IONQ Inc (IONQ) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day and welcome to the IonQ third-quarter 2021 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. (Operator Instructions) After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. (Operator Instructions) Please note, this event is being recorded.

大家好，歡迎參加 IonQ 2021 年第三季財報電話會議。所有與會者將處於「僅收聽」模式。 （操作員指示）今天的演示結束後，將有機會提問。 （操作員指示）請注意，本次會議正在錄製中。

I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jordan Shapiro, Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

現在，我想將會議交給財務規劃與分析副總裁兼投資者關係主管喬丹·夏皮羅先生。請您發言。

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to IonQ's third-quarter 2021 earnings call. My name is Jordan Shapiro, and I am the vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis and Head of Investor Relations here at IonQ. I am pleased to be joined on today's call by Peter Chapman, IonQ's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Thomas Kramer, our Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the Company's third-quarter 2021 earnings press release issued this afternoon, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website at investors.ionq.com.

大家下午好，歡迎參加 IonQ 2021 年第三季財報電話會議。我叫喬丹‧夏皮羅 (Jordan Shapiro)，是 IonQ 財務規劃與分析副總裁兼投資人關係主管。我很高興 IonQ 總裁兼執行長彼得·查普曼 (Peter Chapman) 和財務長 Thomas Kramer 也出席今天的電話會議。現在，大家應該已經可以閱讀公司今天下午發布的 2021 年第三季財報新聞稿了，該新聞稿可在我們網站 investors.ionq.com 的投資者關係板塊查看。

Before we begin, a quick reminder to our listeners. Through the course of this call, management will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Actual results and the timing of certain events may differ materially from the results or timing predicted or implied by such forward-looking statements, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance.

在我們開始之前，請各位聽眾注意：在本次電話會議中，管理層將根據聯邦證券法做出前瞻性陳述。這些陳述是基於管理階層目前的預期和信念，並包含風險和不確定性，可能導致實際結果與這些前瞻性陳述中所述的結果有重大差異。實際結果和某些事件發生的時間可能與此類前瞻性陳述預測或暗示的結果或時間有重大差異，報告的結果不應被視為對未來績效的指示。

Please note that these forward-looking statements made during this conference call speak only as of today's date, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update them to reflect subsequent events or circumstances other than to the extent required by law. Please refer to today's press release and to the Company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, which was also filed with the SEC earlier today, as well as other filings with the SEC for a detailed discussion of the risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today.

請注意，本次電話會議中所做的前瞻性陳述僅代表截至今日的觀點，除法律要求外，本公司不承擔更新這些陳述以反映後續事件或情況的義務。請參閱今天的新聞稿以及本公司截至2021年9月30日的10-Q表季度報告（該報告也已於今天早些時候提交給美國證券交易委員會），以及其他提交給美國證券交易委員會的文件，以詳細了解可能導致實際結果與今天做出的任何前瞻性陳述中明示或暗示的結果存在重大差異的風險。

Please note that on today's call, management will refer to adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. While the Company believes this non-GAAP financial measure provides 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. Please refer to our earnings press release for a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to its most comparable measure prepared in accordance with GAAP.

請注意，在今天的電話會議上，管理階層將提及調整後的EBITDA，這是一個非GAAP財務指標。雖然公司認為該非GAAP財務指標為投資者提供了有用的信息，但這些資訊的呈現並非旨在單獨考慮或取代根據GAAP呈現的財務資訊。請參閱我們的收益新聞稿，以了解調整後的EBITDA與其根據GAAP編製的最可比較指標的對帳情況。

Now I will turn it over to Peter Chapman, President and CEO of IonQ. Peter?

現在我將把話題交給 IonQ 總裁兼執行長 Peter Chapman。 Peter？

Thanks, Jordan. And thank you all for tuning in to our first earnings call as a public company. Before I jump into the results and the events of the quarter, I wanted to give you some background for those who are new to the IonQ story.

謝謝，喬丹。也感謝大家收聽我們上市後的首次財報電話會議。在介紹本季的業績和活動之前，我想先為那些還不熟悉 IonQ 的人介紹一些背景資訊。

IonQ makes the world's most powerful quantum computers and we differ from most of our competitors by using a unique trapped ion approach. We employ some of the world's foremost talent in our space, including our co-founders, Dr. Jungsang Kim and Dr. Chris Monroe. Both have been trailblazers in the world of quantum computing for decades and sit on the White House's national quantum initiative advisory committee. They are some of the most cited quantum computing researchers in the industry with complementary skill sets in electronics and experimental physics.

IonQ 製造全球最強大的量子計算機，我們採用獨特的離子阱技術，與大多數競爭對手截然不同。我們擁有業內頂尖人才，包括聯合創始人 Jungsang Kim 博士和 Chris Monroe 博士。他們數十年來一直是量子計算領域的先驅，並且是白宮國家量子計畫諮詢委員會的成員。他們是業界被引用次數最多的量子運算研究人員之一，在電子學和實驗物理學領域擁有互補的技能。

In the six years since IonQ's founding, we have made significant strides in taking our revolutionary trapped ion technology out of the lab and putting it into the hands of our customers, as a commercial-grade, readily-available quantum computer. IonQ's hardware is being used by companies and partners to push the boundaries in areas like machine learning, financial modeling, logistics optimization, and even quantum video games.

IonQ 成立六年來，我們取得了長足的進步，將革命性的離子阱技術從實驗室走向客戶，打造出商業級、隨時可用的量子電腦。 IonQ 的硬體正被許多企業和合作夥伴用於突破機器學習、金融建模、物流優化，甚至量子電子遊戲等領域的極限。

At a high level, I am pleased to announce that IonQ is tracking at or ahead of schedule on all critical path items underpinning our business. We manufacture and operate the best quantum computers in the world, and our mission is to make our quantum computers even more accessible, and to nurture a global developer ecosystem.

我很高興地宣布，IonQ 正在按計劃或提前完成支撐我們業務的所有關鍵路徑項目。我們製造並經營世界上最好的量子計算機，我們的使命是讓我們的量子計算機更容易普及，並培育一個全球開發者生態系統。

In the next few minutes, I will take you through IonQ's strong progress against its technical milestones we outlined earlier in the year, how we are continuing to broaden and deepen our ecosystem, and how we are accelerating in scaling and commercialization. Let's begin with the impressive progress we have made on scaling our hardware.

接下來的幾分鐘，我將帶您了解 IonQ 在今年稍早概述的技術里程碑方面取得的強勁進展，我們如何繼續拓展和深化我們的生態系統，以及如何加速擴展和商業化。首先，讓我們從我們在硬體擴展方面取得的令人矚目的進展開始。

Quantum computing is a next-generation form of computation similar to how a GPU differs from a CPU. There are several approaches to quantum computing. IonQ's technology use trapped ions for our qubits, or the quantum bits underlying our systems. We chose trapped ions because we believe they exhibit qualities that are well-suited for stability and their ability to scale. It can be hard to evaluate the relative merits of various quantum computing platforms in the market.

