How Infleqtion Turns DARPA Research Into Revenue: The Government-to-Commercial Conveyor Belt

How Infleqtion Turns DARPA Research Into Revenue: The Government-to-Commercial Conveyor Belt

Here’s what most founders think an SBIR buys: $100,000 to $2 million in non-dilutive funding to build something the government wants. Cash without equity dilution.

Here’s what an SBIR actually buys: proof that a government buyer wants your technology badly enough to fund its development, relationship infrastructure with program officers who control future budgets, and the confidence to make a seven-figure bet on manufacturing capabilities before you have commercial customers.

Matthew Kinsella, CEO of Infleqtion, describes their commercialization strategy as “this conveyor belt on where we take these products from the research world and into the commercial realm.” In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, he walked through how that conveyor belt works—the specific decisions that transform a DARPA research grant into an $10.9 million defense contract.

Stage One: The SBIR as Demand Signal

“The easiest thing to do, if you’re a very early stage startup, is to respond to calls for what are called SBIRs,” Matthew explains. These grants operate on “time and materials plus like a 10% fee” and range from $100,000 to $2 million.

But the real value isn’t the grant structure—it’s what the grant represents. When DARPA issues an SBIR, they’re broadcasting a specific capability gap. They need something that doesn’t exist. They need it badly enough to fund its creation.

This is the demand signal most founders overlook. You’re not just getting paid to build a prototype. You’re getting paid to discover whether the government has a serious, funded need for what you’re building.

Infleqtion won the Rimrock SBIR to build a rack mounted rubidium optical clock. They delivered one prototype. That single unit validated two critical questions: Could they technically build this? And did the government actually want it at scale?

Stage Two: The Relationship Infrastructure

The second thing an SBIR buys is harder to quantify: “The most important thing about it, honestly, is that you’re building the relationship with those buyers of the technology.”

Program officers at DARPA, IARPA, and other agencies run multiple programs over years. When you successfully deliver on an SBIR, you’re proving execution capability and building trust.

This compounds. Program officers “know what you’re good at. And so they almost can sometimes, you know, you can read between the lines that this was maybe written with you in mind, because they know you could do a good job.”

Read that carefully. When you see an SBIR that perfectly matches your capabilities, and you’ve successfully delivered before, it might not be accidental. Program officers can’t tell you they wrote it for you—but they can write specs that map to proven capabilities.

Phase one SBIRs lead to phase two, which lead to phase three. The progression can become “many millions of dollars over the course of several years” if you execute well. These relationships inform what happens next on the conveyor belt.

Stage Three: The Manufacturing Investment Decision

Here’s where most founders stall. You’ve built a prototype. The government likes it. You have relationships with program officers. Now what?

Most deep tech companies would wait for more customer demand before investing in manufacturing. They’d want multiple confirmed buyers before making major capex investments.

Infleqtion made a different calculation. Matthew describes the logic: “I built you one rubidium optical clock. I know there’s demand for a lot more of those. So we’re going to actually invest in the resources to build the manufacturing capabilities to sell that.”

Notice the confidence. The SBIR proved demand. The relationships confirmed ongoing need. Infleqtion didn’t wait for a purchase order. They invested in manufacturing based on validated demand signal from the SBIR program.

This is the leap that separates research labs from commercial companies. You have to believe the demand is real enough to invest before you have confirmed buyers. The SBIR is your validation.

Stage Four: From One Unit to Commercial Scale

Once you have manufacturing capability, the economics shift. Matthew defines commercial as “selling many of one thing.” Not research prototypes. Not custom builds. Repeatable, scalable production.

This is where the conveyor belt reaches commercial realm. Infleqtion moved from building one Ticker for DARPA to manufacturing clocks “in the tens, twenties and hundreds and volumes.” Last week, they signed a $10.9 million contract for these clocks.

That contract didn’t happen because Infleqtion had great government relationships (though they did). It didn’t happen because their technology was impressive (though it is). It happened because they made the manufacturing investment before they had the contract—based on the demand signal from the SBIR.

The Dual-Use Commercial Expansion

The final stage extends beyond defense. Matthew describes Infleqtion as “squarely a dual use company.” The commercial realm divides: “To the DoD and then part is to the commercial world.”

The same quantum clocks that solve GPS-denied navigation for the military solve commercial problems in telecom networks and data centers. Telecom networks already use “highly accurate clocks” for time division multiplexing. Data centers use them to “provision those workloads between servers and between data centers.”

These commercial buyers use cesium atom clocks—old technology. “Really what we need to do now is just swap our 3000 times more accurate clock out for those existing clocks.”

The DARPA investment de-risked the R&D. The government contracts funded manufacturing scale-up. Now commercial buyers can adopt technology that’s already proven, already manufactured—because the government paid for the hard part.

The Conveyor Belt Principle

Infleqtion’s “history is very much in US government research,” Matthew notes. But he frames it as a progression: “I kind of view it as this conveyor belt on where we take these products from the research world and into the commercial realm.”

The principle is systematic. DARPA funds research through SBIRs. Those SBIRs validate demand and build relationships. Relationships inform future opportunities. Validated demand justifies manufacturing investment. Manufacturing enables commercial scale. Commercial scale creates dual-use revenue.

Most founders see SBIRs as funding. Infleqtion sees them as the first stage of a multi-year commercialization process that ends with both government and commercial customers buying the same manufactured product. The grant isn’t the business model—it’s the validation that justifies the investment that enables the business model.

The conveyor belt moves from research to commercial, but only if you understand what you’re actually buying at each stage.