balance of this year. At Investor Day in September, we raised our guidance for 2026. Today, on the strength of our record third quarter we are further raising our full year 2026 revenue guidance from $450 million to $460 million, up to now $505 million to $515 million. We can now proudly say that IMG expects to be the first pure-play quantum company to report $0.5 billion in GAAP revenue.

This represents more than 10x revenue increase in just the past 2 years. Many of you asked about our quantum computing revenue, which, of course, is a key driver and remains that. On the strength of our strong sales motion and performance in the third quarter, we are expecting more than 110% growth in our continuing revenue this year, up from $100 million that I talked about last quarter.

Now that we are moving forward towards potentially being the first quantum company to deliver $1 billion of revenue in the future, it is also time to begin to think about charting out our path to both revenue growth and profitability. September marked my 1-year anniversary in the company in this operating role.

And as we scale, this comes into focus as a priority for Niccolo and the entire leadership team to ensure that we are plotting our path for profitable growth in the future. We have a number of products and some products naturally will get there faster than others, and we will look across all of them to say how we want to allocate capital and drive both growth and profitability.

Operationally, we're putting in place programs to drive bottom line results, including disciplined monthly and quarterly business reviews of what things are going well and what needs attention. Our pricing strategies across our portfolio. and deal discretes. Sales productivity, M&A integration, everything kicks on an importance at this point as we think about past profitability. With SkyWater and our other acquisitions, we run more back-office systems and sites than we need.

So that's an example where we will turn our focus in 2027 and look at our site strategy. I could give you many more examples, we have a team that will focus on this and in my experience, and Nicolas brand. It always helps to align competition with results that you're trying to drive.

And we may consider ensuring that these initiatives towards profitability become part of that exercise as we enter 2027. In conclusion, our results reinforce our confidence in being able to not only close out 2026 on a high note, but really on record setting them. And we believe INK is well positioned to continue treating and leading in quantum technology as it accelerates around the world. Operator, can we now open the queue for questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Vivek Arya of Bank of America.

分析師問答

Unknown Analyst

This is Liam on for Vivek. Want to start on Quantum Security and Networking now that you've closed your list acquisition. Could you describe how you're seeing that market, how we should think about that market longer term in terms of sizing that compared to compute?

And more specifically, your strategy to monetize that section of your portfolio. Should we expect it more subscription base, kind of like cybersecurity companies are doing elsewhere in the postal space or more hardware? Can you just walk us through that part of the business, please?

Inder Singh

Sure. Yes. Great question. Look, a quarter and 2 quarters ago, even Niccolo and I were talking about quant of security, becoming more and more prevalent in our conversation with the customers.

And I think that the executive order that came out previously, as you're aware, and other events that have happened since it's become clear to most large enterprise and frankly, even others, governments, of course, around the world, that classical cybersecurity just doesn't work. not only against things like ethos, but frankly, against a quantum cuter.

If it doesn't work against method, what do you do in a quantum environment. So what we have assembled is a quantum cybersecurity business. And of course, we already had a presence in, as I mentioned in my remarks, but we needed to round out that portfolio and what elicit brings to us is the ability to help a customer become quantum safe.

Not 2 years from now, not 3 years from now, but now, the capability that Felicity, frankly, is sold to its customers and also something that we needed. So we were building that. Now we bought it, and we were there faster and earlier. So we now have an ability to talk to an enterprise of any size, frankly, and many large enterprises, our customers to say we can scan your network, we can look for quantities with the tools that licibrings us.

Again, we were building that tool. Now we have the tool. So list brings a lot of like acceleration, I think, in my mind, in terms of what we can offer to our customers when they're becoming more sensitive about security. The prospects of this business, to your question around growth and TAM, as I said, I think this is a TAM that could be and might be bigger than even quantum computing 1 day.

It sits with our solutions work on existing networks, and they don't require tens of billions of dollars of investment. Yes, there's some hardware. Of course, there is. Validity is a software business. I love the software business, the margins of that business. I love it even more when it's a recurring revenue business.

So they bring us 100 customers, as I mentioned, we have over 100 ourselves. That's just the beginning. We intend to drive it further from there. So it's the recurring revenue, high margin, uniquely positioned, opportunity for us to leverage. -- and growth comes with investment, and that's why we made the investments. Nicolas, do you want to add anything?

