To The Moon

Frontier tech, deep value, and the quantum leap ahead

I don’t typically chase moonshots—unless they’re quite literally heading to the Moon or rewriting the laws of computation. That’s why Intuitive Machines (LUNR) and Rigetti Computing (RGTI) have earned a long-term spot in my portfolio. Both are high-conviction plays in what I’d call pre-industrial revolutions: commercial lunar infrastructure and practical quantum computing.

Moon dust and quantum code—two revolutions just beginning

Neither firm is for the faint-hearted. Loss-making, volatile, and heavily shorted—yes. But under the hood, there’s genuine edge, differentiated tech, and tangible financial momentum that the market, in my view, is wildly underpricing.

LUNR: NASA’s Favourite Contractor Quietly Building the Moon Economy

Let’s start with $Intuitive Machines(LUNR)$, which has locked in three lunar delivery contracts under NASA’s CLPS programme—a strong vote of confidence for a company with just over $1.4 billion in market cap. While headlines focus on space tourism, LUNR is instead targeting a much more practical frontier: infrastructure and logistics on the lunar surface. Think payload delivery, navigation, communications—a sort of FedEx and Vodafone for the Moon.

Its trailing twelve-month revenue stands at $217 million, putting its price-to-sales ratio at just 4.49. For a company growing into a monopoly-esque role on the Moon, that feels surprisingly grounded. LUNR’s balance sheet is also healthier than one might expect: $373 million in cash versus $37 million in debt, and a current ratio above 4. The firm has room to breathe, even as it ramps up CapEx and R&D.

Admittedly, profitability is lightyears away. Net losses sit at $198 million, with negative operating margins and no EBITDA to speak of. But when viewed through a startup lens—particularly one building foundational technology for a trillion-dollar future market—the runway looks more like an opportunity than a risk. One lesser-known fact? LUNR’s recent earnings surprise came not from NASA, but a confidential commercial partner. Private space is coming, and LUNR is already docking.

RGTI: Quantum Computing, Grounded in Real Hardware

If LUNR is building our off-world future, Rigetti is reprogramming this one. As one of the few publicly traded pure-play quantum firms, $Rigetti Computing(RGTI)$ offers direct exposure to quantum’s commercialisation curve. It's also making real technical strides. The company’s latest system, Ankaa-2, boasts 9 qubits with improved coherence and fidelity—critical for useful computation. More impressively, Rigetti is targeting an 84-qubit system by 2025, inching towards what experts call quantum advantage.

Financially, Rigetti is still very early stage. Revenues are just $9.2 million, but the company holds over $200 million in cash with just $8.4 million in debt. That gives it ample time to execute. Its gross margins are positive, though operating losses remain steep at $66 million. Yet, that cash burn is controlled relative to the scale of its ambition. With a current market cap of $3.4 billion, Rigetti trades at over 350 times revenue—absurd by traditional metrics, yet arguably modest when you consider the total addressable market of quantum computing could reach into the trillions.

One thing investors may miss is Rigetti’s hybrid architecture strategy. Rather than going it alone, the firm is positioning itself as a modular partner to classical cloud infrastructure providers. If the big hyperscalers embrace quantum at the edge, Rigetti could become a critical bolt-on.

Why I’m Ignoring the Red Ink and Holding On

Both companies are bleeding cash, but they also carry two ingredients I value deeply in frontier investing: first-mover advantage and asymmetric optionality. Intuitive Machines is already sending payloads to the Moon, while Rigetti has working quantum chips in the wild. That puts them well ahead of most SPAC flotsam.

Yes, LUNR is down 32% year-to-date. RGTI is off 22%. But LUNR is still up 133% over the past year, while RGTI has soared over 930%—despite brutal selloffs in 2022 and early 2023. The volatility is a feature, not a bug. This is the price of admission when investing in technologies that haven’t yet crossed the commercial chasm.

When moonshots fly, benchmarks barely leave the runway

Crucially, both companies are still lightly owned by institutions—only 45% for LUNR and 31% for RGTI. That tells me large funds are still watching from the sidelines, wary of liquidity and earnings timelines. But as commercial revenues grow, and cost curves shrink, these will become harder to ignore.

Volatile, yes—but the upside is hard to quantify.

The Long View on Two Asymmetric Bets

In a world dominated by mega-cap narratives, I’m allocating a slice of capital to where the world might be headed—10, 15, even 20 years from now. Intuitive Machines is quietly building lunar infrastructure that could eventually support defence, research, and rare mineral extraction. Rigetti is laying the groundwork for quantum systems that could upend sectors from finance to pharma.

I’m under no illusion—both stocks could halve tomorrow. But they could also 10x over the next decade, and that asymmetric profile makes them compelling long-term holds. In a market obsessed with quarterly EPS, I’m content to look up—and look ahead.

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