量子運算是下一代運算形式，類似 GPU 與 CPU 的差異。量子計算有多種方法。 IonQ 的技術使用捕獲離子作為量子位元，也就是我們系統底層的量子位元。我們選擇捕獲離子是因為我們相信它們具有非常適合穩定性和可擴展性的特質。評估市場上各種量子運算平台的相對優劣可能很困難。

However, the recent publication of the benchmarking study of all commercially available quantum computers by the QED-C, a third-party industry group, confirmed that IonQ's computers are best-in-class along key dimensions such as their accuracy while running algorithms with high circuit width and circuit depth.

然而，第三方產業組織 QED-C 最近發布的所有商用量子電腦的基準研究證實，IonQ 的電腦在運行高電路寬度和電路深度演算法時的準確性等關鍵方面處於同類最佳水平。

IonQ's hardware outperformed the field, outpacing entities from IBM, Honeywell, and Rigetti. For additional details, we will refer you to the original paper and a blog post on our website that walks you through the value of the algorithm-based benchmarks, the specific tests performed, and the conclusions of the paper.

IonQ 的硬體效能超越了 IBM、Honeywell 和 Rigetti 等公司。更多詳細信息，請參閱原​​始論文和我們網站上的部落格文章，其中詳細介紹了基於演算法的基準測試的價值、所執行的具體測試以及論文的結論。

Broadly speaking, every quantum computing company is working to increase the number of qubits in their systems and at the same time, reduce the prevalence of errors in order to improve the capacity of their platforms. For our quantum processing unit, or QPU, that is designed to allow us to increase the number of qubits in our system while maintaining stability. We believe this creates a path to scale that could allow us to place hundreds of qubits on a single chip up from the dozens we have on chips today.

整體而言，每家量子運算公司都在努力增加其係統中的量子位元數量，同時降低錯誤發生率，以提升其平台的容量。對於我們的量子處理單元（QPU），其設計旨在讓我們能夠在保持穩定性的同時增加系統中的量子位元數量。我們相信，這開闢了一條規模化的道路，使我們能夠在單一晶片上整合數百個量子位元，而目前單一晶片上的量子位元數量僅為數十個。

In early October, researchers from IonQ and the University of Maryland published results in a prominent peer-reviewed journal that documented best-in-class error correction technology. This joint study with Duke University, the University of Maryland, and the Georgia Institute of Technology was the first and so far the only one on any quantum computing system to show fault-tolerant error correction working in practice. Solving error correction is critical to creating quantum computers large enough to deal with the complex problems that governments, businesses and societies face today.

十月初，IonQ 和馬裡蘭大學的研究人員在一份著名的同行評審期刊上發表了一項研究成果，記錄了業界領先的糾錯技術。這項由杜克大學、馬裡蘭大學和喬治亞理工學院共同進行的研究，是首個也是迄今為止唯一一個在量子計算系統上展示容錯糾錯技術在實踐中發揮作用的研究。解決糾錯問題對於建立足夠強大的量子電腦以應對當今政府、企業和社會面臨的複雜問題至關重要。

In summary, we are confident that our technical progress today will allow IonQ to continue its leadership in the quantum industry. Next, I am excited to update you on how we are bringing quantum out of the lab and into the real world. Our goal is to enable every developer to use IonQ's quantum hardware and create applications that take advantage of the unique strengths of our quantum computers. Year-to-date, we have accomplished what we believe to be the two most important steps in making IonQ's quantum hardware widely accessible: broad cloud partnerships and broad software support.

總而言之，我們相信，今天的技術進步將使 IonQ 繼續保持在量子產業的領先地位。接下來，我很高興向大家介紹我們如何將量子科技從實驗室帶入現實世界。我們的目標是讓每位開發者都能使用 IonQ 的量子硬件，並創建能夠充分利用我們量子電腦獨特優勢的應用程式。今年迄今為止，我們已經完成了我們認為使 IonQ 量子硬體廣泛普及的兩個最重要的步驟：廣泛的雲端合作夥伴關係和廣泛的軟體支援。

First, IonQ is the only provider of quantum computing hardware available on all three major public clouds. We already have two quantum systems available for our customers through every major U.S. cloud provider, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. We have also completed the construction of our third more powerful system, which we announced at our second quarter business update call on September 22 this year. This is now available as a private beta for select customers via our dedicated cloud. We are the only provider of quantum computing hardware available on all three major public clouds.

首先，IonQ 是唯一在三大公有雲上提供量子運算硬體的供應商。我們已經透過所有美國主要雲端服務供應商（包括亞馬遜網路服務、微軟 Azure 和谷歌雲端）為客戶提供了兩套量子系統。此外，我們還完成了第三套更強大的系統的構建，並於今年 9 月 22 日在第二季度業務更新電話會議上宣布了這一消息。該系統現已透過我們的專用雲端平台向特定客戶推出私人測試版。我們是唯一在三大公有雲上提供量子運算硬體的供應商。

And second, we have integrated IonQ's hardware with every major quantum software development kit, including platforms like IBM's Qiskit and Google Cirq. This simplifies access to our hardware for hundreds of thousands of developers already on those platforms.

其次，我們將 IonQ 硬體與所有主流量子軟體開發套件集成，包括 IBM 的 Qiskit 和 Google Cirq 等平台。這簡化了這些平台上數十萬名開發者對我們硬體的存取。

Lastly, I will discuss the great progress we have made on the commercial side of the business and in building the Company. We are proud to announce that we have tripled our bookings expectations for fiscal year 2021. This past quarter, we announced partnerships and collaborations with world-class companies including Goldman Sachs, Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, Accenture, and GE Research, as well as with educational institutions like the University of Maryland.

最後，我將討論我們在商業業務和公司建設方面取得的巨大進展。我們很榮幸地宣布，2021財年的訂單量預期已成長兩倍。上個季度，我們宣布與高盛、富達應用技術中心、埃森哲和通用電氣研究院等世界一流公司以及馬裡蘭大學等教育機構建立合作夥伴關係。

We continue to make progress towards new and exciting applications and customer wins. We have also fortified IonQ's balance sheet in recent months, having completed our business combination with dMY Technology Group III on September 30, 2021. IonQ is now the first publicly traded, pure play quantum computing company in the world. We are fortunate to have Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Corporation, Silver Lake, MSD Partners, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, NEA, GV, and Fidelity Management and Research Company as stockholders of IonQ.

我們持續在令人興奮的新應用和客戶拓展方面取得進展。近幾個月來，我們也進一步增強了 IonQ 的資產負債表，並於 2021 年 9 月 30 日完成了與 dMY Technology Group III 的業務合併。 IonQ 現已成為全球首家上市的純量子運算公司。我們非常榮幸地擁有現代汽車公司和起亞汽車公司、銀湖資本、MSD Partners、Breakthrough Energy Ventures、NEA、GV 以及富達管理與研究公司等眾多 IonQ 股東。

As a result of this transaction, we received net proceeds of $575 million, which will fund our commercialization efforts and accelerate the development of future generations of quantum computers. While we achieved all these milestones through Q3 2021 with comparatively modest funding, we are now one of the best funded quantum computing companies in the world.

