Okay, Andrew, let's get started. If you could flip to the next slide, please. Okay. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter results conference call. I'm Brian Stringer. I'm the Chief Financial Officer for 01, and with me on the call is Andrew Cheung, our Chief Executive Officer. The agenda today will be Andrew will take you through a presentation on our recent results, which were released this morning, and give you an update on where we sit now, where we're going, and elaborate more on IronCAP v2.0 , which we released yesterday. Following the presentation, there will be a chance for Q&A, and I think we're all now familiar with Zoom. At the bottom, there's a Q&A tab.
If you could press it and send me your questions, I'll sort them and provide them to Andrew and moderate the Q&A at the end of Andrew's presentation. Before we get started, if you could take a few seconds to take a look at our forward-looking statements disclaimer. I will now turn it over to Andrew Cheung. Andrew, over to you.
Thank you, Brian. Welcome everyone. My name is Andrew Cheung, President and CEO of 01 Communique Inc. Welcome to our 2023 second quarter financial result and corporate update. A lot of good development had already happened since we last met in April during our AGM. First, we participated in a joint marketing event with Thales at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, the Bay Area. Secondly, many of our R&D projects in the last two years actually crossed the line of finishing during this quarter. Before I start talking about the details about those, please allow me to provide some background of the quantum computer development for the benefit of those new shareholders. The IBM Quantum Computer Roadmap, in my opinion, is the single most important and significant information for the cybersecurity world.
This roadmap clearly shows that quantum threat are already here. The question is: can you see them? IBM commercially released the world's first quantum computer in 2019, with 27 qubits. This was just a quantum toy, like the PC we had in the 1970s. After a few iteration, in November of last year, only about seven months ago, they fulfilled their promise, delivering 433 qubits version called Osprey. IBM plans to deliver 1,100 qubit this year, followed by 1,400 next year, then 4,000 qubit in 2025, and 100,000 qubits in 2026. Now, please don't forget, this is just IBM and their competitors like Google, Amazon, D-Wave, Honeywell, et cetera, are all striving to beat them.
After all these are just the commercial level, and we all know that national level is usually five to 10 years ahead. Logically, what they already have is likely what we will have in 2026, at least, like, maybe two years ago. Everyone, I think, still remembers the infamous act by the FBI cracking, about two years ago, 2021, breaking the Bitcoin wallets of the Colonial Pipeline hackers within two weeks. Of course, they will never tell you what they use and how they did it.
In addition to that, earlier this year, there's a group of Chinese crypto scientists published a paper claiming the possibility of cracking RSA with 372 qubit, which is well under the IBM proposed 1,000 qubit or even the 433 qubit from last year. This is still waiting to be proven, but this is very alarming, and this kind of advancement seems accelerating worldwide. First of all, let's disregard this paper from China for now. The IBM roadmap is very significant because if this is correct, 2023 will be the year when we cross the line of Q-day. Cybersecurity experts generally believe that a true 1,000-qubit quantum computer can crack RSA in a reasonable time.
We need to remember one thing, that cracking doesn't have to be, like, within a few second in order to pose a threat, because the damage is already here. Even if the cracking can happen within a few days, even a few months, by using the 1,000- qubit version to be available by IBM later this year. It is just unthinkable what would happen when we have 100,000 qubit in 2026. Therefore, it is no surprise that quantum safety has gathered a lot of attention lately. In addition to the national agencies like NIST, who suddenly rushed out a few recommendations 11 months ago, the U.S. NSM-10, National Security Memorandum 10, also set a deadline of October 18, which is only a few months from now, of this year, for the federal agencies to assess funding requirement to achieve quantum safety.
The Bank for International Settlements, BIS, has also announced their intention to assess use cases in the quantum safety achievement. On the commercial side, okay, now, what I just said was just the national agency side. On the commercial side, vendors of gears that drive the internet security worldwide, such as Thales, has already signed up with IonQ as their post-quantum cryptographic supplier. I won't blame you if you don't know Thales, because they are not a household name, but everything that you use every day depends on their military-grade product for cybersecurity. Thales is a French-based giant, having major customers like enterprises, banks, central banks, government, national security, space project, as their customers.