Niccolo de Masi

No. I mean, look, I've met with a number of world leaders at the Commonwealth Head of Government meeting earlier this week. And I think I would echo what Intersaid, which is everyone recognizes that security is the foundation not just for civilization as we know it.

But obviously, for moving forward, technologically, if you are a nation or a large enterprise or a department of a large nation, it all kind of goes back to, can you trust your communication? Can you trust the systems you're working with? And can you trust the network you're on. So on a combined basis, we have an absolutely differentiated software and hardware platform.

It's an area that we're very bullish on, not only as a place to bolster the foundations that are already in existence across the globe, but 1 that needs continual investment in this area of LLMs and quantum computers and an area where we can land and expand across the rest of our Quantum platform.

So you may start in the CISO office, but we rapidly get to the rest of the organization by delivering success in our first quantum engagements. And as you heard in my prepared remarks, we're increasingly finding that our customers are demanding more and more of our platform.

Unknown Analyst

Made. And then to my second question, was wondering if you could give us some more color around the rationale behind the $2 billion raise in October. What should we expect for use of proceeds? And what went to the timing of that decision given that Superior 256 is ramping in the second -- sorry, the first half of 2017?

Inder Singh

Thanks. So I'll start. I mean, look, I think that I believe Niccolo believes that we need to have the ability to invest for the long term. to the ability to invest in R&D, having the best talent on the planet, which we believe we have already and ensuring that we keep the innovation edge, right? And every year, we're introducing a new generation of quantum better.

Each 1 expansion more powerful than the prior. That requires line of sight to the next 5 years of R&D investment, for example, and even longer. And we like to make sure that we have the ability to keep investing without blinking. There was -- I'm pleased, frankly, looking at the stock market and have all those in that we did the raise when we did it. and it was done under a premium.

So it was a -- it's not 256 or anything like that, in particular, as you were mentioning. I describe it more to we're preparing for the next chapter of growth of IQ, as Niccolo mentioned, a company that is at $0.5 billion today going to billion and beyond and ensuring that we have a fortress balance sheet as much as we can. So it's for long-term capital, not for any particular need. We believe that this gives us some years of runway and the ability to make sure that we keep growing and setting the pace for the industry. Does that help you?

Operator

Our next question comes from Jill Moore of Morgan Stanley.

Jill Moore

I wonder if you could talk about the NVIDIA announcement that you had that there'll be having IT systems in the research center. Give us any color on what that may mean for you going forward.

Niccolo de Masi

It's Niccolo. So we are the first partner in their Boston research center that is obviously a data center that requires robust deployments of anything in it, so that vibrations and it do not cause alignment issues.

And I think it's safe to say that INQ's robust manufacturing process at Sky water as well as the architecture we've created that puts ion traps on a chip gives us not just a cost advantage or manufacturing advantage, but also a stability advantage. So we're kind of uniquely well suited if you look across the quantum ecosystem.

And it's safe to say the cowherd program, where there's 500 people doing diligence at the Department of War on things like Quantum Utility and who can manufacture who can drive that economic value add NVIDIA has got a large Quantum team who are looking at the quantum ecosystem trying to find the partner, if not the partners who can scale with them into the hybrid workflows that I referenced in my prepared remarks.

So we'll be doing research with NVIDIA on, of course, the future of what GPU-based machine learning and QPU based AI can do. We'll be doing research together, obviously, on how we can deploy hybrid workflows.

And we think it's a fantastic endorsement between DARPA, QBI, Phase I and NVIDIA of our architecture and our ability to deploy rapidly, seamlessly in a robust way in a stable way, that gives us additional vectors of scalability here. By proving the sound in 1 data center with NVIDIA, we can obviously prove it out in the rest of their data centers. and we expect this will expand our channels to market as well.

Jill Moore

Great. And just to clarify, that deployment is next year. Have you seen any more specific timing than that?

Niccolo de Masi

We haven't given an exact month, but I think it's safe to say that it's 1 of our earlier ones, and we'll be very busy next year.

Operator

Our next question comes from Craig Ellis of B. Riley Securities.