這項交易為我們帶來了 5.75 億美元的淨收益，這將為我們的商業化努力提供資金，並加速未來幾代量子電腦的研發。雖然我們在 2021 年第三季實現了所有這些里程碑，但資金相對有限，我們現在已成為全球資金最雄厚的量子計算公司之一。

Part of scaling the business is growing the team including recent key hires. We brought in Ariel Braun as Senior Vice President of Product Management. Ariel's background is truly impressive with extensive experience across diverse roles and technology areas, working in companies ranging from early start-ups to the Fortune 100. In addition to cofounding Pure Digital Technology, which generated over $1 billion in revenue, with the Flip video camcorder, Ariel led Cisco's consumer product portfolio, as well as Google's AR and VR product management.

業務擴張的一部分是團隊規模的擴大，包括最近的關鍵員工。我們聘請了 Ariel Braun 擔任產品管理資深副總裁。 Ariel 的背景令人印象深刻，她在各種職位和技術領域擁有豐富的經驗，曾就職於從早期新創公司到財富 100 強的企業。除了共同創立 Pure Digital Technology（該公司憑藉 Flip 攝影機創造了超過 10 億美元的收入）之外，Ariel 還領導了思科的消費產品組合以及Google的 AR 和 VR 產品管理。

We hired Dean Kassmann as Vice President of Research and Development. Prior to joining us, he was Senior Director of Advanced Technology for Blue Origin. There, Dean established and led the team responsible for companywide applied research in the support of their launch vehicle engines and in-space product lines. Dean has over 25 years of leadership in software, hardware and technology development, including advanced modeling and planning roles at both Aspen Technology and Amazon.

我們聘請了 Dean Kassmann 擔任研發副總裁。在加入藍源之前，他曾擔任藍色起源公司先進技術高級總監。在藍色起源，Dean 組建並領導了一支團隊，負責全公司範圍內的應用研究，為藍源的運載火箭發動機和太空產品線提供支援。 Dean 在軟體、硬體和技術開發領域擁有超過 25 年的領導經驗，曾在 Aspen Technology 和亞馬遜擔任高階建模和規劃職位。

We are thrilled to welcome Ariel and Dean to the IonQ family and look forward to working with them as we continue to build out our world-class team. We are beyond excited to begin our life as a public company, and I want to thank all our board members, advisors, investors, employees, and everyone who make our public listing possible.

我們熱烈歡迎 Ariel 和 Dean 加入 IonQ 大家庭，並期待與他們攜手共進，共同打造世界級的團隊。我們非常高興能夠開啟上市公司的旅程，我要感謝所有董事會成員、顧問、投資者、員工以及所有為 IonQ 上市做出貢獻的人。

And with that, I would like to turn over the call to our CFO Thomas Kramer. Thomas?

接下來，我想將電話轉給我們的財務長 Thomas Kramer。托馬斯？

Thank you, Peter, and good afternoon, everyone. I would like to start off by quickly going through some of our financial results in more detail. Earlier in Q3, we raised our full year 2021 forecasted bookings expectations from $5 million to $15 million. Today, I am happy to announce that as of the end of Q3, our total bookings for the year have already exceeded our increased expectations for the full year ending up at $15.1 million. We believe this is the recognition of the promise our customers see in our platform and resulted from customers buying more and also earlier than we had expected.

謝謝Peter，大家下午好。首先，我想快速詳細地介紹我們的一些財務表現。早在第三季度，我們就將2021年全年的預訂量預期從500萬美元上調至1500萬美元。今天，我很高興地宣布，截至第三季末，我們全年的總預訂量已超過我們上調後的全年預期，達到1510萬美元。我們相信，這是對我們平台客戶承諾的認可，也是因為客戶的購買量比我們預期的更多、更早。

Given that we are still at the beginning of our commercialization phase and that in addition to transactional-based cloud revenue, we sell large contracts where customers pay for reserved compute access, we should expect bookings to continue to be lumpy for quite some time. On the top line, we had $233,000 of revenue in the third quarter of 2021 for a total of $451,000 year to date. We had no revenue in the prior year period.

鑑於我們仍處於商業化階段的起步階段，並且除了基於交易的雲端收入外，我們還出售客戶為預留計算訪問付費的大額合同，因此我們預計預訂量在相當長的一段時間內仍將保持波動。 2021年第三季度，我們的營收為23.3萬美元，年初至今的總營收為45.1萬美元。去年同期，我們沒有任何收入。

Moving down the income statement, our total operating costs and expenses for the quarter were $10.8 million up from $3.6 million in the prior year period. Breaking this down a bit, our research and development costs in the third quarter of 2021 were $6.2 million, compared to $2.3 million in the prior year period, as we continue to invest in building our technology advantage. Our selling and marketing costs in the quarter were $1.3 million compared to $81,000 in the prior year period. This is due to the ramp-up in our commercialization efforts and focus on sales and partnerships.

損益表中，本季我們的總營運成本和費用為1,080萬美元，高於去年同期的360萬美元。具體來看，由於我們持續投資打造技術優勢，2021年第三季我們的研發成本為620萬美元，去年同期為230萬美元。本季我們的銷售和行銷成本為130萬美元，去年同期為8.1萬美元。這得益於我們加大了商業化力度，並專注於銷售和合作夥伴關係。

Our general and administrative costs were $2.5 million compared to $727,000 in the prior year period due to increased headcount and overhead associated with scaling. We expect our general and administrative expenses to increase for the foreseeable future as we scale headcount with the growth of our business and as a result of operating as a public company.

我們的一般及行政費用為250萬美元，去年同期為72.7萬美元，歸因於員工人數增加以及規模擴張帶來的管理費用。我們預計，隨著我們業務成長和上市公司運營，員工人數的擴大，在可預見的未來，我們的一般及行政費用仍將增加。

You may also note the $4.3 million non-operating costs on our P&L, which is the portion of the transaction costs allocated to the liability classified warrants from the original dMY III IPO. This is a one-time, non-cash expense that will not be a recurring charge. This resulted in a net loss of $14.8 million compared to a net loss of $3.6 million in the prior year period. Our adjusted EBITDA loss for the quarter was $7.9 million compared to the $3 million in the comparable year prior period.

您可能還會注意到，我們的損益表中有430萬美元的非營業成本，這是分配給dMY III初始IPO中負債類認股權證的交易成本的一部分。這是一次性非現金支出，不會成為經常性費用。這導致淨虧損1,480萬美元，而去年同期淨虧損為360萬美元。本季我們調整後的EBITDA虧損為790萬美元，去年同期為300萬美元。

As a reminder, due to the nature of our business and technology, we expect to continue to build our investment in our business for the immediate future. On our balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents were $587 million as of September 30, 2021, which was largely a result of the close of our transaction with dMY III. The transaction closed on September 30 and provided us with net proceeds of $575 million.

提醒一下，鑑於我們業務和技術的性質，我們預計近期將繼續加大對業務的投資。截至2021年9月30日，我們的資產負債表上的現金和現金等價物為5.87億美元，這主要得益於我們與dMY III交易的完成。該交易於9月30日完成，為我們帶來了5.75億美元的淨收益。

We intend to use these funds to bring new generations of hardware with higher capacity to market and to build out our commercial capabilities, in addition to investing in the quantum computer ecosystem. We are well-capitalized and well-positioned to benefit from Capitol Hill's interest in quantum as shown by the infrastructure bill.

