SKYT News & Events

Reports Q4 revenue $171M, consensus $160.05M.

Welcome to the latest edition of "Quantum Leap" where The Fly decodes news and activity in the quantum computing space.CONFIDENTIAL COMPUTE:Arqit Quantumannounced the availability of its encryption software pre-installed inside an IntelTrust Domain Extensions trusted execution environment on Intel NetSec Accelerator Reference Design-based accelerator cards. The company said the result is confidential compute: trusted workloads, trusted networks, and trusted agents, even in shared or hostile environments.QUANTUM SCALABILITY:Sealsqannounced an increased technology-driven focus on semiconductor CMOS-compatible quantum computing architectures. The company said, "This strategic emphasis reflects Sealsq's conviction that long-term quantum scalability will be achieved through deep alignment with semiconductor technology. By prioritizing silicon spin qubits and electrons-on-helium platforms, Sealsq is concentrating its investments on qubit technologies that can be fabricated, integrated, and scaled using established semiconductor CMOS processes and manufacturing capabilities. Both silicon spin qubits and electrons-on-helium platforms approaches are promising for semiconductor CMOS-compatible quantum computing: silicon spin qubits use electrons in silicon and can be made with chip-making methods similar to CMOS, which may help with scaling and manufacturing, while electrons-on-helium qubits use electrons above superfluid helium on a silicon chip and can use CMOS-compatible controls, offering a low-noise alternative approach. CMOS compatibility is not just a technology or manufacturing preference; it is a system-level enabler. Quantum processors require dense arrays of control electrodes, high-speed signal routing, cryogenic-compatible electronics, and precise calibration and monitoring infrastructure. Silicon-based quantum platforms offer a credible path to the co-design and eventual co-integration of quantum devices with classical CMOS control circuitry."SHIELD CONTRACT AWARD:IonQannounced it was awarded a contract under the Missile Defense Agency Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense, SHIELD, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a ceiling of $151B. The company said this contract encompasses a broad range of work areas that allows for the rapid delivery of innovative capabilities to the warfighter with increased speed and agility.ADVANCED POST-QUANTUM ENCRYPTION:Cloudflareannounced it has achieved a complete secure access service edge to support modern post-quantum encryption standards. The company said, "By integrating advanced post-quantum encryption across all its major network configurations, the Cloudflare One SASE platform now provides the most secure bridge between corporate environments and its global network-which is one of the largest in the world. This allows any organization to protect its most sensitive data against the next generation of cyber threats, ensuring a seamless transition to new cryptographic standards. As the possibility of quantum computing nears, the encryption that protects our most sensitive healthcare, banking, personal data, and more, faces a reckoning that could render current security measures obsolete. To preempt this, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has issued a clear warning: upgrade cryptographic algorithms by 2030, or fall victim to the powerful quantum computers that will be able to break traditional cryptography. While that deadline may seem distant, upgrading global infrastructure is a massive undertaking."COMBINATION AGREEMENT:IQM Finland and Real Asset Acquisitionannounced they have entered into a definitive business combination agreement, which will result in IQM becoming a public company and listing American depositary shares. The transaction provides funding with the aim to accelerate IQM's technology and commercial development towards fault-tolerance quantum computing. Headquartered in Finland, IQM is also considering a dual listing that would see the trading of IQM's ordinary shares on the Helsinki stock exchange, which would be expected to take place following the completion of this transaction. Following completion of the transaction, IQM's cash on its balance sheet is expected to be in excess of $450M cash at closing. The transaction values IQM at a pre-money equity valuation of approximately $1.8B. The existing IQM shareholders will not sell any shares or receive any cash consideration as part of the transaction and all material IQM shareholders have committed to a customary lock-up agreement at close of this transaction. The board of directors of both IQM and Real Asset Acquisition have each unanimously approved the proposed business combination. The closing of the proposed business combination is subject to, among other things, the approval by shareholders of Real Asset Acquisition and IQM of the business combination agreement and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.CHANGE OF HEART:Sealsq and Quobly announced that they have mutually agreed to halt discussions regarding a potential majority investment or acquisition of Quobly by Seals. The parties will instead explore the possibility of a minority investment, to be discussed once Quobly launches its Series A financing round. This decision reflects a shared preference for a minority investment structure that is more compatible with the current pace of quantum computing investments in France.SOUTHEASTERN QUANTUM COLLABORATIVE:D-Wave Quantumannounced the company joined the Southeastern Quantum