Craig Ellis

Congratulations on the momentum in the business guys. Niccolo, I'll follow up on the point you made about being really busy next year. So the company has a real strong track record of doubling revenues year-on-year each year. And -- and implicitly, in fourth quarter, we should be at a $760 million run rate.

So we can see that there could be very significant revenue growth this coming year. But I think I also heard you say that you're already sold out for Superion 256 in calendar 2027. So can you just go into some more detail on some of the tailwinds that you see for next year and some of the headwinds, whether they be capacity related or otherwise?

Niccolo de Masi

Yes. So look, I think it's safe to say that I don't see headwinds, and I haven't seen headwinds the last 2 years. And we are in a secular bull market here, not just for Quantum Security but obviously, quantum computing quantum sensing. If I look across our platform, we're the only down select with DARPA, it's about time program for clocks.

We're the only down select for the DARPAHARC program around entangle distribution. And we're the only ion trap down select for the DARPA Phase C. So technical validation is very strong for our company. And you're seeing that from, obviously, the most important institutions, not just in the U.S., but I'd argue in the world.

On the commercial front, we have always said that commercial success obviously requires not only technical underlying milestones in the lab, but it requires the D part of R&D to happen as well as the manufacturing, the go-to-market function and, of course, the commissioning.

We have grown all of these functions every year, and we continue to grow them relentlessly because remember, our systems turned on first nearly a decade ago in 2017. Our systems have been on the public cloud since 2020. And we have a pipeline of customers who are absolutely coming to us knowing that we have a track record of delivering year after year since our IPO. My comment on selling out 2027 capacity is obviously a very bullish sign. We are going to keep growing our manufacturing capacity of whole systems. As I mentioned in my preferred remarks, we are not limited, of course, by making the chip. That is something we can make large numbers of Sky water.

But the rest of the system, obviously, is something that we are going to continue to grow in our vertically integrated U.S. supply chain secure model. And so it is safe to say that you should read into my comments that we're beginning to fill the order books into 2028. -- pretty comfortably.

And it's not just into 2028 for to be 6 systems, but of course, we have interest in the future generations that we're working on, given that we showed off 3 generations of our CMOS chips at our Analyst Day in September, and you can see them also, of course, in our executive briefing center in College Park or headquarters anytime.

Inder Singh

I'll just add. Very helpful. I'll just add a brief comment, Craig, just 1. Just to remind -- last year, we talked about demand for Tempo exceeding our ability to supply. A quarter later, we sold that. So the comment is from nickel, very much about demand. Demand for Superion is very strong. So you can count on the fact that we've done it before, and we'll ride the challenge of meeting demand again. in Evergreen. Yes, certainly, the new contract signings show that it's strong right now.

Niccolo de Masi

Yes. No doubt about it. On the path to profitability comments, Inder. Back office is an emphasis next year makes a lot of sense. Can you just clarify in the third quarter in the adjusted EBITDA number, what was the amount that would have related to SkyWater deal closed and related kind of nonoperating expense, just so we can have a clean number for the third quarter as we look at the fourth quarter and next year.

Yes, you'll find more detail in our filing around it. I did comment around G&A being 1 of those areas, for example. And you can think about, over time, of course, induration happens with IT, right? That's not a day 1 thing always. So the opportunity to expand margins is for us, I think, available from an M&A integration standpoint in a very good way. I pointed out some of the things when I gave my comments in the prepared remarks.

But we've established a team and someone that used to work in a prior company that did this professionally and knows exactly how to drive this, taking the baton over from another colleague on my team as we now integrate Sky water and driving a very systemic approach to go after, as you said, back office, right?

IT systems, financial systems, all of the things that you think that would be necessary. And so that's 1 area. But I would also talk about front office the ability to do multiproduct sales and leverage the products of 1 of the companies that we acquired with another.

That's something that Niccolo and I and the team are focused on driving much harder, much faster. And we're -- as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we made a lot of headway on our go-to-market. The leader that we brought in that I've talked about a number of times now and his team are starting to really fire all cylinders. And you can see the results of the signings and the RPO.

I mean I never thought we were talking about a $1.2 billion RPO. -- we have opportunity to expand margins. The path to profitability, any responsible company would do. And we're doing because we're reaching scale. And we don't intend to do anything to damage our hypergrowth trajectory of course not. We intend to do with the and to make sure that we are disciplined around our cost, how we invest.

