QuantumScape Partners With Muehlbauer on 100-MWh Line

The Tip Desk · October 27, 2026 · 3 min read

Customer billings were $9.8 million in the third quarter as Honda and QSAS work first converted into invoices.

QuantumScape Corporation (QS), a solid-state lithium-metal battery developer, said the Eagle Line pilot cell production line inaugurated in February has become the workhorse of customer sampling and that progress on scalable production has given it confidence to scale beyond the line’s designed capacity.

The company announced a partnership with Muehlbauer Group, a German manufacturer of manufacturing and automation equipment, to supply cell-assembly equipment for a planned 100-megawatt-hour cell production line. QuantumScape said the 100-MWh line will be the first commercial-scale mass production of its cells, with output aimed at its QSDC and QSAS verticals. Muehlbauer engineers evaluated Eagle Line processes on site in San Jose and developed design enhancements toward mass production and, eventually, gigawatt-hour scale. Start of production is targeted for 2028.

Customer billings in the third quarter were $9.8 million, a metric the company described as the total value of invoices issued regardless of accounting treatment, not a substitute for GAAP revenue. The figure included both automotive and non-automotive customers and a mix of development activities, ecosystem-partner payments, and cell shipments.

The quarter marked the first customer billings from the Honda agreement announced in June, which covers joint development to integrate QuantumScape’s solid-state platform into Honda’s technology roadmap. The company also recorded its first customer billings from the QSAS vertical, after the prior quarter had described only QSE-5 sample shipments to a major American defense prime. It said it has shipped QSE-5 samples to customers in defense, aviation and telecommunications and believes the QSAS addressable market is up to $75 billion by 2030.

QuantumScape said it signed an agreement with a new leading global mobility-manufacturing customer to further advance automotive commercialization. It is aligning its statement of work with VW PowerCo toward a long-term technology platform that goes beyond QSE-5 and includes applications such as data centers and robotics, with the aim of bringing automotive customers onto a common platform. On November 11 it will announce more details on that next-generation platform at its third annual Solid-State Battery Symposium in Kyoto.

On October 8 the company launched the QS PowerBlock for AI data centers with the Open Compute Project, an in-rack energy storage reference design built on the QSE-5 cell. In testing it demonstrated four times the power density and five times longer runtime than the OCP lithium-ion reference specification, QuantumScape said. It said QS solid-state batteries have been shown to be thermally stable well over 300 degrees Celsius in customer and third-party lab testing in the third quarter, versus conventional lithium-ion cells that are not thermally stable above about 180 degrees Celsius. The company said it will integrate the PowerBlock with rack-level power electronics and battery management systems and is already engaged with technology partners.

GAAP operating expenses in the three months ended September 30, 2026 were $92.4 million, down from $115.0 million a year earlier, with research and development at $73.9 million and general and administrative at $18.5 million. GAAP net loss was $84.5 million, or $0.14 a share, versus $105.8 million, or $0.18 a share, a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $60.7 million, which the company said was in line with expectations.

Capital expenditures in the third quarter were $4.4 million, versus $9.6 million in the year-ago quarter. Liquidity ended the quarter at $819.8 million, including $75.6 million of cash and cash equivalents and $744.2 million of marketable securities.

For full-year 2026, QuantumScape reiterated Adjusted EBITDA loss guidance of $250 million to $275 million and capital-expenditure guidance of $27 million to $37 million.