Quarter 1
Q1 2026 Earnings Call — April 22, 2026
Analyst Name (Firm): Winnie Dong (Deutsche Bank) Analyst: Hi, thank you for taking my call, my question, sorry. I was wondering if you can potentially qualitatively characterize the rent of QSE 5 production into Q. It seems like there's going to be some steep, I guess, quarter over quarter improvement in terms of the output, but was wondering if you can characterize it for us perhaps like qualitatively or even directionally. Thank you.
Executive Name (Title): Yes. We are beginning the ramp of the Eagle line in Q2. As you would expect with a highly automated line such as the Eagle line, once we have installed and started beginning the initial volume of cells we need to continuously improve the uptime the throughput the control systems the process stability all of this to continuously improve and then there is a ongoing demand for samples from our automotive customers and from these new markets that we are attempting to enter and these demands pile up. So Q2 we begin ramping and we'll continue to go up satisfying these demands through the rest of the year. That gives you a good feel for how fast we are ramping the EGLE line, Winnie.
Analyst: Okay, got it. And then second question is on the expansion to new markets, it seems like you think the cells can really be used for energy storage and data center. Maybe can you talk about some of the potential investments that you may need to put into this? And then what kind of timeframe we're looking at in terms of launching a potential product for that? Does it need some substantial change in terms of the technology and product, or is it an easy transfer into that market? Thank you.
Executive Name (Title): That's a very interesting question, Winnie. Most of the learning from automotive business transfers here. The data center market is going into the 800-volt architecture and many of the requirements are very similar with respect to energy density and power density and cycling life, et cetera. However, the most important thing we have to offer in addition is the safety and the no compromise nature of the product, meaning you don't have to sacrifice performance for safety. You can have the product as close to the computer as possible. This is what we mean by last-meter power. And in all of these AI data centers and AI factories, what you need is to be able to maximize the compute density. And so the ability of our cells to be closed and deliver high-quality last-meter power is what makes us very attractive, and it is a natural transition from the automotive product to the data center product. And, Winnie, I'm happy to take the capital allocation part of the question. As you know, our strategy is to develop technology platforms that serve multiple markets. The bulk of the investment goes into developing a platform. It's more incremental to tailor a product and to engage customers. And where we see incremental investment opportunities in the best interest of shareholders, of course, we're going to go after them. We're very excited about the new high-value markets that we mentioned in the letter and in our remarks. And
as a reminder, ==one of our goals, number three, is to expand into high-value markets.
Our annual operating plan and the financial guidance upon which it's based already contemplate that.== And in today's call, we reiterated our adjusted EBITDA guidance, our CapEx guidance, and we also reiterate that we are tracking to our year-over-year increase in customer billings, all reiterated on today's call.
Analyst: Got it. Awesome. Thank you so much for taking my questions.
Executive Name (Title): Thanks. I'll pass it on. Thank you, Annie.
Analyst Name (Firm): Ben Callow (Baird) Analyst: Hey, good afternoon. Good evening, guys. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the first billings. Just maybe on the last question a little, if you could expand just, would it be similar in a – a license model, or is it something that you could do under PowerCo with the expanded purview that you guys did a while back?
Executive Name (Title): Well, it's exactly correct. So we will be looking at both of those. Initially, the samples will come out of the Eagle line. Additionally, PowerCo has five gigawatt hours of capacity reserved for markets outside the automotive. And we will continue to find other opportunities for these markets as well. And so all of these are, as you said, right in our path of how we want to take it through. The ecosystem also plays a big role. Our ability to ramp the separated production from either Corning or Murata helps with this. And we expect to see the same phenomenon happen with our equipment and materials partner who all will help us with this ramp.
Analyst: And then just thank you for that. Just moving on to the other auto OEMs that you're working with, could you just talk about, you know, kind of what, if there is, you know, kind of a view on the progression of turning those to a formal licensing partner, from the JDA to the formal licensing partner, like a timeframe or any kind of, like, what they're looking for to solidify that relationship? And thank you, guys.
Executive Name (Title): Yeah. Ben, thank you. Thanks for the question. Yes. Up front, I want to say four of the top 10 auto OEMs in the world are now actively involved with us across the major geographies, North America, Japan, and of course, Europe with Volkswagen. And in all cases, we are carefully going up the progress with evaluation to joint development working towards licensing. As you know, Volkswagen is the most advanced in that relationship. The others are well on their way for us to progress towards getting a license from them. And all of these, of course, run through the Eagle line. The Eagle line makes the difference in our ability to sample and move this process along towards licensing.