They have over 80,000 staff and more than EUR 20 billion in revenue. This partnership was signed about a year ago and require us to integrate IronCAP post-quantum cybersecurity into their Luna HSM hardware security module machine. This way, their clients can easily purchase an IronCAP FM, functional module, to upgrade their infrastructure to become quantum safe. Since Thales Luna HSM has already been approved by virtually all security-sensitive organization, this is a shortcut for us to reach the highly security sensitive end user customer base. The R&D development has been completed recently, and the first co-marketing event was held in April at the RSA Conference, as how I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation. The RSA Conference is the most important cybersecurity event in the world. It is being held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco Bay Area every year.
The event has been halted for two years due to COVID, was just being resumed this year. It was a day and night compared to last time when I was there in February 2020, when there was really no one talk about quantum safety. Fast-forwarding to 2023, post-quantum cybersecurity has been discussed everywhere, while Thales has already partnered with IonQ and started to promote PQC to their customers. Let me just show you some pictures. We were thrilled to be part of the Thales PQC Palooza event at the RSA Conference this year. More importantly, they are focused on promoting the importance of being quantum safe and have invited many of their existing customer to their booth. The most notable one was the SVP, called Peter Bordow from Wells Fargo.
Peter is not only noticeable because of Wells Fargo's commitment to PQC, but also his outstanding appearance. Let me show you. Guess who? Who is Peter here? The guy who looks like a rock star is Peter. He was presenting at the PQC Palooza event of Thales, about why is it so important for people to be quantum safe, and why everyone has to be quantum safe, and also why Wells Fargo has committed to convert into becoming quantum safe. Besides Wells Fargo, even the FBI was at the event.
We actually have met a lot of Thales existing and prospect customer during the event, and I have to say that, very glad some of them are even fast-tracking partnership with us, so I hope there will be some announcement very soon. As mentioned earlier, too, the other great success during this quarter is the official issuance of the blockchain endpoint protection patents on June 6th, only about a week ago. This is very encouraging because it's a sign that the patent is like granted very, very quickly. To be very frank, we have never experienced such a speed . The speed that it has been granted was only eight months, from when we filed in October to the issuing date last week.
You know, it was only eight months, where the average time for patent grants is, like, about three years. This is very noteworthy because it implies the uniqueness of our invention, as the patent examiner was unable to find anything close to what we have globally. This is almost like a hole in one in the patent application process. Our invention covers all kinds of blockchains, new blockchain, existing blockchain, private or public blockchains. I would say the most notable example that we can help would be the CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currency. As we all know, most central banks globally, including the Bank of Canada, are investigating the issuance of CBDC that must be quantum safe.
This can be very significant technology to achieve quantum safety for CBDC. We have already engaged into some discussion with various central banks through our partners already. In addition to the blockchain patent, coincidentally, our partner, Hitachi in Japan, also informed us on June 6th, the same day, that a notice of allowance has been received from the Japanese office, Japanese Patent Office, about the code-based encryption technology we filed in 2020. This represents a significant milestone with our PQC development in Japan with Hitachi. On the other hand, with the unexpected, as mentioned earlier, the unexpected move from NIST that rushed out some kind of recommendation 11 months ago, we decided to incorporate the NIST-approved algorithm into our IronCAP X product.
While this has caused some kind of delay in releasing our business version, it really gives a significant marketing value. The good news is IronCAP X business version was released yesterday. Not only that it is the world first quantum-safe end-to-end email security product, it is indeed the first quantum-safe business solution in the world that end user can really touch and use on their everyday life. The pricing strategy is very simple. Personal usage is free, and the business version is $100 per year per user, and this include a central management tool for IT managers to manage the key revocation, the resetting password, things like that.
Besides this end-to-end encryption that no one in the middle can intercept, including the agency from government, its digital signature ensures the authenticity of the sender, allowing it to be the most effective killer of phishing email, which is 91% of the source of ransomware attacks. The market size of this quantum-safe end-to-end email is huge, because very simple math, there are 730 million business email accounts globally, and potentially each one of them has to be quantum safe one day. The activities are basically reflected very loud and clear in our quarterly result.
Without the revenue of a one-time proof of concept project like last year, our revenue for this quarter was less, but virtually with no impact on the bottom line because the proof of concept project was a break-even research activity for our partner. The slightly more operating loss was due to the additional R&D spending, quite obvious, on the finalization of IronCAP X, which was released yesterday. With the completion of IronCAP R&D and the significant patent portfolio in place, I can see that Q2 of 2023 was a pivotal quarter when we are transforming from heavy R&D into the mode of harvesting. The co-marketing activity with Thales in San Francisco is a good example, and the official release of IronCAP X business version is just another example.