And as Nicolas and I and the leadership team get together and discuss capital allocation, to say where do we want to put the incremental dollar in terms of growth and seeing a return on that growth. So it's a discipline that you would expect from any company that is of scale, and I think we're now at scale.

Operator

Our next question comes from John McPeak of Rosenblad.

John McPeake

Can you hear me guys? Can you hear me? I don't want to start talking and the -- all right. Congrats on the ARPC. Thanks for the additional metrics sold out capacity $256 million. Slide 6, is it as simple as price times unit will make an assumption on price and then units to figure out our estimates for your Superion 256 sales in 2027?

Inder Singh

We haven't really talked about 2027 yet from a revenue or guidance standpoint. So I don't want to get into sort of like Pete per se. But yes, I mean, much as you would sell a tempo system, a 26 of a similar system.

John McPeake

Okay. And just assume kind of similar prices across the board? Or is there any variance based on desirability of customer reference customer or anything like that?

Niccolo de Masi

The customer demand that we're seeing is from really serious customers who want to invest for the longer term, not just for a box, right? So what I like to see customer lifetime value, John, I know you talked about that a lot. So 1 will over multiple years, the many generations that commuters will make, but also multiple products. And so we're happy to see the demand -- and yes, of course, we're being picky in terms of selecting the customer that will be with us in the journey for the long term.

John McPeake

Right. So it will be first in line for the 10,000, et cetera.

Inder Singh

Yes, of course. Of course.

John McPeake

Or customer -- and then if you could elaborate a little bit more on like on the status of the 256 Superion, like where it is right now on the bench. Anything would be appreciated. That's all I got.

Inder Singh

Yes. So we made a pretty full update, obviously, at our Analyst Day on September 8 on that one. And assuming you were there, you would have seen our display of 3 or 4 generations of chips. We've talked about the reduction in cycle time from 9 months to 9 weeks. And we've obviously talked about the fact that our architecture has been proven out from a fidelity perspective on a control system perspective.

So the time lines remain as they have been for the last 2 months. We continue to March forward, not just in the phase, but the D phase, if you will. And if you visit any of our offices, you'll see these machines in College Park and Offshore and so on as they're being built.

So I think there'll be a lot more updates coming on our next earnings call. Then this one, we kind of provided the November update, if you will, early in September.

But fundamentally, the thesis remains exactly as it has been in prior quarters, and we're excited about the fact that this architecture has obviously been validated by DARPA CBI Phase I selection as well as NVIDIA as probably having the most powerful, let's just say, time-resolution and cost of solution in the world.

Operator

Our next question comes from Robert Acano of Needham & Co.

Unknown Analyst

This is Robert on for Quinn Bolton here at Needham. Just 1 on the Sky water acquisition now that it is closed, you guys touched on this in the prepared remarks, but I was wondering if you could expand maybe on some of the external quantum customer engagements.

Congrats obviously on extending D-Wave. But it sounds like things are moving in the right direction, but maybe what are some of the engagements with other external existing foundry customers and maybe their appetite to work with Sky water and how that's changed since the deal has closed?

Niccolo de Masi

So I think what's exciting about the Sky water platform at this point is we've been investing and expanding these merchant supply capabilities. So we made an acquisition of a business called Nexus Photonics that adds Integrated Photonics to the overall quantum Foundry proposition. You've seen our announcement of a program to accelerate earlier stage start-up quantum companies into the manufacturing phase using the complete value chain that Sky water, plus Nexus plus IQ have brought together here.

And just as Inder and I talk about our customers taking more than 1 proposition, if you will, from our products across the platform. The same thing is able to happen and starting to happen across the SkyWater customer base. So they can do more with us because we offer more. We have maintained complete intellectual property Integrity complete security integrity as has been committed and promised when we first announced the deal back in February this year.

And I think our customers have seen that. And so we've had a strong reception, honestly, across not just the United States, but let's just say, the Western world of the capabilities and the fact that we are the only operating quantum foundry, we believe in the 2020s that's able to deliver, deliver on time, deliver at cost and really help the quantum industry scale.