Analyst Name (Firm): Mark Shooter (William Blair) Analyst: Hey, team. Thanks for taking my question. And, Kevin, it was great to see you at the conference. Congrats on all the progress this quarter in the Eagle line and, you know, the new auto engagement. So regarding the OEMs and the field testing as the next step, my understanding is that you'll need to size up the cell from the QSC5 to fit into VW's unified cell architecture. So do you still need to do that for field testing with them, or are they now taking the QSC5 to field test, or is another customer that you're working with leapfrogging VW and beating them to field testing?
Executive Name (Title): Mark, very interesting question. Yes, we are field testing with the QSC5. As we demonstrated with the Ducati bike last year and onwards, they will be field testing. But you are absolutely right. VW has the unified cell to work with, and they are working closely with us to design that cell as well. And I expect that each one of our OEM customers will want their specific form factors as well. And we work with each of them. This is one of the biggest advantages of the licensing business model. Our separator can handle all these form factors, but they will be working with us on how to ramp on their specific needs.
Analyst: Great, Siva. Thank you. That's very helpful. Switching to, you know, some other markets here, it's very evident where you're trying to go by the people you've added to the board with the former military defense contractors. So, you know, I'll ask about the potential drone market in aerospace and defense. Your auto sample cell, the QSC5, has a significant performance advantage for autos. But I'm wondering if there's some juice left, per se, and if you were to redesign that for a drone spec. Because drones, they require higher specific energy density, but also they don't need as much cycle life. So I'm wondering if there's knobs to turn, like separator thickness and cell packaging, where that could give you some torque on some performance improvements.
Executive Name (Title): You are 100% correct, Mark. One of our goals for this year is go beyond QSC5. As we keep repeating, we are just at the start of this S-curve. There are many levers still left to move us up the performance curve. And please allow us to come and show you what we are developing sometime later this year. And they'll be applicable not just to the drone market, but to all other markets as well. So we will continue to push the technology frontier for all of this. The separated technology, the ceramic separator, is the key to our sales architecture and its performance. And we will continue to evolve in all fronts to make the sales adapter to different applications.
Analyst: Appreciate the time. Thank you, Siva.
Analyst Name (Firm): Mark Delaney (Goldman Sachs) Analyst: Hi. Good afternoon. You've got Ayush Ghosh on for Mark Delaney. Thank you for taking the questions. On billings, how should we think about the potential increases in billings going forward, you know, considering you recorded the first billings from the ecosystem and also with the new JDA and other non-autoline markets?
Executive Name (Title): Ayush, thank you for the question. In fiscal year 2025, we recorded approximately $19.5 million in customer billings. In Q1 26 on this call, we recorded $11 million in the quarter. If you recall, our guidance is to increase billings year-over-year, 2026 compared to 2025, and we reiterate that guidance today.
Analyst: Got it. Thank you for that. And then separately, you also mentioned you transitioned from the technology evaluation to the JDA with the top 10 OEM, and congrats on that. Can you sort of speak on some of the benchmarking tests, what they were and how QS performed, and also what some of the initial feedback was?
Executive Name (Title): Yes, I would love to talk about it. These are hands-on in lab evaluation by these customer engineers in our pilot facilities. They spend a lot of time working with us, making the cells and measuring them here. And they have a lot of experience in solid state in their own labs. And of course, all OEMs kick the tires from around the world. And these are top 10 OEMs. They are not novices to this technology, and they get actively involved with this. And for us to feel good about moving to the next state, that makes us feel good and sort of ratifies our own confidence in how far we have been in this differentiated technology.
Analyst Name (Firm): Laisha Zak (HSBC) Analyst: Hi, Zeva. Can you hear me?
Executive Name (Title): Yes. Hi, Laisha.
Analyst: Hi. How are you? Thanks for taking my question. I just have one very quick on timing. I wanted to know how does going into the new market change the timeframes that you've set forth your automotive goals. Are there like, are these new possibilities you see in some of the human capital that you destined for automotive and the teams that you have established for automotive? Or are you going to start to expand your workforce, your teams, your resources? How does this work? How should we think about it?
