Engineered against your specifications. Funded in increments you control.
Five stages. Every increment is preceded by a decision that belongs to you.
No two are the same.
Every Q-SMEC instantiation is matured against one set of operating requirements — so the work begins wherever you do.
What a Funder holds at the end is a materials recipe and a device configuration, matured against requirements they set and qualified in the environment they name.
NIKET brings the technology stack — quantum, physics, materials properties, agentic AI/ML, additive manufacturing, supply chain, model-based systems engineering, digital twin and factory automation modelling.
A Funder brings the use case, or takes one NIKET already has underway and carries it forward on their own specifications. Both routes enter at the same first stage.
The program answers one question in stages: can a Q-SMEC instantiation meet those requirements, and how far can it be matured. Each stage is entered on its own, so the answer arrives before the next commitment does.
The specifications are the input at every stage.
Pre-Feasibility opens with joint definition of the targets the use case has to meet. Nothing proceeds until they exist in writing.
Feasibility carries those targets further, exercising the stack across every layer that bears on them, and returns a judgment on what can be matured and how far.
Task 1 turns that judgment into a materials recipe — the configuration that answers the specifications, generated, captured and protected as new intellectual property.
Task 2 places the printed device into the simulated environment you designate, under the testing protocol you set. Task 3 does the same in your operational environment, against form, fit and function you define.
A report closes every stage. Those reports are jointly owned, so each decision to continue is made on work already in your hands.
Five stages, each entered separately.
Pre-Feasibility
Targets for the use case defined jointly and set down in writing.
Feasibility
The stack exercised against those targets, returning a judgment on what can be matured.
NRE Task 1
Recipe creation — new intellectual property generated, captured and protected.
Required before Tasks 2 and 3.
NRE Task 2
The printed device integrated into the simulated environment you designate.
NRE Task 3
Qualification in your operational environment — form, fit and function.
Every milestone is a place to stop.
The commitment is $25,000 at a time. A Funder who stops after one engineering milestone has committed twenty-five thousand dollars — not one hundred thousand, and not three hundred.
Pre-Feasibility closes with a report. Whether to commission the Feasibility Analysis is decided on that report, and on nothing else.
Feasibility closes with a report and a go / no-go. It is invoiced in two parts as a convenience — one stage, one decision, taken at its end.
Every milestone ends in a report
Progress Reports at Milestones 1, 2 and 3, then a Final Design Report at Milestone 4. Each is a continue-or-stop decision the Funder makes, and Funder staff are welcome to review NIKET’s internally generated documents throughout the effort.
No milestone begins unfunded
Each $25,000 increment is payable in advance of the work it funds. Nothing is invoiced against a stage the Funder has not authorised, and no Task obligates the Funder beyond the milestone in front of them.
Termination is two weeks
At the conclusion of any milestone review, written notice of two weeks ends the engagement. That notice acts as a stop-work order — NIKET carries out reasonable project closeout and nothing further.
Reports are jointly owned from the first stage.
The Pre-Feasibility Report and the Feasibility Analysis Report are jointly owned by NIKET and the Funder.
At the conclusion of Task 1, the Q-SMEC materials configuration work products are jointly owned.
The Q-SMEC Technology Stack itself remains NIKET Background IP throughout. It does not transfer, and entering the program does not license it.