So we continue to invest in our capabilities. And we're really excited about the fact that this integration has gone exactly as planned. exactly on schedule. I'd say, in a lot of ways, it's a role model for how acquisition integrations can happen, particularly between 2 public companies.

Unknown Analyst

That's great to hear. And just a quick 1 on Stage I of the DARPA KBI. I was wondering maybe what were -- what was some of the feedback that start that gave you guys? And then kind of what does it look -- what does the process look like beyond Phase I or in Phase II?

Niccolo de Masi

Well, look, I mean, there's obviously important NDAs in place, and I'm not going to be reading off feedback from the Department of War on an earnings call. But I think it is safe to say that what is public about DARPA BI is that there are approximately 500 people on their side doing detailed diligence on not only where a company's machine is today, but the road map of where they are going in the next few years.

And so this is not just incredibly validating for us because of the financial ramifications of a $300 million program, but it's incredibly validating because our architecture obviously has come together and proven out exactly what we said it would over the last year or 2. And I think it's exciting that we were early in the DARPA Phase B, early DARPA Phase I.

And we have a lot of momentum, obviously, because of the fact that we are not just being practical about bill of materials, but we've already demonstrated rapid, if not the fastest time to solution, I'd say, in the industry. So on April 14 this year at World Day, if you look at our presentation materials there, which show on our investor page, you can see that our time to solution is somewhere like 100x to 10,000x faster than other cloud computers that were available earlier this year.

And so the combination of incredibly fast time to solution of solving useful applications and doing real work as well as having an unparalleled price point, if you will, for the machines that are delivering that power gives us not just speed, but it gives us a cost of solution, which translates into utility.

And so DARP-C is about economic utility, not only actual algorithmic utility, right? So it's not just can you solve the algorithm, which is a necessary but not sufficient condition but it turns into, okay, if you can solve the algorithm at all, how fast can you do and was it cost to do it? And this is why we're really delighted by this validation because it is obviously done at the highest levels of government as well as the highest levels of technical achievement.

And it speaks to the fact that we've really designed our systems for manufacturer from the get-go and to scale. We recognize that a sound in the woods that no 1 hears is not very valuable, right?

A lab experiment that never leaves the lab is nothing more than a lab experiment that you can write a paper about but you can never manufacture. What's unique about us is we're really integrated, and we can, we do manufacture and we can scale tremendously and we can deploy.

And I would argue we have the most practice doing that, the biggest track record doing that. and it gives us a lot of momentum as we head into the next year or 2 of building fall tolerant machines and doing exactly the same thing we've done since IPO over the last 5 years.

Inder Singh

And I would just be I mean Niccolo nailed it. I would just add, our touch points with DARPA increasing. I mean, not only did we get the Phase C, but also they bought the atomic clocks that I mentioned earlier around sensing. We announced the HARC agreement.

So we're delighted to see that as Dara represents the front end of business with the Department of War, for example, that they are testing and certifying and feeling comfortable our products for deployment, I'll call it, in the mission. And that's to me from prior experience, a good leading indicator for the government being more ready to do business with you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Gary Mobley of StoneX.

Gary Mobley

A lot of the discussion so far has been on hardware sales. But I'm curious if you can share with us some of the performance KPIs for cloud access or revenue generated from your deployed cloud capacity. First of all, how much capacity do you have from a revenue perspective, maybe annualized? How has the usage trends gone on a year-over-year basis?

And where are you at in terms of utilization right now?

Niccolo de Masi

Yes. Both are growing, right? So as I said last quarter, some customers prefer to start with CAS -- and some customers will start and stay with gas. And quantum computing as a service allows you to do many things, useful for education, training, running some basic types of algorithms, et cetera.

On the other hand, if you want to do hybrid computing and you want to put a CPU next to a GPU, you can't do that through the cloud. So both are driving higher. Of course, CCaaS is a higher-margin business, as I said last quarter, -- so the more it grows, the better we do. So to your point on like do we focus on software, of course, we do. elicit is a software business.

As we look into our future, we're going to have a mix of hardware and software. The margins should be helped by that. The path of profitability should be helped by that. But in the quarter and last -- this year, frankly, year-to-date, I'm seeing strong demand for CS.

