Episode 540: Infleqtion CEO Matt Kinsella on Quantum Sensing, Computing, and Race to Scale

**Lance** (0:13)
Welcome to another episode of the Inside the ICE House podcast. Today's guest is Matthew Kinsella. He is the CEO of Infleqtion. Matt, thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE House. Happy to have you here.

**Matt Kinsella** (0:22)
Great to be here, Lance. Thanks for having me.

**Lance** (0:24)
So I want to start our conversation with Infleqtion's most recent first quarter earnings. I know this happened just a couple of days ago. When you look at the performance that Infleqtion has delivered, just what stands out to you through quarter one as the core drivers of that success and really how the business has evolved.

**Matt Kinsella** (0:40)
So core to our business is our focus on both quantum sensing as well as quantum computing. And that's made possible by the flexibility of the underlying technology that we utilize. And we can get more into that later in our discussion.
And because we make both quantum sensing devices and quantum computing devices, we have a more diversified revenue stream than many other quantum, all other quantum computing only companies. So the drivers of our $9.5 million in revenue this quarter and the drivers of our at least $40 million in revenue this year will be both quantum sensors and quantum computers. And so we have a reasonable mix of each inside those numbers.

**Lance** (1:20)
And how does that success that you've already seen in quarter one, because you mentioned a little bit about the rest of the year too, how does that shape your confidence in the broader 2026 outlook and what you see for quarters moving forward and everything beyond?

**Matt Kinsella** (1:34)
So we announced, it wasn't an earnings call, but we did a business update back in February, March and in late March. And at that point in time, we had guided to approximately $40 million in revenue. And now that we have wrapped up the quarter and I'm seeing things that are making me optimistic, I've tweaked that guidance to at least $40 million. And so it's a subtle but important tweak.
And hopefully that showcases that we have good confidence in our ability to grow revenue.

**Lance** (2:06)
And I think one of the constant tensions for companies in emerging tech is balancing the needs to deliver obviously quarterly results while still investing in long term breakthrough innovation. It's the focusing on the here, but also focusing on what might be here years from now too. At the same time, how do you approach that balance in a space like quantum, where timelines can obviously stretch, but expectations obviously still and always will remain high?

**Matt Kinsella** (2:32)
So I think about this a lot and I say it the way I say it internally is we have to sell what we have on the truck and drive that truck to the future. And so we are again unique because we have useful products today. And so we are held to accountable for two metrics where I hold ourselves accountable for two metrics. One is near term points on the board by selling the things that we already have to sell. And the second is investing in the R&D to bring forth the progress we need technologically to get to the next phase of our product development. And largely that is to make quantum computers useful. Those are not yet commercially useful, unlike quantum sensors, which are. And so a lot of our R&D is to make these quantum computers get useful faster, because it's going to be a massive market opportunity when we do that.

**Lance** (3:20)
Absolutely. And so you talk about products, you talk about R&D, you actually brought the prop with you today, which a lot of people don't bring props with them. So I appreciate that. It was unexpected to me. So I don't have any questions about the prop, the prop, excuse me, on my script. So I'm just going to free flow it here. It's on the table. No, it's not the mug, nor is it the cup of water. But show us what that is real quick.
Tell me a little bit about it. You talk, and we talked a little bit about before we were recording, about holding something tangible in your hands. Just sort of explain, right? Because with something like quantum, a lot of people may never hold it tangibly in their hands. You think of it as sort of like an intangible that just sort of happens and just sort of works. But you're holding something I had to hold it before. So explain what that is and sort of just the function that it has.

**Matt Kinsella** (4:04)
OK, so let me start at the very basic level. Like what is quantum? When we're talking about quantum, we're talking about the world of the very small. So we're talking about the atomic and the subatomic levels where there's a whole different set of rules that govern down there, and those are called quantum mechanics. They were discovered in the late 1800s, early 1900s when scientists like Einstein realized that at the world of the very small, things work very differently than they do at the world of the big that we live in.