Executive Name (Title): That's a great question. The automotive marketplace still remains an important focus for us. We are adding these additional markets to our automotive portfolio. We are adding customers in the automotive marketplace. Four of the top 10 are joining us. So it is not like we are taking our eye away from the ball with respect to the automotive marketplace. However, these new big growing marketplaces with respect to data center and different set of space are very good fits for our product. So as Kevin mentioned earlier, at the start of the year, we had looked at these markets and appropriately sized our resourcing for this as part of our annual operating plan. So we have well resources and will continue to invest as needed. This is not an either-or. We are looking at both of these opportunities with capturing and creating and capturing shareholder value.
Analyst: Okay. Thank you so much. That makes a lot of sense.
Executive Name (Title): Thank you, Leisha.
Executive Name (Title): This does conclude the question and answer session of today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to Siva Sivaram for any further remarks.
Executive Name (Title): Thank you, Abhijit. Finally, today I want to recognize the entire QS team for their execution and thank our shareholders for their continued support. We look forward to updating you on our progress in the months ahead. Thank you.
Executive Name (Title): Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.
Quarter 2
Q4 2025 Earnings Call — February 11, 2026
Analyst Mark Shooter (William Blair): Hi, team. Thanks for taking my question. And congrats on commissioning the Eagle Line. My question here is with this new manufacturing technology, I know there's a lot of improvement in throughput and yield, but I'm wondering if there's an ability to increase the surface area of your ceramic separator and therefore maybe increase the cell size. Is this possible or is this on your technology roadmap?
Executive Name (Title): Mark, thank you. Thanks for the question. The Eagle Line clearly enables us to do all the things you just said, improving yield, improving uptime, improving operational efficiency, improving materials utilization, so that we can show our customers the efficiency with which we can make sales. Equally importantly, the Eagle line and the Cobra line are set up to be adaptable to making the line useful for every customer for their specific needs. Our aim is to use the Eagle line as the backbone so that when we industrialize for specific customer needs, we can adapt the line to make that happen. That's exactly what we are using as this transfer platform. So the Eagle Line acts as the scalable blueprint for us to take a core technology platform and adapt it to every one of our customers' specific needs.
Yeah, Mark, as you mentioned, those are probably the three vectors we'd expect our automotive customers to work with, either it'd be choice of cathode, capacity to sell, and sell format. Our COVID process is capable of those, and as is the Eagle line, and that exactly fits into that first of our two phases of our business model, working together with customers to customize our technology platform to their product solutions, earning the first line of cash flow, and longer term, setting up that much larger.
Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate the color there. I just, as a follow-up, maybe put a finer point. The reason why I asked about the surface area increasing larger cells is what I thought I heard from the PowerCo arrangement is that the QuantumScape cells need to fit into the unified cell architecture. I'm wondering if that can be done with the current size, the QSC5, or is that a larger cell that needs to develop?
Executive Name (Title): Yeah, as you just said, the QSC5 cell is a certain aspect ratio providing us with about 5.6 amp hour and about 21 watt hour cell. The UFC is a larger form factor and every customer has their specific need for what they need for their application. Fully knowing that we use this as the adaptable baseline, the Eagle line will show what the platform is from which we can adapt it to make it bigger, smaller, whatever we need to. And that's the whole point of establishing one stable baseline from which we can build for different customers. Very helpful. Thank you.
Analyst Winnie Dong (Deutsche Bank): Hi, thank you so much for taking my question. In your prepared remark, you alluded to various verticals, including data centers and robotics, aviation as potential applications outside of automotive. I think in the past, consumer electronics was also a potential application as well. I was wondering if you can help us understand, is there one vertical where your technology is more suitable than the other ones? For instance, I'm just trying to understand in things about stationary storage. A lot of companies that are sticking out to this are trying to use LFP. So just curious, like, why is lithium metal, you know, just as good or even better for some of these applications?
Executive Name (Title): So we need to start out, and Kevin has some strong views on the subject that he'll continue on. Clearly, the architecture that we have developed with the ceramic separator provides you what we call a no-compromise solution, meaning concurrently, at the same time, we can deliver high energy density, high power density in both charge and discharge, better safety capability, cycle life, and because we eliminate the anode, we have better, and because the formation is so short, we can deliver a better cost profile. Each of these markets that we just talked about have unique needs. For example, as you asked, the consumer electronics product is very big on volumetric energy density. We are trying to make sure that we size the opportunity to work with customers rapidly so that we can take our no-compromise self and fit it into the appropriate platform, appropriate form factor, and quickly get to market. That's the idea behind it.