Collaborative as an inaugural member, along with The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Davidson Technologies, IBM and Alabama A&M University. "Alabama has long been a leader in the development and use of advanced technologies, and D-Wave is excited to join the Southeastern Quantum Collaborative as an inaugural member to support the next wave of innovation coming from the region - quantum computing," said Jack Sears, VP of government business solutions at D-Wave.COLLABORATION:Arqit and 6WIND announced a strategic collaboration to deliver quantum-safe, encrypted virtual private networking business services. These services support a wide range of enterprise, telco, and B2B use cases, including site-to-site connectivity, hub-and-spoke architectures, and high-availability deployments, delivered across universal customer premises equipment and virtualized cloud infrastructure. This announcement follows the integration of Arqit's NetworkSecure quantum-safe encryption key generation technology with 6WIND's Virtual Service Router product portfolio.INVESTMENT:Sealsq announced a new strategic investment in EeroQ, a U.S.-based quantum chip design company working on quantum computing architecture based on electrons on helium. This represents one of several investments made under Sealsq's Quantum Investment Fund platform. Carlos Moreira, Founder and CEO of Sealsq, commented: "This extended investment in EeroQ marks a significant milestone in SEALSQ's Quantum Made in USA strategy and in the establishment of our Quantum Highway."ANALYST COMMENTARY:Morgan Stanley cut the firm's price target on IonQ to $35 from $58 and maintains an Equal Weight rating ahead of the company reporting after the market close on February 25. The firm is expecting "modest upside" to FY25 revenue guidance in-line with management commentary in conjunction with the company's announcement to acquire SkyWater Technology, as well as an "upbeat" 2026 outlook, the analyst told investors in a preview. However, the firm is lowering its multiple, reflecting uncertainty on long term quantum commercialization and multiple compression similar to the peer group.

SkyWater Technology announced the appointment of Christine Dunbar as senior vice president, SVP, of sales and solutions engineering, reporting directly to President and COO John Sakamoto. In her role, Dunbar will focus on accelerating customer acquisition and scaling growth across the company's core platforms.

Welcome to the latest edition of "Quantum Leap" where The Fly decodes news and activity in the quantum computing space.FORTUNE 100:D-Wave Quantumannounced a $10M two-year enterprise quantum computing as a service agreement with a "leading Fortune 100 company." Under the agreement, the companies plan to collaborate to develop and deploy several quantum-powered applications, the company said in a statement. "This agreement marks a significant milestone in D-Wave's annealing quantum computing enterprise adoption and impact," said Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave. "No other company in the world has production-grade quantum technology in the market today, and this agreement is inarguably one of the most significant endorsements of how our solutions stand to benefit the world's leading companies."VERTICAL INTEGRATION:Sealsqreported that it is "redefining" vertical integration in the quantum era by building a platform in silicon. The company said, "Rather than developing quantum solutions in isolated layers of hardware, software, or connectivity, Sealsq has designed a fully integrated architecture in which cryptographic identity, post-quantum security, and sovereignty are embedded at the hardware level from the outset. This ensures that security and trust are intrinsic properties of the system, not external add-ons. The initiative began with a pilot Quantum Corridor linking three strategic European sites in Spain, France, and Switzerland. This proof-of-concept demonstrated that secure, cross-border collaboration in quantum and post-quantum technologies could operate under a unified, hardware-rooted trust framework."AIR AND MISSILE DEFENSE PLANNING:D-Wave, Davidson Technologies and Anduril Industries formed a collaboration to develop quantum-classical hybrid applications for U.S. air and missile defense planning challenges. In an initial proof-of-concept that used Anduril's defense simulations, Davidson's mission-domain modeling and secure-computing expertise, and D-Wave's quantum computing technology, the companies evaluated missile-defense planning scenarios. The effort compared performance of a classical-only approach against D-Wave's Stride hybrid solver running on the Advantage2 system. The company said, "Results demonstrated that while classical solvers performed effectively on smaller, less complex scenarios, the time to reach a solution increased significantly as problem size grew. By comparison, as problem complexity scaled, D-Wave's Stride hybrid solver extended its performance lead over classical-only approaches, delivering at least 10x faster time-to-solution, a 9% to 12% improvement in threat mitigation, and the ability to intercept an additional 45-60 missiles in a 500-missile attack simulation." D-Wave, Davidson, and Anduril plan to expand the collaboration by exploring other large-scale defense optimization challenges, including contested logistics, scalable and distributed manufacturing, cyber defense, and courses of action generation.NEW DIGS:D-Wave Quantum has selected Boca Raton, Florida as the location of its new corporate headquarters and a U.S. research and development