Inder Singh

As well as, as Nicolas mentioned and the announcements we made, folks saying, we actually have a data center with a bunch of GPUs from NVIDIA, and we want to put 1 of your cups next to it. City was 1 the 1 we noted this quarter is another, Quantum Basel is another, EBB and Tennessee and others. So it's a pattern that we would love to see continue.

And I think that more and more countries Niccolo and meets with customers are saying they want sovereign access, sovereign control. So I see both growing over time. You can't use some algorithms on a cloud basis, so you need the machine. On the other hand, you don't necessarily need to buy the machine and you can use CCaS from us. Instead, we run behind all 3 major clouds. Inder.

John McPeake

My follow-up I wanted to ask about maybe some capacity constraints or you did mention that Superion 256 is sold out through 2027. And -- so does that create some sort of impediment to selling more naturally or purposely on your part? And how do you transition to become sort of a mass producer producing 10-plus of these machines each year?

Niccolo de Masi

Yes. Well, look, I think that the demand is growing -- we are creating groundbreaking for innovations with each of our computers. We're delighted to see the demand. We're companies that actually moved very rapidly, as you saw from us in the past. If demand is there, we will rise to that demand.

And so I have no doubt in my mind that the capacity comment is a temporary comment. We have multiple locations where we can do manufacturing that we own. And when we get to the larger numbers we're talking about, we can think about manufacturing strategies that involve third parties as well. So that is not going to limit us from our...

Inder Singh

I just want to be clear, I did not give you a number for 2027, and we absolutely have the intention of getting to large-scale manufacturing right at this company, and we're the best positioned in the world to do that because we own Sky water, right? So I think you should read into the capacity constraint of a very integrated company that has a significant advantage in U.S. supply chain, the demand is unbelievably strong.

Operator

Our next question comes from Tyler Anderson of Craig Hallum.

Tyler Perry Anderson

This is Tyler Anderson on for Richard Shannon. I wanted to expand upon the manufacturing capacity. And I do want to clarify very quickly because I've been getting cut out with the sound -- did you say that you had 6 systems that were being delivered in 2017?

Niccolo de Masi

No. We did not mention any numbers. Sorry, you must have had some talk.

Tyler Perry Anderson

No, that's totally fine. So I just want to, from a high level speak to -- when we look at manufacturing these systems, and we have your new system powered by microwave and electronic control I would presume that, that would be a little bit more manufacturable or at least have a shorter time to manufacture. So if you could just describe how the previous systems, how long the previous systems typically maybe took compared to the new ones in any way that you could? And then highlighting that you just said there's a potential for contract manufacturers. I'm wondering, is this -- does that deemphasize the need for, let's just say, smaller optical solutions or just more semiconductor solutions to essentially take out the complexity.

Inder Singh

Okay. So there's like 3 or 4 questions there now said. Let me tackle most of them in 1 shot. Absolutely, we will demonstrate, I think, in the coming year or 2 that only I can manufacture fall tolerant computers that are robust, stable, can sit in data centers, have fast commissioning times and relatively rapid manufacturing times. Obviously, like with everything in life, you get better at the more you practice, but compared to bulk optics, where our industry tends to be in a lot of places. And where IQ was 2.5 years ago.

Electronic hope control and ion traps on a chip are unbelievably rapidly manufacturable, robust, stable and don't require the tuning environments that bulk optics require, okay? First point. Like we have assembled this company in the last 2 years so that we are the mass market manufacturing winner. On a global basis for fall tolerant can computers.

And that takes an architecture that works and it takes the actual supply chain and the trusted fabs on a secure environment to deliver on that, right? And we are doing that. And I think I want to point out, I think we've delivered more systems than anybody else. We sold our system everybody else, and we continue to see a path to growing that rapidly in the coming years even as we move the R&D road map forward.

The second thing that we've done is we own NEXUS, which is an integrated photonics company. And enter photonics are really useful, not just for where our computing platform is going, but also where other opportunities across our Quantum platform may head. I've talked about the importance of our atomic clocks, which are the most accurate in the world by a long way. We are the only down select in the DARPA it's about time program, i.e., you can read into that that no 1 else in the world makes clocks as accurate as us. Using Integrated Photonics and our clocks, we also own, of course, capabilities in the heavens.

