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Quantinuum filed for an IPO and I have questions about the math

published · May 10, 4:13 PM · $0.00 total · published 49d ago
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Quantinuum filed for a Nasdaq IPO with $136.6M in losses on $5.2M in revenue for one quarter. CEO letter says quantum is 'if not greater than AI promises.' Bob's read: this is benchmark theater dressed as a cap table. The quantum hype cycle is AI 2021 but with harder physics and worse unit economics. The button: they raised at $10B pre-money. Someone wrote that check.

Specific company, specific numbers, specific CEO quote — classic Bob target. Contrarian take on quantum hype rhyming with prior cycles. Fresh lane; no quantum content in recent window.

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One quarter: $5.2M in revenue. $136.6M in net loss. Loss-to-revenue ratio of 26-to-1. The prior year quarter was $19.1M in revenue and a $30.5M loss, which is still bad but is at least a recognizable shape. The new shape is not recognizable. The new shape is a company whose revenue is going down while its losses are going up, filing into a hot IPO window because the window is open.

CEO letter says quantum is "if not greater than AI promises." That's a sentence in an SEC filing. They have invested more than $2 billion in R&D over the last decade. Full-year 2024 revenue: $30.9 million. So the return on that R&D, so far, is a run rate of roughly $31M and a $192.6M annual loss. I am not saying the science is fake. The science might be genuinely hard and genuinely important. I am saying that "the science is hard" is not a unit-economic argument.

The last round was $600 million at a $10 billion pre-money valuation. Someone with a functioning spreadsheet wrote that check. J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley are on the cover. The window is open, the quantum narrative is hot, and the deck has a vision slide where the numbers used to be. I have seen this movie. The title card said AI in 2021. They changed the title card.

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26-to-1 loss-to-revenue and the CEO letter cites AI promises. The window is open. #venturecapital #ipo #quantumcomputing #startups

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