除了投資量子電腦生態系統外，我們計劃利用這些資金將新一代容量更高的硬體推向市場，並增強我們的商業能力。基礎設施法案表明，我們資金充足，並有能力從國會對量子技術的興趣中獲益。

Turning briefly to our fourth quarter and full year guidance, we continue to see strong demand for our compute platform. In the third quarter, we benefited from some contract bookings closing sooner than anticipated. Still, in the fourth quarter, we expect an additional $600,000 to $800,000 in new total contract value bookings. As a result, we anticipate that we will end the year between $15.7 million and $15.9 million in bookings. This is well above our original 2021 estimate of $5 million and also significantly above our updated full your target of $15 million.

簡要回顧我們第四季度和全年的業績指引，我們繼續看到市場對我們計算平台的強勁需求。第三季度，我們受益於一些合約訂單提前完成。儘管如此，我們預計第四季新增合約總價值訂單將達到60萬至80萬美元。因此，我們預計今年年底的訂單金額將在1,570萬美元至1,590萬美元之間。這遠高於我們最初對2021年500萬美元的預期，也顯著高於我們更新後的1500萬美元的全年目標。

The closing of bookings in Q3 will have a direct impact on recognized revenue and accordingly, we anticipate our top line for Q4 to end up between $1 million and $1.2 million for the full year revenue of $1.5 million to $1.7 million for 2021.

第三季的預訂結束將對確認的收入產生直接影響，因此，我們預計第四季度的營業收入將在 100 萬美元至 120 萬美元之間，2021 年全年收入將在 150 萬美元至 170 萬美元之間。

Now I would like to touch on two topics that we felt were important to mention outside of our financial results. First, the redemption rate observed during our de-stack process was notably low at approximately 2.5% of the outstanding shares of dMY III. We take this as an indication of our investor confidence in our long-term prospects, which can be further surmised by the fact that 71% of our investor base agreed to lock up periods ranging between 6 to 18 months.

現在，我想談談我們認為除了財務表現之外，還有兩件重要的事情需要提及。首先，我們在去重過程中觀察到的贖回率明顯較低，約為 dMY III 流通股的 2.5%。我們認為這顯示投資人對我們長期前景充滿信心，而 71% 的投資人同意 6 至 18 個月的鎖定期，也進一步印證了這一點。

Second, I want to mention that we expect a large number of one-time transaction-related expenses in addition to costs of being public to be paid out in the fourth quarter of 2021. The largest of these is a D&O insurance policy, which will be approximately $2 million.

其次，我想提一下，我們預計除了上市成本之外，2021 年第四季還將支付大量一次性交易相關費用。其中最大的一筆是 D&O 保險，金額約 200 萬美元。

Finally, I would like to move on to some of the partnerships that we announced in the quarter. As Peter touched upon earlier, in Q3, we announced a partnership with the University of Maryland to create the National Quantum Lab at Maryland or Q-Lab. The Q-Lab will serve as an important conduit for some of the rising stars of quantum and for the scientific community as a whole to pursue world-leading research through hands-on access to commercial-grade quantum computer.

最後，我想談談我們在本季宣布的一些合作關係。正如Peter之前提到的，在第三季度，我們宣布與馬裡蘭大學合作，創建馬裡蘭國家量子實驗室（Q-Lab）。 Q-Lab將成為量子領域一些新星以及整個科學界的重要管道，透過實際接觸商用級量子計算機，推動世界領先的研究。

Access to the facility will be open to UMD-affiliated students, faculty, researchers, staff, and partners across the country, allowing collaboration with our own scientists and engineers. We will be the exclusive provider of quantum computers to the Q-Lab and as such, the University of Maryland is an important customer. We could not be more excited about this partnership and look forward to future projects with the University of Maryland, which has made a name for itself as an international powerhouse for quantum research.

該設施將向全美各地馬裡蘭大學附屬的學生、教職員工、研究人員、員工和合作夥伴開放，以便與我們自己的科學家和工程師合作。我們將成為 Q-Lab 量子電腦的獨家供應商，因此馬裡蘭大學是我們的重要客戶。我們對此次合作感到無比興奮，並期待與馬裡蘭大學開展未來的項目，馬裡蘭大學已成為國際量子研究領域的領導者。

Next, in collaboration with Goldman Sachs and QC Ware, we demonstrated how our quantum computers are powerful enough to run an algorithm that lays the foundation for speeding up Monte Carlo simulations. As many of you know, Monte Carlo simulation is an important analytical tool for a variety of industries, including financial services, drug discovery, robotics, and climate science. We are working to design a number of quantum algorithms intended to let firms evaluate risks and similar prices for a variety of financial instruments, much faster than classical computers are capable of doing today.

接下來，我們與高盛和 QC Ware 合作，展示了我們的量子電腦如何強大到足以運行一種演算法，為加速蒙特卡羅模擬奠定基礎。眾所周知，蒙特卡羅模擬是金融服務、藥物研發、機器人技術和氣候科學等眾多產業的重要分析工具。我們正在設計一系列量子演算法，旨在讓企業能夠以比傳統電腦更快的速度評估各種金融工具的風險和相似價格。

In a similar vein, we also released a paper in collaboration with the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, demonstrating how our quantum computers can outperform classical computers in the generation of high-quality data use in testing financial models. We believe the new technique is a significant step in developing applications for quantum finance that is also applicable to a broad set of other industries. Obviously, we are very encouraged by these results and their potential.

同樣，我們也與富達應用技術中心合作發表了一篇論文，展示了我們的量子電腦在產生用於測試金融模型的高品質數據方面如何超越傳統電腦。我們相信，這項新技術是開發量子金融應用的重要一步，也適用於其他廣泛的產業。顯然，我們對這些成果及其潛力感到非常鼓舞。

Additionally, we announced a multiyear strategic relationship with Accenture intended to accelerate the development of quantum-computed business applications. Accenture's experience in quantum, its work with companies across a wide range of industries and its ability to design customers' industry solutions tailored to our hardware will enable us to help more companies become quantum-ready in the future.

此外，我們宣布與埃森哲建立多年策略合作關係，旨在加速量子運算商業應用的開發。埃森哲在量子領域的豐富經驗、與各行各業公司的合作，以及根據我們硬體客製化客戶產業解決方案的能力，將使我們能夠在未來幫助更多公司做好量子運算的準備。

Lastly, we announced a partnership with GE Research to explore how our quantum computers can be used in the field of risk analysis. Risk analysis, which is common in the finance industry can apply to a wide set of complex systems such as supply chains, environmental systems, and cybersecurity networks. We are encouraged by our financial performance this quarter, and look forward to continuing or to execute on our roadmap.