As you would expect, the automotive market still is the larger market and we remain focused on it. Logically, the automotive market also takes the longest time to develop, qualify, and deploy into largest leagues. These are just facts of the marketplace that we work with. But the cell itself is so useful across different markets that we do think it's logical for us to take that leap. As Siva mentioned, we're starting from a good place with that no-compromise battery with the advantages Siva has laid out. We see opportunities over the fullness of time across the broad set of energy storage applications. I believe you listed several potential applications. Consumer electronics tends to really get excited about the volumetric energy density advantage. AI identifiers, data center safety, drones, and anything that flies loves the gravimetric savings and the power, and the grid, at least for the major load shifting application, values cost per round-trip cycle. So we believe we can offer compelling solutions in all these spaces, and as a management team, it's our job how many of these do we do in parallel, and in what order do we sequence them to both delight our customers and to optimize returns for our shareholders?
Everything we just discussed about, we're intending in goal number three that we laid out in our letter today, expand into high-value markets. The whole thing is enabled by the Eagle Line. The Eagle Line allows us the flexibility of going and trying these out because we have the ability to make more samples for more customers. And that is what makes this whole thing possible.
Got it. Thank you. My second question is on the year's EBITDA guidance. I was wondering if you can help us flush it out in terms of the objects and also in the context of some of the billable help that you can get from your partner as a result of the partnership.
Executive Name (Title): So, and then, Winnie, if you help me with the color around which aspect, and then you were asking about color on billings. Is that a correct rephrasing of your question?
Analyst Winnie Dong (Deutsche Bank): Yeah, essentially, you're guiding to – you have the year's EBITDA guidance. I'm just curious, in the context of existing partnership, I think in the past you've mentioned, you know, getting operational help from some of these partners. Is it being considered within the outlook?
Executive Name (Title): Yeah, so that's a great question. So to answer what you just mentioned first, so, yes, our EBITDA guidance is inclusive of help, either from OEM partners or ecosystem partners. That's all baked in. And by the way, there is significant resource being put in by all of those three. In terms of just some color, the EBITDA guidance is relatively flat year over year, but I would point out that the team is seeking to take on a lot more with expanding and deepening the automotive partnerships, as well as expanding into new high-value markets. There's all sorts of activities behind that, as well as pushing the frontier of battery development. So our goal is to deliver much more with the same resource base, improving efficiency to shareholders.
Just to be clear, for this year, Kevin just announced $19.5 million of billings and cash received. And that, as he has pointed out, has gone directly into equity, and that is not part of the EBITDA loss that we just announced. Correct. And as I mentioned in the comments, please expect that to be lumpy quarter to quarter as we do this type of agreed development work with customers and ecosystem partners, as well as our desire to improve on it, 2026 versus 2025.
Got it. That's very helpful. I'll pass along. Thank you.
Analyst Joseph Spak (UBS): Thank you. Good afternoon. First question is just if I compare the slide like you put out today versus prior, it looks like that conditional cash inflows is now $150 million. Last time it was $261 million. Can you detail what changed there?
Executive Name (Title): If you just to rephrase or maybe to clarify, when we expanded the VW, the development and collaboration and licensing agreement with Volkswagen last summer, there's an opportunity to earn up to $131 million worth of those development type payments. Is that what you're referring to, Joe?
Analyst Joseph Spak (UBS): Yeah, like if you put on slide 16, you have on the slide detailing your relationship with PowerCo says 150 million plus of conditional cash inflows. If I look at the last quarter slide, that 150 was 261. Let me pull that up and revert with you in a few minutes. I don't have that in front of me. I will revert it with you on that.
Executive Name (Title): Okay. The next question, then, just... You know, obviously, PowerCo is a deep and important partner here. There had been some reports that Volkswagen sort of slashed the funding there. Just curious if you felt that at all, if that sort of impacted your business or your work with them, or if it's even increased some of your urgency to diversify to other customers.
