The Infleqtion Lobbying Playbook: Why Defense Tech Requires Congressional Strategy, Not Just Pentagon Relationships

The Infleqtion Lobbying Playbook: Why Defense Tech Requires Congressional Strategy, Not Just Pentagon Relationships

You’ve built a relationship with a colonel at the Pentagon. He loves your product. He wants to buy it. He’s told you the exact specs you need to meet. You’ve met those specs. Now you just need him to place the order, right?

Wrong. That colonel can’t buy your product—even if he desperately wants it—because Congress hasn’t appropriated funding for it. And here’s the part that breaks most founders’ mental models: that colonel can’t tell Congress to appropriate the funding.

“Those people who are making the decision can’t lobby on your behalf, nor can they tell Congress that they want to buy your stuff,” Matthew Kinsella, CEO of Infleqtion, explains. “You need to then get written into the bill, the funding to buy rubidium optical clocks, and then the purchaser will then make that purchase from you.”

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Matthew walked through why Infleqtion’s path to defense programs of record requires what he calls “a multi pronged sort of pincer movement”—and why treating lobbying as optional kills most defense tech GTM strategies.

The Coordination Problem Defense Tech Creates

Most enterprise sales follows a predictable pattern. You identify the economic buyer. You build a champion. You close the deal.

Defense sales breaks this entirely. Matthew describes it as “unlike any go to market motion I’ve ever seen. It’s very strange. It’s convoluted, but it’s just the way it works.”

Programs of record—becoming the default procurement choice for a military branch—represent real scale. A program of record means “you are now the product that the military procures from,” Matthew explains.

Getting there requires attacking from two directions that can’t communicate. Direction one is the Pentagon. You need specs from the people who will use your product. What power consumption? What temperature ranges? You’re talking to colonels and program managers.

Direction two is Congress. You need budget items “appropriated to fund those purchases.” Without Congressional authorization, the Pentagon buyer has no money to spend.

The coordination problem emerges because these groups can’t help each other. The colonel can’t lobby Congress. Congress won’t fund without defense department validation. You’re the only entity that can connect both sides.

The Scaling Problem That Forces Lobbying

Matthew initially tried handling this himself. Two and a half weeks before our conversation, he was in DC meeting with legislators, evangelizing quantum technology.

Then he hit a fundamental constraint: “I’m only one person. I can only be there every so often.”

This isn’t about needing more meeting time. It’s about persistent presence. The Pentagon buyer isn’t making quarterly decisions. Congress isn’t appropriating budgets based on one conversation. The process moves slowly, with many stakeholders, across multiple budget cycles.

You need someone “walking the halls of the Senate buildings and the House buildings and having these conversations with the staffers or legislators themselves” daily. Someone who tracks which committees are marking up which bills. Someone who understands timing for amendments. Someone who knows which staffers write the language that becomes legislation.

Matthew’s conclusion: “Washington is still very much a who, you know, place and having someone talking in the ears of the legislators and the staffers and lobbying on behalf of the industry and the specific company, it’s a valuable way to invest your money.”

What Lobbying Actually Buys You

The word “lobbying” triggers associations with influence peddling. That’s not what Matthew is describing. He’s describing infrastructure—like developer relations or customer success. You’re not paying for special treatment. You’re paying for consistent presence with people who control budget authority.

The lobbyist’s job splits across both fronts. On the Congressional side, they maintain relationships with staffers, understand the legislative calendar, find opportunities to get your technology written into appropriations bills. On the Pentagon side, they’re “walking the halls of the Pentagon, talking to all those decision makers, understanding what the specs are.”

Critically, they’re doing this when you’re not in DC. When you’re running your company, someone is maintaining relationships. When budget season arrives, someone already knows which committee members care about your technology category.

Matthew observes that “the companies that have been successful in defense tech, they’ve probably been world class at the lobbying efforts.” This isn’t speculation—it’s pattern recognition from watching which companies actually close programs of record.

The “No Hacks” Reality

When founders ask Matthew if there’s a way around this system, his answer is direct: “There’s not a lot of ways to hack it. You just have to play the game.”

This is the advice founders don’t want to hear but need to hear. There’s no growth hack for defense sales. There’s no PLG motion that bypasses Congress. There’s no viral loop that replaces relationship-building with program officers and legislative staffers.

The system is convoluted by design. Multiple stakeholders approve large expenditures. Budget authority and operational needs live in different branches of government. Procurement processes prevent corruption and ensure oversight.

You can’t hack around structural safeguards Congress intentionally built. You can only work within them effectively.

The Investment Framework

When does lobbying make sense? Matthew frames it as infrastructure investment, like hiring your first sales person.

The trigger is pursuing programs of record seriously. If you’re at the SBIR stage, you probably don’t need dedicated lobbying. You’re building relationships, proving technical capability. That’s founder-led work.

But when you transition to “we want to be the Navy’s standard clock,” lobbying becomes essential. You’re coordinating Pentagon specs and Congressional appropriations across multi-year budget cycles.

The ROI is straightforward. Programs of record can run “on autopilot for a long time” once established. If lobbying helps you become the default procurement choice, the contract value justifies the expense many times over.

But you invest before you have the program secured—the same way you invest in manufacturing before you have the contract.

The Pincer Movement Mindset

Infleqtion’s lobbying strategy isn’t about political access or special relationships. It’s about accepting that defense procurement requires attacking from two directions—Pentagon specs and Congressional budget—and that connecting those two directions is your job, not theirs.

The companies that win in defense tech build the infrastructure to maintain presence on both fronts simultaneously. They staff for it. They budget for it. They recognize that “Washington is still very much a who, you know, place” and invest accordingly.

There are no shortcuts. Just the systematic work of playing the game the way it’s actually structured.