最後，我們宣布與通用電氣研究院 (GE Research) 合作，共同探索如何將我們的量子電腦應用於風險分析領域。風險分析在金融業中十分常見，可應用於各種複雜系統，例如供應鏈、環境系統和網路安全網路。我們對本季的財務表現感到鼓舞，並期待繼續推進或執行我們的發展路線圖。

And with that, operator, you may now open the line for questions.

接線員，現在您可以打開熱線來回答問題了。

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) Katy Huberty, Morgan Stanley.

我們現在開始問答環節。 （操作員指示）摩根士丹利的凱蒂·休伯蒂。

Thank you. Good afternoon and congratulations on the public listing and many product announcements and milestones in the quarter. I have a couple of questions. The first is about the bookings and mix of bookings year to date. What can you tell us about the number of customers or deals within that 50 million of bookings and about the mix of customers and use cases that you have seen this year?

謝謝。下午好，祝賀公司上市，並在本季發布了眾多產品，取得了許多里程碑式的成就。我有幾個問題。第一個問題是關於今年迄今為止的訂單量和訂單結構。您能否介紹一下這5000萬訂單中客戶或交易的數量，以及您今年看到的客戶結構和用例？

Hi, Katy. Thanks for calling in and excellent questions. What we have seen to date is that we have seen thousands of customers running projects on our machines with billions of shots in terms of running their quantum computations. We continue to see a mix of customers coming in through our public cloud where we actually don't know who all of the customers are, because that sits with the public cloud provider. And we have customers on a private cloud as well. We are, to date, not going to break out the individual customer names because many of these actually covered by confidentiality clauses.

嗨，凱蒂。感謝您的來電和精彩的提問。到目前為止，我們已經看到成千上萬的客戶在我們的機器上運行項目，他們的量子計算次數高達數十億次。我們持續看到一些客戶透過我們的公有雲加入，但我們實際上並不知道所有客戶是誰，因為這些資訊掌握在公有雲供應商手中。我們也有一些使用私有雲的客戶。到目前為止，我們不會透露具體客戶的名字，因為其中許多客戶實際上受到保密條款的保護。

Okay. And then as it relates to the cost structure, the fact that G&A today is greater than sales and marketing just speaks to how early you are in the commercialization phase. How should we think about sales and marketing expense scaling longer term? Should we model that as a percentage of bookings? And then just remind us at what revenue scale would you expect the business to be profitable on a non-GAAP basis?

好的。然後，說到成本結構，目前一般及行政費用（G&A）高於銷售和行銷費用，這顯示你們的商業化階段還處於早期階段。我們應該如何考慮銷售和行銷費用的長期成長？我們應該將其建模為預訂量的百分比嗎？然後，請提醒我們，您預計在非公認會計準則下，業務在多大的收入規模下才能獲利？

So excellent questions. We look forward to providing updates on our future cost structures as well as earnings on the Q4 call. However, you are absolutely right in that we anticipate our commercialization to ramp up and hence, sales and marketing should grow as a percentage of our total cost basis.

這些問題問得非常好。我們期待在第四季度電話會議上提供有關未來成本結構和收益的最新資訊。不過，您說得完全正確，我們預期商業化進程將會加快，因此銷售和行銷占我們總成本的比例應該會有所成長。

Okay. And then just lastly, the high-level thoughts. I know it's early to be specific, but you have outperformed the bookings target by 3X in 2021. Your original target for 2022 was $15 million, so flat with what you've executed to this year. I imagine that there is some upward pressure potentially on next year outlook. Just any thoughts as to how the outperformance year-to-date influences qualitatively your view of next year. Thank you.

好的。最後，我想談談一些宏觀的想法。我知道現在說具體還為時過早，但你們2021年的訂單量已經超額完成了3倍。你們2022年的原定目標是1500萬美元，所以與今年的執行情況持平。我想明年的前景可能會有一些上行壓力。請問你們對今年迄今的優異表現將如何影響你們對明年的展望有什麼看法？謝謝。

Absolutely. We are extremely happy to have seen how many customers have been willing to invest in us early on in our lifecycle as a commercial company that is offering products for sale. And we anticipate that this will continue to happen. We look forward to updating the market on our expectations for 2022 sales on our Q4 earnings call.

當然。我們非常高興看到，在我們作為一家提供產品銷售的商業公司發展初期，有這麼多的客戶願意投資我們。我們預計這種情況將持續下去。我們期待在第四季度財報電話會議上向市場更新我們對2022年銷售額的預期。

Thank you.

謝謝。

David Williams, Benchmark.

大衛威廉斯，基準。

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for the -- letting me ask the question, and congrats on the solid progress here.

嘿，下午好。謝謝你讓我提出這個問題，也恭喜你在這裡取得了紮實的進展。

Thank you.

謝謝。

I wanted to maybe ask maybe on the competitive environment, you spent some time talking about this, clearly made a lot of progress here. But when you think about some of the competitors within the space, what are the key differentiators you think in IonQ that you'd not be able to exploit? Or maybe I've realized we are still in the early days of quantum technology, but beyond the metrics, how do you think about the competitive landscape?

我想問一下競爭環境，您花了一些時間討論這個問題，顯然取得了很大進展。但是，考慮到這個領域的一些競爭對手，您認為 IonQ 有哪些關鍵的差異化因素是您無法利用的？或者我可能意識到我們仍處於量子技術的早期階段，但除了這些指標之外，您如何看待競爭格局？

Well, hi, this is Peter, and thanks for the call. In general, there is a lot of noise about total number of qubits from competitors. And as we have said before, we don't think that that by itself is going to foretell who's going to win the quantum space race. Other factors such as average two-qubit gate fidelity, the error correction overhead, qubit connectivity, and eventually the price per qubit are going to be the kind of -- need to be considered as well. And all quantum companies know this, even though they don't talk about it. And we continue to believe ours will lead to the best quantum computer in the future.

嗨，我是彼得，謝謝你的來電。總的來說，競爭對手對量子比特總數的討論很多。正如我們之前所說，我們認為這本身並不能預示誰將贏得這場量子太空競賽。其他因素，例如平均雙量子位元閘保真度、糾錯開銷、量子位元連接性，以及最終的每量子位元價格，都是需要考慮的。所有量子公司都知道這一點，即使他們沒有公開談論。我們仍然相信，我們的產品將在未來打造出最好的量子電腦。

Great, fantastic. Thank you. And then maybe as I understand some of the aspects around the different approaches or models, maybe gate versus annealing, it seems optimization-type problems are less tolerant or maybe have a little more overhead than maybe the gate approach. Can you maybe just talk about that a little bit in terms of the applications you think IonQ systems will have the best advantage? Maybe any specific areas you think you can capture here.

太好了，太棒了。謝謝。然後，也許就我所理解的不同方法或模型的一些方面而言，例如門控與退火，優化類型的問題似乎比門控方法的容錯性更低，或者開銷更大一些。您能否從您認為 IonQ 系統最有優勢的應用角度簡單談談這個問題？或者您認為可以在這裡探討哪些具體領域？

Hi, good question. This is Chris Monroe, Chief Scientist. So the annealing model of quantum computing is highly experimental now. It's not clear that quantum even plays a role in what's going on there. It's not -- it's really apples and oranges comparing that to the gate model, which is the type of computing mode we and most of the others in the industrial space work on.