Executive Name (Title): Yeah, so Joe, our work with PowerCo is continuing on unchanged. Their commitment to us is very, very good. Our relationship with them and the focus with which we are working together is as good as ever. We are both working towards a set of agreed upon scope of work that has not changed. And we are continuing to build them the way we have agreed in that $131 million deal that Kevin just talked about. So in July of last year, we agreed on a scope of work. Our partnership is as strong as ever. The work itself is lumpy as in the way it is planned and up and down. But we are doing very well with respect to Volkswagen. That does not mean we are not working with other customers. As we announced in the letter, we have added two new large global auto OEMs to our portfolio with whom we are working with. We have also announced additional technology development and technology evaluation agreements with them together. So this is in a good place. The customer interest has been very strong and the Volkswagen and PowerCo relationship still remains very, very strong.
Okay. Last question for me. And you touched on some of this and I just sort of want to better understand how you're thinking about it. Cause you talked about new end markets, opportunities, energy storage, robotics, you know, exciting stuff. But you know, if I look at what you've done with the auto business, you've effectively left the commercialization industrialization to PowerCo and other partners. So as you move to these other end markets, like, how is it, you know, if you're not making a sort of a standard cell, like, and I understand the Eagle line sort of helps you sort of do different form factors or different cells, but like, aren't you going to need to sort of reach out individually to help sort of scale these different form factors for these opportunities? It just seems maybe a little bit more difficult as you go to some of these other end markets where there might be some more bespoke use cases versus, you know, the old strategy, which was doing it yourself. But maybe I misunderstand.
Executive Name (Title): This is a very receptive question. I'm glad you asked. The licensing and capitalized business model is not a single flavor. There are a lot of different ways of doing the same thing. Have made rights, having contract manufacturing, having our partners manufacture for others, having customer-provided manufacturing abilities. There are many different ways of doing it. As long as we are not spending the capital to build it, we can do this very well. And these markets are fully amenable to these business models. So we are exploring those with our new customers. I'm not saying that we rule anything out, but our preference has always been to a license and capital-like business model. I'm glad you asked this question. Even in these markets, such different variations on this theme are very possible.
Thank you for that. I appreciate it. I did have a chance to look at the slide you referenced. The prior reference to 260 or 261 is when you sum both parts of the economics with Volkswagen together. million prepay and the up to $131 million of development payments. That's the former number you referenced. In this latest round, as footnoted, what we're doing is we're only – we're having more of a backwards-looking view where we're only counting the billings to date plus the 130. So it's a different cut at the same two numbers. There's nothing changed contractually.
Analyst Joseph Spak (UBS): Okay, so nothing changed with that other, with that delta that's sort of more potentially to come.
Executive Name (Title): Correct. It's more looking at the bird in the hand relative to billings as opposed to the bird in the bush with the up to.
Thank you for that. I appreciate it.
Analyst Mark Delaney (Goldman Sachs): Hi, good evening. Thank you for taking the question. Do you have a mon on for Mark? Maybe kind of starting on your goal for the Eagle line and scaling that, and congrats on getting that installed. Can you maybe help provide some context for where some of the key metrics for that line are today, like yields and production time and things like that, and how you see that scaling over the course of the year and what's needed to then, you know, exiting the year, get to commercial transfer to your licensing partners?
Executive Name (Title): Yeah. Aman, thank you for the question. So last year, we had a manual line with which we were producing sales for applications such as the IAA Munich demonstration on the Ducati bike. We developed a very stable baseline and we decided that was a good time to convert it to be a much more highly automated line so that we can match the output of the highly productive Cobra line to the cell making line. In the 10 months since March of last year, we have literally conceived the line, designed it, found the build partners for the equipment, brought the build equipment, and brought them over here, installed them, qualified them, developed the process, transferred the process, and then converted it into the baseline, and we are running it. And that's what we inaugurated last week this time.
Now, this is a manufacturing prototype pilot line. This is what we are using to convince and work with our partners who are going to be working with us hand in glove, watching how this is done. So all of the metrics that we normally use in a pilot production facility, such as uptime, mean time between failure, mean time to assist, mean time to repair, yields, reliability, quality, cycle time, cost, all of these kinds of metrics have to be made efficient so that our customers come and work with us and say, okay, now I'm ready to go take this line and convert it to our need in my own factory to scalability. So these are the things that you, what you just asked is what we will be very, very, very closely monitoring as we ramp it up. We are in a good place and we'll continue to work with our customers and we need to show this to our customers who are here with us watching this. When we inaugurated the line here, the customers were actually here with us as we got this started.
