By Mackenzie Tatananni
A new contender among quantum computing stocks has entered the ring.
Infleqtion went public on Tuesday through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, offering investors a different way to play the broader quantum-computing category.
"A lot of capital came along with this transaction," CEO Matt Kinsella said in an interview with Barron's. "It puts us in a position to play to win, which is what I'm interested in doing."
The company's common stock and warrants began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbols "INFQ" and "INFQ WS," respectively. Each whole warrant is exercisable for one share of common stock at the price of $11.50, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The stock was trading at $15.55 on Tuesday, up 9.1% from its opening price of $14.25. It traded as high as $17.51 earlier in the session.
Infleqtion said in September that it planned to go public through a merger with Churchill Capital Corp X, a blank-check company headed by Wall Street veteran Michael Stuart Klein. The merger valued the startup at $1.8 billion before new investment.
Infleqtion and Churchill formally filed registration paperwork with the SEC at the beginning of last month, writing that the start-up was "already well-capitalized" and projecting that the combination would generate over $540 million in gross proceeds. Infleqtion completed its merger with Churchill on Friday.
The company provided an update on Tuesday, saying "strong support from Churchill X's shareholders" led to Infleqtion receiving over $550 million of gross proceeds. The sum includes nearly all the cash held in Churchill X's trust account prior to the redemption deadline.
It was a full-circle kind of moment. When Barron's profiled the start-up last September, CEO Matt Kinsella detailed his transition from the world of public equity to that of quantum computing.
Kinsella was working at Maverick Capital, a Dallas-based hedge fund, when he came on board as an investor and director in 2018. In April 2024, he assumed the role of chief executive.
"I always look at three factors when evaluating deep tech companies: technology risk, execution risk, and financing risk," Kinsella told Barron's. The $550 million in new funding "took an existential risk off the table," he added.
Infleqtion's architecture centers on neutral atoms, which have no net electric charge. Its most formidable opponent in this space is QuEra Computing, which remains privately held.
Infleqtion's approach uses particles that are cooled to near absolute zero and controlled by lasers. When the atoms are cold, the surrounding system operates at room temperature, which eliminates the need for bulky cryogenic cooling chambers.
However, there's more to the company than just computing. Infleqtion doesn't claim to be a quantum-computing pure play: One of its most commercially robust products, according to Kinsella, is an atomic clock called Tiqker.
"Timing is at the heart of all of our critical infrastructure," Kinsella explained. "We usually rely on GPS for timing, but GPS is becoming increasingly prone to being spoofed or denied."
Atomic clocks, meanwhile, can be used for far more precise timekeeping, with broad applications spanning defense as well as telecommunications infrastructure and data centers.
Another key field is quantum sensing. Last week, Infleqtion unveiled an effort with longtime partner NASA to send a gravity sensor to space, something that has been "a huge national security priority," according to Kinsella.
"There's a climate change use case -- you can track the depletion of aquifers, which can predict when droughts are going to happen," the CEO continued. "But you can also start to see what's happening under the Earth's surface, whether tunnels are being dug or nuclear materials are being moved around. This is a precursor to developing those types of capabilities."
While the company has received tens of millions of dollars in government funding to date, Infleqtion faces the same woes as other quantum computing players that have yet to achieve profitability and broad commercialization of their technology.
The company aims to develop progressively larger, more powerful quantum computers. By 2028, Infleqtion expects to have achieved quantum advantage, which the company defines as the point where utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers outperform classical machines. The $550 million in new funding will be used to advance that goal, Kinsella said.
This trajectory is in line with the timelines set by peers like International Business Machines, which expects to make substantial progress in building commercially viable computers by the end of the decade.
Clearly, it's a longer-term goal, but this shouldn't be news to investors watching the space. Most on Wall Street regard quantum as a longer-term bet because the technology has yet to prove stable enough to move beyond a research setting.
"I'm glad we have worthy competitors out there, both in the publicly traded world and private world," Kinsella told Barron's. "I think we have a pretty differentiated business model and strategy, and, therefore, story that is much more than just quantum computing."
Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 17, 2026 14:36 ET (19:36 GMT)
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