嗨，好問題。我是首席科學家 Chris Monroe。量子計算的退火模型目前處於高度實驗階段。目前還不清楚量子在其中是否發揮作用。這與門模型（我們以及工業領域中的大多數其他人都在研究的計算模式）相比，簡直是天壤之別。

And the benefit of the gate model is that it's proven to be universal. You can perform any quantum algorithm with a gate machine. It's not clear you can do that with an annealer, although you may be able to do interesting things with an annealer. I think that's left to research. So with the gate model, again, we can characterize the number of qubits, the number of gates seen and perform and compare the different technologies.

門模型的優點在於它已被證明具有通用性。你可以用閘機執行任何量子演算法。目前尚不清楚退火器是否也能做到這一點，儘管你或許可以用退火器做一些有趣的事情。我認為這還有待研究。因此，再次強調，利用閘模型，我們可以表徵量子位元的數量、可見的閘門數量以及執行情況，並比​​較不同的技術。

Okay, very helpful. Thanks. And one last one, maybe if you can maybe talk a little bit about the new chip that you have announced. And just curious maybe if you can walk through the timing and when we should expect to have maybe some early performance data. And then is this a fundamental change in maybe the epitaxial process or maybe the circuit architecture, or is this just maybe a refinement of your existing approach?

好的，非常有幫助。謝謝。最後一個問題，您能否談談您發布的新晶片？能否介紹一下時間安排，以及我們什麼時候可以獲得一些早期效能數據？這是否是外延製程或電路架構的根本性變化，還是只是您現有方法的改進？

Chris Monroe here again. So the new chip we demonstrated allowed us an intermediate way to scale up our system by multiplexing several cores of ion-trapped -- of collections of qubits. Now the chip itself, it's made of a different material than we had used previously, but there is nothing quantum about the chip. It's more of the support structure. It's part of the control system, and we anticipate in the future probably changing that around, too, as need be. The main point of that chip is scaling and allowing us to get algorithmic qubit numbers, so that we can hit useful applications.

又是克里斯·門羅。我們演示的新晶片透過多路復用多個離子阱核心——量子位元集合——為我們提供了一種中間擴展系統的方式。晶片本身採用的材料與我們之前使用的材料不同，但它與量子無關。它更像是一個支撐結構，是控制系統的一部分，我們預計未來可能還會根據需要進行調整。該晶片的主要目的是擴展，並允許我們獲得演算法量子位元數，以便我們能夠實現有用的應用。

Fantastic. Thanks so much. Looking forward to seeing the 4Q results.

太棒了！非常感謝！期待看到第四季的業績。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Ruben Roy, WestPark Capital.

魯本·羅伊（Ruben Roy），WestPark Capital。

Yes, thank you, and thanks for taking my questions. I guess either Peter or Chris, just to kind of follow up on that last question. Seeing that the bookings are moving higher, which is great, just wondering if you can give us an update on systems manufacturing progress. Are you -- I think Peter mentioned you are ahead of schedule on most of your metrics, but maybe a little bit of an update on where you stand with systems at this point, how you're looking for next year would be helpful?

是的，謝謝，也謝謝您回答我的問題。我想問Peter或Chris，我想跟進最後一個問題。看到訂單量不斷增加，這很好，我想知道您是否可以向我們介紹系統製造的進展。我記得Peter提到過，您的大多數指標都提前完成了，但能否稍微介紹一下您目前的系統狀況，以及您對明年的展望，這會對您有所幫助嗎？

Hi, Ruben, happy to answer. So at the current time, we have two systems, which are servicing jobs out on the cloud for all three cloud partners and internal for our private cloud. And then there is an additional system which is the -- what we call the 32-qubit system, which right now is in private beta.

你好，Ruben，很高興回答。目前，我們有兩個系統，分別在雲端為所有三個雲端合作夥伴提供服務，並在內部為我們的私有雲提供服務。此外，還有一個額外的系統，我們稱之為 32 量子位元系統，目前處於內測階段。

And we have customers and in fact actually, Goldman Sachs and Fidelity have been running jobs on that system as well as other customers. So that one, we haven't put out into the cloud yet. We expect to do that in 2022. And then in addition, there is three additional systems under construction in various phases of development that we are building right now that we will be talking about in the future.

我們有一些客戶，實際上，高盛和富達以及其他客戶一直在該系統上運行作業。所以，我們還沒有將該系統遷移到雲端。我們預計在2022年實現。此外，我們目前正在建造另外三個處於不同開發階段的系統，未來我們會討論。

Great, thank you, Peter. To follow up on that, I guess, and following up on a question from earlier just around expenses. I guess, Thomas, maybe we could talk a little bit about how you are thinking about R&D. I don't think you really talked about scaling that and how that might impact the model near-term as the bookings go up and you are working on these new systems. Yes, I would imagine it's more of development than research at this point, but if you can give us a little bit of how you're thinking about R&D, that would be helpful.

太好了，謝謝你，彼得。我想，為了跟進一下這個問題，也為了跟進之前關於費用的問題。湯瑪斯，也許我們可以談談你對研發的看法。我認為你並沒有真正談到規模化，以及隨著預訂量的成長和新系統的開發，這將如何影響短期模式。是的，我認為目前更多的是開發而不是研究，但如果你能告訴我們你對研發的看法，那將會很有幫助。

Absolutely. Good to hear you, Ruben. I think you covered it very nicely. We will absolutely continue to scale up our R&D investments, but it's mostly on the D and not on the R. Most of the technology that we are utilizing has already been laid out and documented through 25 years of research from Dr. Kim and Dr. Monroe. And what we are doing is executing on this roadmap that they have already laid out.

當然。很高興聽到你的聲音，Ruben。我覺得你說得很好。我們絕對會繼續加大研發投入，但主要還是投入研發上，而不是研發上。我們正在使用的大部分技術，都是Kim博士和Monroe博士經過25年的研究，已經規劃並記錄下來的。我們正在做的，就是按照他們已經規劃好的路線圖來執行。

Thankfully, most of our parts are standard off the rack. We like to joke that we can buy them on Amazon. But in reality -- well, we do, of course, buy some things on Amazon. We buy these from standardized makers of traditional parts and some untraditional ones that we won't cover on this call, but that's our secret sauce, of course. But these parts are neither very unique or very expensive, which allows us to have a much lower cost base than what you would expect from an early-stage hardware manufacturer. And we are very happy to see that we have been able to do this with a limited investment, and already, we are seeing quite some pick up in the market.

值得慶幸的是，我們的大部分零件都是現成的標準配置。我們喜歡開玩笑說，這些零件可以在亞馬遜上買到。但實際上——我們當然會在亞馬遜上買一些東西。我們從一些生產傳統零件的標準化製造商那裡購買，也有一些非傳統製造商——我們不會在本電話會議上討論，但這當然是我們的秘訣。這些零件既不特別獨特，也不太昂貴，這使得我們的成本基礎遠低於早期硬體製造商的預期。我們很高興看到，我們能夠以有限的投資做到這一點，而且我們已經看到市場出現了相當大的回升。

Great, thanks, Thomas. Last question since we do have Dr. Monroe on the call. Wondering -- you started to talk a little bit about that chip and scalability, the reconfigurable chip. What are the milestones that you're looking for next? When you talk about scalability, I think you guys have talked about using an optical interconnect to scale into systems that have higher qubits. Is that the next milestone? Or what should we be thinking about in terms of moving forward towards commercialization of that new technology?