And our clocks as they miniaturize will offer incredible next-generation positioning navigation and time GPS opportunities precisely because we can manufacture and drive integrated photonics along with the world's most accurate clocks also deployed in multiple theaters of war, if you will, from submarines to satellites. So we're really pleased with how the vision is coming together. It's obviously been many years in the making, but we've been incredibly deliberate about the pieces we've added, how we've integrated them and how we've proven out the pieces.

And I think it's safe to say that the roughly 4,000 people who work at IQ are excited to be here precisely because of how we integrate our road maps and what we can do in quarters and years as opposed to what will take other companies a decade.

Tyler Perry Anderson

Got it. And I agree with the deliberate acquisitions. And on that note, I see crypto agility is table stakes for PQC considering their potential fragility in the future. But I'm thinking about using these technologies that you acquired. Is there any other way that you could repurpose some of these, such as micro segmentation to bolster other things that you have within your business?

Niccolo de Masi

I think that's a great point, honestly, Tyler. There are many more opportunities across our platform. When you look at the synergies between the patents we have, and I think we have something like 1,200 and charging and the talent we have. And so we have the high-class problem, Tyler, of deciding the stack rank order of our commercial opportunities across our R&D platform.

And there can be plenty of passionate debate about it because everything from secure communications through to the future of GPS through to the future of security and computing run through our company, not to mention that we supply, obviously, a double-digit number of other quantum companies in the ecosystem. And we do this all to accelerate our nation's opportunities for victory in a geopolitical race that we believe matters a lot, not just for national security, but national economic security.

Every 1 of our technologies, if you think about the combination, Tyler, of not just the war-fighting domain we're in, but also the ability to cross pollinate these technologies within IQ's platform, create new applications and new road maps.

And this is a company where everyone is excited to come to work because of exactly what you just pointed out, which is that often 1 technology that has a primary purpose of A and a secondary purpose of B, typically in combination with something else we own could do more along other growth factors. So there's lots to come here.

I'm not going to prognosticate in this forum on what we could do. But you'll hear from us every quarter as we continue to deliver. And as we continue to prove out that the R in R&D and then the D and the manufacturing, the commercial opportunities have to obviously sync because we are the largest player, we believe, in our sector. We are determined to continue powering the tenth road map. In parallel with powering, obviously, financial milestones.

Inder mentioned long-term thoughts around profitability and integration for us is not only the back office, but it's also integration of the Ten road map and our ability to sell that so that customers are able to drive multiples of revenue per engagement, which, of course, like with every company drives exponential gross margin and profitability opportunities. as you're servicing that customer more effectively.

Lastly, I'll just say, I think you know a fair amount about what's going on in the security space. I agree with you that there is an arms race underway between LLM, quantum computers and what's going on to secure ourselves. That rate is just starting as my strong contention. The last quarter is not blips of the FBI website, getting hacked in the Department of Home Security obviously getting hacked and finance going and so on. There's much more of that to come. We're just getting started.

And so what IQ supplies in both hardware and software, we believe, is absolutely vital, not just for all governments but of course, all enterprise in the free world. and we're investing aggressively to keep ourselves safe, to keep our customers in part of safe, keep our governments safe.

And we believe that it will be, as Inder rightly pointed out, a rapidly growing segment because of this multi -- I would say, really multi-century if not multi-thousand year race between code makers and code breakers. We've seen, for the first time in a long time, I would argue since -- the British had Blackley Park and they were cracking a Nigma60, 70 years ago. We haven't seen this momentum in the attack vector and the code breaking in decades. And so defense and security is going to be something that everyone has to invest much more in.

Operator

Our next question comes from Troy Jensen of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Troy Jensen

Gentlemen, congrats on just the great results in the DARPA and the acquisitions and whatnot. But a quick question for you, Nicole, I'm sure you're going forward, you'll do probably a lot more acquisitions and software is probably a candidate for it. But I'd be curious to know if you think IQ would ever be a multi-modality on the hardware front? Or do you think trapped ion is the time to solution and time to cross winner for like most important applications.

Niccolo de Masi

Yes. So I mean, I'll answer that 1 slightly, Troy, which is I think there's plenty of people that have to hedge because they're not in DARPA or because they don't have a path to manufacturable utility. -- not at least in the 2020s, right? I mean we can all prognosticate about the 2040s and we can prognosticate about the late 2030s. But IQ has been focused on commercializing since I took this company public in 2020.