facility. D-Wave plans to transition its headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Boca Raton, Florida before the end of 2026. In addition, D-Wave announced an agreement to install an Advantage annealing quantum computer at Florida Atlantic University's Boca Raton campus. The agreement represents a $20M commitment from FAU.POST QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY IN ROBOTS:Sealsq noted a live demonstration exploring its post-quantum cryptography robotic concept during the Physical AI Roundtable held in Davos on the margins of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. The demonstration featured WISeRobot, developed in cooperation with its parent company WISeKey, and illustrated the potential and need for post-quantum security to one day be embedded directly into physical AI and robotic systems. The company said, "As quantum computing continues to advance, many of today's cryptographic standards are expected to become vulnerable. Sealsq is proactively addressing this challenge by working on the integration of quantum-resistant algorithms and hardware-based roots of trust into robotic platforms, with the goal of ensuring long-term security, integrity, and trusted operation for AI-driven and autonomous systems deployed in real-world, often adversarial environments. The demonstration leveraged WISeRobot.ch, an advanced robotics platform meant to illustrate how post-quantum security could eventually be anchored across the silicon, firmware, and system levels. During the roundtable, WISeRobot actively participated as a live, interactive presence, animating discussions by demonstrating secure digital identity, trusted human-machine and machine-to-machine interactions, cryptographically protected communications, and hardware-anchored trust in real time."M&A:IonQand SkyWater Technologyannounced they have entered into a definitive agreement pursuant to which IonQ will acquire SkyWater for $35.00 per share in a cash-and-stock transaction, subject to a collar, implying a total equity value of approximately $1.8B. Under the terms of the agreement, SkyWater shareholders will receive $15.00 in cash and $20.00 in shares of IonQ common stock, subject to a collar, for each share of SkyWater common stock held at close of the transaction. The purchase price represents a 38.0% premium to the 30-day volume-weighted average price of SkyWater shares as of market close on January 23. The stock component is subject to a collar under which SkyWater shareholders will receive IonQ stock valued at $20.00 per SkyWater share, based on the 20-day volume weighted average price of IonQ stock as of three business days before closing, unless such volume-weighted average is greater than $60.13 per share, in which case SkyWater shareholders will receive 0.3326 IonQ shares per SkyWater share, or less than $37.99 per share, in which case SkyWater shareholders will receive 0.5265 IonQ shares per SkyWater share. SkyWater shareholders will own between 4.4% and 6.7% of the combined company under the collar. SkyWater will maintain its headquarters in Bloomington, Minnesota and its facilities in Minnesota, Florida, and Texas will serve as regional quantum production hubs. The Boards of Directors of both companies have unanimously approved the transaction, which is expected to close in the second or third quarter of 2026, subject to approval by SkyWater shareholders, receipt of required regulatory approvals and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. In light of the pending transaction, SkyWater's previously scheduled investor day will not be held in March. The combined company is expected to hold an investor event in the third quarter.DAVOS:Sealsq and WISeKey reported the inauguration of the "Year of Quantum Security" at Davos. The companies stated, "As quantum security emerges as one of the most dominant themes of this year's international discussions, progressively displacing Artificial Intelligence in terms of urgency, and strategic importance. Throughout the week, the companies carried out an intensive agenda, participating in numerous high-level panels and strategic events with global leaders from governments, industry, finance, and academia. These engagements included discussions with CNBC, Economist-related forums, Monaco innovation initiatives, India-focused technology events, the Choose France investment platform, celebrations linked to the upcoming USA 250th Anniversary, and many other international gatherings. Across these platforms, Carlos Moreira, founder and CEO of WISeKey and Sealsq, was repeatedly invited to address what is rapidly becoming the world's most pressing digital risk: the vulnerability of today's digital infrastructure in the face of powerful quantum computers."ENCRYPTION INTELLIGENCE:Arqitannounced the full commercial launch of Encryption Intelligence, a product that delivers a complete cryptographic inventory. Trevor Graham, chief security officer at Arqit, said: "Organizations cannot manage what they cannot see. Encryption Intelligence provides the visibility and control needed to plan and execute PQC migration efficiently, minimizing cost and disruption while meeting emerging compliance obligations."ANALYST COMMENTARY:B. Riley upgraded Rigetti Computingto Buy from Neutral with an unchanged price target of $35. The firm cited valuation for the upgrade and remains encouraged with Rigetti's near-term commercial trajectory. It sees greater visibility into the company's 2026 estimates following the India C-DAC order. B. Riley now has a more constructive 12-month stance on the shares.