太好了，謝謝，托馬斯。由於門羅博士確實在電話會議上，所以這是最後一個問題。我想知道——您開始談論晶片和可擴展性，以及可重構晶片。您接下來期待的里程碑是什麼？說到可擴展性，我記得你們討論過使用光互連來擴展到具有更高量子位元的系統。這是下一個里程碑嗎？或者說，在推進這項新技術的商業化方面，我們該考慮什麼？

Yes, thanks for the question. That's certainly one of the milestones. I would say one aspect that sets our company apart from the entire market is we have a very deliberate path to scale on several fronts. One of them is the multicore architecture that we demonstrated the basics of on this recent chip where we, on a single chip, can have many cores of individual -- we call them local quantum computers. And it's reconfigurable. It allows us to move qubits back and forth between the cores.

是的，謝謝你的提問。這當然是里程碑之一。我想說，我們公司與整個市場不同的一個方面是，我們在多個方面都有一條非常謹慎的擴展路徑。其中之一就是多核心架構，我們在最近的這款晶片上展示了其基本原理。在單一晶片上，我們可以擁有多個獨立的核心——我們稱之為本地量子電腦。而且它是可重構的。它允許我們在各個核心之間來回移動量子位元。

And then as you correctly noted, our out game is to move the information off chip to another chip. And here, we envision something like a data center, where each chip would be on its own device connected by optical fiber to another device. And then it comes down to how much [LAN] do you have to put racks in and scale up your quantum computer accordingly?

然後，正如您正確指出的那樣，我們的最終目標是將資訊從晶片轉移到另一個晶片。在這裡，我們設想了一個類似資料中心的方案，每個晶片都位於一個獨立的裝置上，並透過光纖連接到另一個裝置。接下來的問題是，你需要多少個[LAN]來放置機架，並相應地擴展你的量子電腦？

Now again, we have -- we have very concrete plans to do that. And we understand as we scale that we will have -- we will have full connectivity. Any qubit in the entire system can directly talk to any other qubit. And so this is one advantage to scale that we are going to pull away even, even more notably compared to today as we scale. So you are right, the photonic interconnect is a key part of our scaling strategy going forward, but it's not the only one.

再說一次，我們有非常具體的計劃來實現這一點。我們知道，隨著規模的擴大，我們將擁有完全的連結。整個系統中的任何量子位元都可以直接與任何其他量子位元通訊。因此，這是我們在規模化方面的優勢之一，隨著規模的擴大，我們將比現在更顯著地發揮這一優勢。所以你說得對，光子互連是我們未來規模化策略的關鍵部分，但並非唯一。

Excellent. I appreciate all the detail and congrats, guys, on the continued execution.

太棒了！感謝所有細節，恭喜大家繼續執行。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Richard Shannon, Craig-Hallum.

理查德·香農，克雷格·哈勒姆。

Well, great. Thanks for taking my questions as well, guys. Maybe a quick financial question for Thomas. Gross margins, I think in your SPAC presentation deck, you had talked about kind of a 40s percentage or percent or so gross margins. We are seeing it so far this year at kind of around zero here. When do we get up to the levels that we are talking about here like 40s or even higher here? Is this something that you expect in the fourth quarter or soon thereafter?

好的，太好了。也感謝大家回答我的問題。我想問托馬斯一個簡單的財務問題。毛利率，我記得在你的SPAC簡報中，你提到了40%左右的毛利率。今年到目前為止，我們看到的毛利率在零左右。什麼時候才能達到我們所說的40%甚至更高的水準？你預計這是在第四季還是之後不久？

So the gross margins that we spoke of earlier was on a unit lifecycle basis, and we think that we are actually delivering towards those already. We will continue obviously to see a very modest gross margin as we are so early on in the commercialization phase. And we look forward to updating you on the expectation for gross margins in 2022 on our Q4 call.

我們之前提到的毛利率是基於單位生命週期的，我們認為我們實際上已經達到了這個水準。由於我們目前還處於商業化階段的早期，因此毛利率顯然會繼續保持在非常低的水平。我們期待在第四季電話會議上更新2022年的毛利率預期。

Okay, fair enough. Second question on bookings. Thomas, again, in your prepared remarks, you talked about your bookings and your outlook for next year, and I think in response to a question as well you also talked about it being lumpy. I think you had a small number of contracts that provided most of the upside to your 2021 number here. Can you give us a sense of what you're looking at in terms of the bookings pipeline today, whether it hits that $15 million goal or whatever it ends up being next year? What is the 80? Is there an 80-20 rule to this or even a more extreme version of that that helps you get to that $15 million number or whatever it becomes next year and can you give us some color as to how that will develop?

好的，說得對。第二個問題是關於預訂的。湯瑪斯，你之前在準備好的發言中也談到了你的預訂情況以及對明年的展望，我想你在回答一個問題時也提到了預訂量不穩定。我認為你簽訂的合約數量不多，這為2021年的業績提供了大部分的支撐。你能不能介紹一下你目前的預訂情況，看看它是否能達到1500萬美元的目標，或者明年最終會達到什麼水平？ 80%指的是什麼？有沒有一個80-20的規則，或者更極端的規則，可以幫助你達到1500萬美元的目標，或者明年最終會達到什麼水平？能不能透露一下具體情況？

Absolutely. So we have been busily talking to potential customers and partners for probably two years now. And it's only been recently that we have been able to come to the market with an actual product that we can sell. And what we have seen is that the reception in the market was larger and faster than we had anticipated, and that refers to the lumpiness.

絕對的。我們大概兩年前就一直忙著與潛在客戶和合作夥伴洽談。直到最近，我們才得以將實際可以銷售的產品推向市場。我們看到的是，市場反應比我們預期的要大、快，這就是所謂的「不穩定性」。

And as you know, when you look at recognized revenue, that [pain] tends to straighten itself out, particularly when you have a contract that you can straight line, which most of ours are. However, the actual time when it comes in can create spikes where you will see that it goes up, and one quarter might be higher than the next, like Q3 was higher than we are anticipating Q4 being.

你知道，當你查看已確認收入時，這種[痛苦]往往會自行消失，尤其是當你有一份可以直線計算的合約時，我們大多數合約都是這樣的。然而，實際收入到帳的時間可能會出現峰值，你會看到它上升，一個季度的收入可能高於下一個季度，例如第三季度的收入就高於我們預期的第四季度的收入。

So that is just the nature of the beast when you sell large deals. And we anticipate that this will continue for quite some time, although we anticipate our recognized revenue to be much smoother. We are busily working away on our next year bunch of sales, of course, and we look forward to updating you on our expectations on the Q4 earnings call.