I also like to emphasize that we always take the most conservative accounting approach by 100% expending all the R&D investments. In other words, the investment in the integration with Thales, blockchain endpoint protection, IronCAP X, you know, everything, are 100% expensed and become hidden value on our book. As a summary, before I turn to Q&A, like, as a summary, looking forward to the rest of 2023 and beyond, we expect considerable reduction in quarterly expense as the major capital-intensive activities have been completed. The goal is to turn into a break-even operation while nurturing more partnerships. We will also continue to support our partners in their co-marketing activities in 2023 and beyond. We expect more enterprises to commence their quantum-safe journey. IronCAP is in an excellent position to capitalize on this upcoming explosive trend.
I'd like to take a pause from here. I think you may have a lot of questions about all these latest development, I'd like to take a pause to allow more time for question and answer. As mentioned at the beginning, by Brian, please use the Q&A feature of Zoom and type your question, and Brian will moderate your questions accordingly. Over to you, Brian.
Thank you, Andrew. Yes, we've had a couple of questions come in, and I'm sure there'll be more. This is more of a general question, Andrew. How, if any, can IronCAP apply to artificial intelligence, AI?
I think this question definitely will be in a lot of people's mind, because AI has, while it has been in the market for a long time, but it is actually receiving attention lately. I think, very few people know that, in fact, my back to so many years ago, my university thesis, graduation thesis, was in AI. I have never been, really doing that in the years, but this is actually my area. AI, in my opinion, is huge, is great. However, if we focus on just ChatGPT alone, just like using AI as an answer to a lot of questions.
It is really lacking the privacy. If you are asking ChatGPT, for example, a question about how to build a bomb, for example, they know this account asked this kind of a question. It's recorded that you have asked this question, so there's really no privacy there. The first things that we can imagine that AI specifically, like ChatGPT type AI, would need to improve on privacy, and this is the area that quantum safety can squarely apply. You know, in fact, the last probably few months, we have already investigated the source code of ChatGPT as they are open sourced, and I see that they really do not have privacy in their code.
There is some kind of opportunity that we can apply, such as having a like a chat IronCAP, you know, something like that, just top of my mind, that we can add privacy to an AI type of a question that everything that our customer ask are encrypted in the post-quantum format, and then the relay the question on behalf to ChatGPT, and then coming back with an answer, again, encrypting back to the user. No one eavesdropping into the session can understand what the user had asked and things like that. That's just one example of how quantum safety can be applied to AI in order to plug the hole of privacy.
Yeah, that's like a short answer to the long-winded version that I have talked about in the last few minutes.
Then the next one centers around the conference that you were at in San Francisco. You did just mention that you met with a number of people. Can you elaborate a bit more on possible partnerships and where they would come from?
Now, this is a little bit sensitive because I obviously cannot mention name, but I can elaborate a little bit more about the type of industry that we have talked to over that few days at the RSA Conference. As I mentioned earlier, Thales is a French giant in the cybersecurity business. They have committed to PQC. A few years ago, they signed up with 01, IronCAP, and they have organized so committed that they organize a PQC Palooza event within the RSA Conference, and invited a lot of their customers, existing and potential customers, to the event.
Obviously, as shown in the picture, we met Wells Fargo at the event. And we also have met other people, like the CA business, certificate authority industry, which is really governing the safety of the internet. They sell certificates to various industries, and they are also looking into selling quantum safe certificate and also providing some end-user solutions that using post-quantum certificate. Our relative advantage as compared to our competitors, not just told by us, but also mentioned by these potential customers who has dealt with our competitors before, was that these people are just scientists.
They provide the engine, the encryption engine to them, and that's it. Saying, "Hey, this is the engine, do whatever you like, we don't know your business." We are different. We are fundamentally a product company. IronCAP walk in and offer that we can help them just exactly how we help Hitachi and how we help our crypto partner in Asia in achieving the Solana quantum safety, that we can really help them converting their product or even creating a new product to take advantage of PQC.
They really like our position, and that's exactly the reason why I briefly mentioned in my presentation, that some of them has already fast-tracked some kind of discussion, and I would... Hopefully, that some announcement will be come up very soon.
This one follows up on partnerships. Andrew, the question centers around PQC Palooza initiatives. Can you elaborate more on what's going on today with PQC Palooza?