And just one other, some other dots to connect. The Eagle Line is certainly called out in our first corporate goal for 2026, demonstrate scale of production with Eagle Line. As Siva was mentioning, it's central to the other three. Without that type of prototype and sampling and demo volume, that is the currency with which we can advance automotive commercialization, new and existing, as well as gives us the currency to expand into new high-value markets. It also gives us other parts for internal use, to do development on to support that beyond QSE 5 roadmap. So that Eagle line we demonstrated last week is really important to set up a successful 2026. Now, having said all that, Aman, this is the unsexy part of the work. This will be systematic, methodical, iterative improvement of every one of those so that the customers see and work with us to see the rate of progress on all of them. So this is not a new thing. I have done this many times in the past and the employees know what it is that we need to do here at QS. So we'll get that going.
Analyst Mark Delaney (Goldman Sachs): Appreciate the color there. Thank you. And maybe tying that to my follow-up here, Kevin, you talked about 40 to 60 million of CapEx. Can you maybe help to mention that across some of the spending you've kind of outlined in your goals, whether that's for the Eagle line and scaling that versus expanding some of the QSE5 technology and potential incremental spend related to expanding to some of these other end markets, and how should we think about that level then being sustained beyond 26 in terms of, you know, further continuing to explore those opportunities?
Executive Name (Title): That's a good question, Aman. The bulk of the spend goes towards the fourth goal of going beyond the QSC-5 and the bulk of the CapEx spend from $40 to $60 million, as you referenced. There is CapEx in the other categories, but with the maturity of the QSC5 platform, for example, in the case of the expanding into new high-value markets or doing custom development for OEMs, it's more incremental on choice of cathode or dimensions or form factor. That's more of an incremental spend as opposed to a core development spend.
As a technology licensing company, it is our core job to develop and pilot and transfer high-performance battery technology to our customers and partners. Capital is required to push that frontier. This is the type of magnitude we think investors should expect going forward for that steady-state advanced runway development. I would also like to draw a contrast with this type of spend under a technology licensing model with that of a full-blown manufacturing company, which requires billions of dollars of investment for gigawatt hour scale done years before that factory even comes online. So we think that our choice of business model is in the best interest of shareholders.
Analyst Mark Delaney (Goldman Sachs): Thank you. And maybe just on that point quickly, can you kind of dimension what are the goals you're trying to hit for the QSC5, like beyond the QSC5 platform that you're spending on? Apologies if you've discussed it before. I don't have it off the top of my head.
Executive Name (Title): Now, Aman, last year we put out our blueprint on how we move forward as a technology company. The QSC5 is our first minimum viable product. Clearly, as we move up the S-curve rapidly, we need to make the performance metrics better on every aspect of it and keep moving this up. Every 18 to 24 months, we will be coming up with new upgrades on this that we need to come and show you all, show our customers and show our shareholders where we are spending the money to move the technology frontier forward. That's where this is headed from the QSC5 moving on. Thank you very much.
Analyst Ben Calo (Baird): Hey, good evening, guys. It was great to see you last week. One thing I noticed when I was visiting is your supply partners there. I just want to get a sense of how they're thinking about your future or potential customers outside of Volkswagen. I know you guys have done a lot of work with the supply chain, so if you could talk about that and just how that helps you with new potential customers.
Executive Name (Title): Ben, great to see you last week. Thank you for being here. You're 100% correct. The QS ecosystem is very important to us. This level of technology change cannot be done by a single company. It requires a whole ecosystem to move this forward, whether it be in capital equipment, whether it be in advanced materials, whether it be in things like software and AI systems. There are places where we need help. Murata and Corning being able to take over and run the manufacturing for the ceramic separator is a big step forward for last year. In our solid-state symposium that we hosted in Kyoto, we brought together similarly our tool vendors from across the world to be there. You saw some of these suppliers here in the US who helped us build the Eagle line. These folks are very excited about the possibility of us expanding further into other form factors, into other markets, into new customers, both in the automotive and non-automotive spaces. We are counting on their support and we will be expanding the ecosystem continuously to make sure that we can bring this along.