所以，這就是大宗交易的本質。我們預計這種情況還會持續相當長一段時間，儘管我們預計確認的收入成長會更加平穩。當然，我們正忙著明年的銷售計劃，期待在第四季財報電話會議上更新我們的預期。

Okay, we look forward to hearing about that. A couple more questions for me, one for Peter. The paper you put out a number of weeks ago regarding the benchmarking organization and the data which -- I read the paper and it seems very complimentary to IonQ in general here. Maybe can you tell us about the reactions you are hearing from customers, researchers and even competitors in the market?

好的，我們期待聽到您的回覆。我還有幾個問題想問Peter。您幾週前發布的關於基準測試機構及其數據的論文——我讀過這篇論文，它似乎對IonQ總體上非常讚賞。您能否談談您從客戶、研究人員甚至市場競爭對手那裡聽到的回饋？

Well, this validates what we have been saying kind of all along that now having an industry, an association be doing kind of independent benchmarking and showing that our quantum computers are the best. In part, too, you'll also hear it from customers. When they say we have tried this on various other platforms, it would only run on IonQ's hardware. And so you are hearing it now both in customer voices and also now in an industry -- industry benchmark. And so we do think that these industry benchmarks are the way going forward to be able to compare systems.

這驗證了我們一直以來的說法：現在有一個行業協會在進行某種獨立的基準測試，並證明我們的量子電腦是最好的。某種程度上，你也會從客戶那裡聽到這種說法。他們說我們在其他各種平台上嘗試過，但最終發現只能在 IonQ 的硬體上運行。所以，你現在既能從客戶那裡聽到這種說法，也能從行業基準測試中聽到這種說法。因此，我們確實認為，這些產業基準測試是未來系統比較的途徑。

In the future, we hope everyone else will join the benchmarking efforts, so that we can compare these systems fairly from one vendor to the next. Obviously, at the current time, we are doing quite well on that as the leading vendor in this space.

未來，我們希望其他所有人都能參與基準測試，以便我們能夠公平地比較不同供應商的系統。顯然，目前，作為該領域的領先供應商，我們在這方面做得相當不錯。

Okay, thanks for that feedback. My last question, I guess I'd love to hear from both Peter and Chris on this one. As you think about the industry developing over the medium to long-term, to what degree do you see this market being a winner take all opportunity?

好的，謝謝你的回饋。我的最後一個問題，我想聽聽Peter和Chris的意見。從中長期來看，您認為這個市場在多大程度上會成為贏家通吃的市場？

Well, the TAM for quantum is huge. So it's hard to imagine one company taking it all. That would be like saying somehow like Intel was the one that was going to take all over on the entire classical computing market. So we do think that there will be space for multiple players. There will probably be space for multiple approaches to quantum and who's winning. And we think those things will be good things for customers. And well, competition makes us better.

嗯，量子計算的潛在市場（TAM）非常巨大。所以很難想像一家公司能包辦所有市場。這就像說英特爾將包辦整個傳統運算市場一樣。所以我們確實認為，未來會有多個參與者的空間。量子計算的多種方法以及最終的贏家都有可能存在。我們認為這些對客戶來說是好事。競爭讓我們變得更好。

Okay, great. That is all for me. Thank you.

好的，太好了。我的就到這裡。謝謝。

(Operator Instructions) Jack Andrews, Needham.

（操作員指示）傑克·安德魯斯，尼德姆。

Good afternoon and congratulations on the results. I was wondering if you could speak to the overall hiring environment. Just given your efforts to scale your organization, how hard is it to find relevant people with the requisite quantum computing skills, or are there similar backgrounds that you think are appropriate and you can leverage in terms of building your organization?

下午好，祝賀你所取得的成果。我想請問您能否談談整體的招募環境。考慮到您努力擴大組織規模，要找到具備必要量子運算技能的相關人才有多難？或者，您認為是否有類似的背景適合併可以利用來幫助您建立組織？

It's a great question. Thanks, Jack. Well, the quantum talent war is indeed heating up. But we've found that those with quantum skill sets are drawn to work on the most advanced technology in the world at IonQ. And we were lucky to have our two co-founders who are the brightest minds in the field, and often people are drawn to them to come work with us. So I think that makes all the difference.

這個問題問得真好。謝謝，傑克。量子人才爭奪戰確實正在升溫。但我們發現，擁有量子技能的人才會被吸引到IonQ，來研究世界上最先進的技術。我們很幸運，我們的兩位共同創辦人都是該領域最聰明的人才，他們經常吸引人們來我們公司工作。所以我認為這才是關鍵。

We are working to create a quantum Silicon Valley in College Park, and with a symbiotic relationship with the University of Maryland. And that continues to also give us a pipeline of new talent as they come out of the universities. We do think kind of internationally as well that often talent isn't just focused in the United States, and so sometimes it's overseas. So what we can as a country can do to help us make that talent available here is also important, but that's probably outside of our control.

我們正在努力在大學公園市打造一個量子矽谷，並與馬裡蘭大學建立共生關係。這也將持續為我們輸送來自這些大學的新人才。我們也從國際角度考慮，人才通常不只集中在美國，有時也會來自海外。因此，作為一個國家，我們能夠採取哪些措施來幫助我們在這裡獲得這些人才也很重要，但這可能超出了我們的控制範圍。

Thanks for the perspective. And just as a follow-up question, I was wondering if you could just drill down a little bit into the traction that you're -- with the public cloud vendors in particular. Is there any one of the three major hyperscalers that you're particularly optimistic about that can help move the needle for you here in the near term?

謝謝你的觀點。接下來我想問一個問題，你能不能深入談談你對公有雲供應商的吸引力？三大超大規模雲端供應商中，有沒有哪一家你特別看好，認為它們能在短期內推動你的發展？

The answer is we unfortunately can't tell you due to agreements with them as to what the sales are for one versus the other.

答案是，很遺憾，我們無法告訴您，因為我們已經與他們達成協議，無法確定其中一個的銷售額與另一個的銷售額。

Got it. Appreciate that. Thank you.

明白了。非常感謝。謝謝。

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

我們的問答環節到此結束。現在請彼得·查普曼致閉幕詞。

Thanks, everyone, for attending today. Any company is the sum of its employees, and we would not be here without the incredible dedication of the IonQ team. I would like to thank each and every one of our employees for their contribution. We continue to be focused on our long-term goals of investing and building the business to make IonQ the clear market leader in quantum computing. We will use these calls as a forum to highlight the key milestones along our journey, and we look forward to updating the entire investment community on our progress going forward. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to listen today.

感謝各位今天的出席。任何一家公司都是員工的集合，如果沒有IonQ團隊的無比奉獻，我們就不會擁有今天的成就。我要感謝每一位員工的貢獻。我們將繼續專注於我們的長期目標，即投資和建立業務，使IonQ成為量子運算領域的領導者。我們將利用這些電話會議來回顧我們發展歷程中的關鍵里程碑，並期待向整個投資界報告我們未來的進展。感謝各位今天抽空聆聽我們的分享。

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

會議現已結束。感謝您參加今天的演講。您可以斷開連線了。