Yeah, as I mentioned in the answer about RSA, our advantage is really helping our partners in achieving what they want to achieve, rather than just giving them the engine. The partnership with Thales Summit was about quantum safety for the cryptocurrency world or blockchain world. The sandbox that we used was Solana, and we have not only successfully proven that we can add quantum safety into an existing blockchain, but also that spawn a very valuable patent that govern the blockchain endpoint security, that can also help not just cryptocurrency, but central banks, CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currency.
Specifically talking about the crypto side, as we all know, beginning of the end of last year, we, the world has entered into a crypto winter. That side of the business has been delayed a bit. As I said, the value that we have built is tremendous here. That it's not just helping the cryptocurrency, but also, all kinds of blockchain-related technology, including a CBDC.
Can you elaborate a bit more, Andrew, on the CBDC?
CBDC, as we all know, is the trend. I think, in my opinion, it is unavoidable trend worldwide, because using of cash was like, invented 1,000 years ago, and it's about time to change. Many government, many countries has already moved into, like, all-digital version. As mentioned earlier, too, that currently, I would say if not all, I would say most, or significantly most of the central bank in the world, including the Bank of Canada, has already engaged themselves into CBDC investigation to see how they can issue a currency in CBDC format. It's just a matter of some of them are more advanced in the process, and some of them are in the investigation stage.
As I said, in my opinion, CBDC is an unavoidable trend, and the technology can help tremendously for CBDC to achieve quantum safety. They have to be quantum safe, because CBDC will for sure cross the line of Q-Day when they are in place. Yeah, we are in a very position to help in that particular sector.
This is the last question. I'm cognizant of time, and it has to do with our IronCAP v2.0 . Can you elaborate a bit more about the revenue opportunity for IronCAP v2.0 ?
Well, yeah, this is actually a very good question because everyone talks about revenue . The revenue is life and blood of a company. The whole reason why we built IronCAP X was for this reason. As I mentioned earlier, that IronCAP X is not only the first quantum safe end-to-end email security product, but indeed, it is the first quantum safe business solution in the world. Like everyone in the world, whether you are the bank, you are the certificate authority or whatever, they all have already adopt to the notion that quantum safety has to be achieved, right? Quantum threat is here. They all have the same kind of question: "How can we monetize on it?
How can we make money, and how do we have a PQC product? This IronCAP X product is actually a demonstration, or a live demonstration to the world that, hey, you know what? It can be a product that you can use, like, end user can use on their everyday life. Because email, as we all know, everyone's are sending email, I don't understand why, are sending email 99.99999% unencrypted. This is also unauthenticated, so that it is like, it give the wide window for those hackers to get in, and hijack your email and become the hole to hijack every other thing in your company and asking for ransom. You know, that's why we mentioned that 91% of ransomware attacks are actually begin from a simple email phishing.
This IronCAP X product is a humongous opportunity here, that not only that it preserve privacy because the email will be encrypted. For example, the email that you're sending to your lawyer, or an email that you're sending to your accountant will be quantum-safe, encrypted, that no one, including the authority, can decrypt your email. I always use the analogy saying that six years ago, maybe, if we have this product, maybe Clinton will be in the office instead of Donald Trump. Anyhow, that was just the encryption side. On the authentication side because emails are unauthenticated.
By using IronCAP X, the sender will have a digital signature that is quantum safe, and when it's arriving into the recipient side, it will see that, oh, this is really from Brian to Andrew. It is not the impersonated Brian sending this email, so I can safely open it. Even though the email is any kind of strange content, I know that it is a legitimate email. This can be, as I said, the most effective killer of a phishing email. On the other hand, because it kills phishing email, it kills 91% the source of a ransomware attack. The market obviously is huge, as there are 730 million business email accounts globally.
If you're charging, forget about, like, $100 a year, even $10 a year, this is $7.3 billion per year of a market size possibility. I'm very glad that we have this product finally released. As I said, the business model is very simple. Personal usage is free, and the business edition is $100 a year per user, and there is a central management tool for IT manager to centrally manage the key for every user, including you want to reset the password, you want to reset the hint, and you want to revoke a password, revoke a key when a staff has left the company, and things like that. Yeah, I am very, very excited about this IronCAP X business version.
Okay, thank you, and that wraps it up. I'm cognizant of time. I'll turn it back to you, Andrew.
Thank you again, Brian. Also, again, thank you for joining our 2023 Q2 business update. I am very pleased to have entered a new phase of operation and can't wait to see the development for the remaining of 2023 and beyond. Please stay tuned, and we'll see you again next quarter.