As Siva mentioned, in the ecosystem we're building where there's customers, there's cell manufacturers and suppliers of materials and equipment, as you add more activity to it, it makes the whole stronger, certainly from the view of a cell manufacturer or a supplier of equipment or materials. More additional end markets and expanding and deepening automotive relationships is a good place to sell their goods and services into, but then from the flip side, if you're a QSC5 customer or manufacturer, the cells having a ready supply chain with the world's leading examples in their respective spots only strengthens the value proposition as well. So we're very excited with the progress that we made in 2025, and our goal is to continue that moving forward into 2026.
And Ben, equally important is the people you did not see in that group. You did not see a graphite supplier. You did not see an anode supplier. So securing the supply chain is as much for us about making sure that the suppliers that we need are there as much as making sure that we are not unduly dependent on any one material from any one place. So that also helps us in securing our supply chain.
Analyst Ben Calo (Baird): You know, we see OEMs retrenching or retreating or however you want to characterize it. And, you know, there's excess cell capacity with new potential customers. Yeah, I'll leave it there. Thank you, guys.
Executive Name (Title): Ben, thank you. Yes, so clearly there is turbulence in the marketplace, at least in the U.S. However, the folks, especially at the senior levels in these companies as we talked to, consistently are more optimistic about the long term. We see the fact that electrification as a longer-term trajectory is still the right way to do it. The more we see about, for example, self-driving vehicles, navigation systems, you start to see there are other vectors that are forcing the EV conversion. So every customer we talk to is upbeat about two things, electrification, but in particular, solid-state batteries. Both are things that they come to talk to us, and we sense that excitement with our partners.
Some of these themes were certainly playing out in 2025, and against that backdrop, we expanded the DW PowerCook collaboration agreement. We signed two new joint development agreements. We added a new technology evaluation agreement. We think that is consistent with the excitement that Siva mentioned, and while you use the word retrenchment, the automotive industry still is growing. It still is very much a growth sector. So the short, medium, and long-term prospects we think are still of growth. Great. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.
Analyst Laisha Sack (HSBC): Hi, Diva. Hi, Kevin. How are you? Thanks for having us last week. I just have one question because my questions are already answered. But I wanted to know if you have any KPIs that you can share with us on how you will measure the goals that you set for 2026.
Executive Name (Title): It was great to see you last week. Thank you for being here. Clearly, the four goals that we have outlined are all very quantitative for us inside the company. Whether it is about the Eagle Line demonstrating the efficiency and scaling of the Eagle Line for the purposes we just talked about, whether it is about making sure that we expand or advance our partnerships with the automotive markets, whether it is to go beyond the QSC5 and expand into high-value markets. Each of those is an extremely important vector for the company to continue to progress on. We will continue to update you as we progress on each of those, and you will see this progress as we give you updates. Our job is to make sure that, just like we did in last year, tell you what we are going to do, and then do, as we say, and on time and give you the updates.
Analyst Laisha Sack (HSBC): Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And just one last thing. I know you mentioned that your focus is still automotive, but when you eventually start looking at other applications, does the Eagle line require major adjustments depending on the segment that you cater to? And will these imply a higher capex also for the customers? You said that the blueprint is easily adjustable to each customer's needs, but does this imply that they need to invest more to adjust to whatever they want to create, depending on the market or segment that the customer is in?
Executive Name (Title): Yeah, it's an interesting dilemma. This is the reason we chose the licensing business model. In the battery business, every customer wants their unique form factor. If we try to set up a line for every one of them, it becomes untenable. What we have done is a foundational technology, a scalable blueprint that we can do it. But any change that we do for any specific customer, clearly we expect that as part of the earlier payment, we would be working with them on financial arrangements to make sure it is done so that we stay capital-lighted. When we take our technology roadmap and show it to our customers, we clearly set the expectation that we intend to be a capital light licensing company.
Executive Name (Title): Thank you so much, Siva. And congrats again on the inauguration.
Executive Name (Title): Thank you, Leisha. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes our Q&A session for today. I will pass it back to Siva Sivaram for closing comments.
Executive Name (Title): Thank you, operator. Finally, today, I want to recognize the entire QuantumScape team for their execution in Q4 and throughout 2025, and I want to thank our shareholders for their continuous support. We look forward to updating you on our progress in the months ahead. Thank you.
Concludes our conference. Thank you all for participating, and you may now disconnect.