And we've commercialized I think, very successfully in the first 5 years post our IPO. You can see with the pieces we've assembled that we're positioned to continue on that path for the next 5 years. We have obviously expanded the vision of what we can successfully sell and proven it out to our customers.

And we have obviously doubled down and tripled down on our Ion Trap technology, not just because we built the world's first quantum logic gate in 1994, but because we've demonstrated the world's first shovel-ready blueprint to building full fall tolerant machines back in April of this year down to every single gate level operation. I haven't seen anybody else do that.

And so when you think about what the steps are to making full toner machines, you got to have that paper out about how you're going to do it, then you have to actually, of course, prove out your tell milestones. Then, of course, you absolutely have to get on with the development of your systems and the manufacturing, the deployment of those. We have the full spectrum of competencies. We have the full spectrum of validation. And we have, of course, 3 DARPA programs that have validated that.

And so -- when you've been right for 30 years, I'd say, Try and we continue to prove out our engineering milestones, I suspect we're going to be right for the next 30 years. The reality is in the history of technology Time and time again, particularly in computing. One has found that engineering pathways are really important at where most of the value is captured. ASML has demonstrated on the chip manufacturing and enablement sector for many decades. IQ has proven that I would argue for many decades.

And so we continue to double down and triple down because we're just getting started here about what we can do is a burly integrated supply chain, manufacturing and architecture. And because NVIDIA obviously has done their homework and decided we're the most manufacturable, most robust, most deployable and a best fit for their GPUs, not just today but in their road map, DARPA has done the same work. And obviously, our customers do the same work.

Every single 1 of our system sales are customers that are looking around the globe -- and all these people agree. So we're proud of where we are. We're even prouder of where we're going to be in the next year or 2, and we're especially proud of where we're going to be as the coming years roll out, and we continue to scale both in R&D and a commercial perspective. So watch this space. I think we've done a lot in the last 3 quarters this year, and we'll do more in the coming quarter.

Troy Jensen

Great answer. If I could just get a quick follow-up for Inder. The $290 million of incremental RTO for the IQ business, I think you said 180 is -- think of it as systems. -- is it the 110, can you just talk about that piece of it? Is that primarily the sensing win you guys won recently? Or is that the security or other sorry, of the 180, you said?

Inder Singh

The 110, the remaining piece of it. I get the 180 because that's all Soriana Darpan what but yes. The remainder of it is belly everything else, like the product portfolio that we've assembled is seeing demand more and more. I pointed to a couple of anecdotal examples, and that's why I mentioned sensing, that's why I mentioned sort of like the security focus that we have right now as well.

But we're really pleased with the portfolio. A one-stop shop in quantum, we're the only one. So for customers who start the journey with 1 product and then move to another in second, third, we're seeing all of those things play out, and that's the multiproduct sales that I talked about in the stats.

As Nicolas said, it was this strategy 2 years ago to put together a platform company. And now we are a platform company with all the manufacturing capacity we need. So as demand rises in each of these areas, whether it's security, will ramp up, whether it's quantum computing will ramp up. So yes, the rest of it came from across the entire business.

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Niccolo de Masi for any closing remarks.

Niccolo de Masi

Thank you, operator. We recognized early that our customers' most consequential challenges demand more than a single quantum technology point solution. That conviction is why we expanded INQ into quantum networking quantum sensing and quantum security.

Today, INQ is the only company commercializing a full quantum platform with more than 40% of this quarter's revenue in the IQ segment coming from customers buying more than 1 solution. Throughout 2026, being in the market worldwide with our Quantum platform has given us a clear view of how each business creates value, how the pieces connect and who owns the buying decisions.

Our opportunity is now to build and accelerate from our unique foundation. I expect that leveraging shared technology manufacturing capabilities and customer relationships will strengthen each part of our business. We believe that as we scale these advantages will become increasingly meaningful drivers of growth and long-term shareholder value. IonQ is building the Quantum ecosystem. In the coming years, we expect to approach a scale that will support structural profitability. Thank you for joining us today and for your questions, and have a great day.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.