Quantum Computing’s Next Winners May Not Be Quantum Stocks Dr. Robert Castellano Tue, November 10, 2026 at 9:24 PM EST 11 min read IBM -0.10% INTC +0.64% NVDA -3.37% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Pure-play quantum stocks have plunged 41% to 65% in a year as technical milestones fail to translate into sustainable commercial revenue.
Rigetti's revenue fell 28% while its operating loss ran about 24 times sales, and D-Wave's spending topped revenue twelvefold.
IBM, Intel, and Nvidia can profit from quantum's manufacturing, software, and classical computing needs without betting on one winning processor architecture.
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Pure-play quantum stocks have lost 41%–65% over the past year even as hardware milestones advance.
Rigetti and D-Wave earnings expose the gap between technological progress and sustainable commercial revenue.
IBM, Intel, and Nvidia may benefit from the infrastructure and manufacturing requirements of quantum computing without depending on a single winning processor.
The quantum computing industry is confronting a distinction between technological progress and commercial profitability. Processors are improving, yet recent results suggest that useful systems are advancing faster than sustainable business models. This raises an investment question: will the developers of quantum processors capture the largest profits, or will established semiconductor and computing companies benefit more from the infrastructure needed to make quantum computing practical?
The latest earnings provide a useful test. D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) reported just $4.5 million in third-quarter revenue despite substantial nine-month bookings growth. Rigetti Computing (RGTI) reported a 28% revenue decline to $1.4 million. IonQ (IONQ) reported $173.8 million in revenue, but nearly half came from acquired SkyWater foundry operations. These are materially different forms of commercialization.
Meanwhile, IBM (IBM) is deploying integrated quantum systems, Intel (INTC) is pursuing silicon spin qubits and quantum software, and Nvidia (NVDA) is positioning its accelerated computing infrastructure to support multiple quantum architectures. Their financial exposure differs fundamentally from that of the pure plays.
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According to Table 1, the four pure-play stocks declined between 41.05% and 64.54% during the one-year period ending November 10, 2026. The separate all-time-high measure is more dramatic: Quantum Computing Inc. was 98.63% below its reported historical peak. That unusually large historical drawdown may be affected by corporate-action adjustments and should not be confused with its one-year return.
Source: The Information Network, Stock Prices End of Trading Day November 10, 2026
These declines do not prove quantum computing is failing. They show investors are revising what they are willing to pay today for revenue and profits that may be years away. The most useful comparison is therefore not qubit counts alone, but the pace at which each company converts technological advances into recognized sales and improving operating economics.
In January 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested that highly useful quantum computers might be about 20 years away. His comments contributed to a selloff in quantum shares. Nvidia subsequently increased its quantum initiatives, but that does not invalidate the original warning: building the classical infrastructure for quantum computing can be commercially rational even if broad quantum usefulness remains distant.
Rigetti's November 10 earnings provide a revealing example. Third-quarter revenue declined 28% to $1.4 million, missing analysts' $3.5 million forecast by 60%. The company reported a $33.2 million operating loss, about 23.7 times quarterly sales. Its much smaller $3.1 million GAAP net loss reflected nonoperating accounting effects and should not be read as a comparable improvement in the underlying business.
Management expects approximately $20 million in full-year revenue, contingent on acceptance and revenue recognition for a quantum system supplied to India's Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. That is roughly 11.5% below the $22.6 million analyst expectation cited in the November 10 report. Customer acceptance timing makes reported revenue volatile, a characteristic that complicates valuing a company on near-term sales multiples.
Rigetti has also reported 99.5% median two-qubit gate fidelity on a 108-qubit system, a meaningful technical milestone. It ended September with approximately $497 million in cash and investments. Thus, the technology can advance while quarterly revenue remains small and unpredictable. Huang may have been overly pessimistic about specific applications, but the distance between demonstration and broad commercial economics remains substantial.
D-Wave reported $4.5 million in third-quarter revenue, up 21% year over year, and $37.4 million in bookings for the first nine months, up 611%. Remaining performance obligations reached $38.3 million. These measures suggest stronger customer commitments, but they are not equivalent to revenue recognized in the current quarter. Indeed, third-quarter bookings declined 19% year over year to $1.9 million.
Operating expenses reached approximately $55.9 million, more than twelve times revenue, while adjusted EBITDA loss was $37.7 million. Cash and marketable securities totaled approximately $503 million. D-Wave has reported optimization applications in telecommunications and manufacturing, yet the company has not demonstrated that those applications can support its present cost structure. The crucial test is not simply whether a quantum system can improve a customer's process, but whether the provider can deliver that improvement profitably and repeatedly.
IonQ's third-quarter revenue of $173.8 million, up 336% year over year, dwarfs the reported revenue of Rigetti and D-Wave. However, $83.5 million came from its acquired SkyWater foundry business, approximately 48% of the consolidated total. The remaining $90.3 million from IonQ Platform also spans several quantum-related activities rather than solely quantum processor sales.
The SkyWater acquisition may ultimately be strategically important. Semiconductor manufacturing capacity can support quantum device fabrication, packaging, and customers beyond IonQ itself. It also introduces a more conventional revenue stream into a business whose valuation has been closely tied to quantum computing. But investors should not equate acquired foundry revenue with organic growth in demand for quantum computers.
IonQ reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $133.6 million and approximately $1.7 billion in cash and investments at September 30. A subsequent equity offering increased its pro forma liquidity to approximately $3.7 billion. These resources provide time to develop technology and integrate acquisitions, but financing strength is not the same as evidence of a self-sustaining quantum computing business.
Quantum Computing Inc. (QUBT) deserves particular attention because its acquisition strategy is closely related to the article's manufacturing thesis. Its purchases of Luminar Semiconductor, NuCrypt, and NHanced Semiconductors added lasers, photodetectors, quantum communications capabilities, and advanced packaging operations. The resulting business is not simply a developer of a standalone quantum processor.
Third-quarter revenue increased to $9.5 million from $384,000 a year earlier, but management attributed most of the increase to acquired businesses. Gross profit was only $428,000, equivalent to a 4.5% gross margin, while operating expenses reached $29 million and operating loss approximately $28.6 million. The company reported a $39.1 million backlog and approximately $1.3 billion in cash and investments.
The distinction is critical. Photonics and advanced packaging could become important enabling technologies for quantum computing and other markets, potentially giving QUBT a more diversified commercial opportunity. Yet the latest financials show that expanding revenue through acquisitions has not produced attractive margins. Its backlog offers a measure of prospective activity, not assurance of profitable conversion. Investors need to distinguish the value of the acquired operating assets from the valuation placed on a future quantum opportunity.
According to Table 2, revenue varies dramatically among the four companies, but the financial comparison remains unfavorable for the development-stage business models. Rigetti and D-Wave each reported GAAP operating losses many times quarterly revenue; QUBT's operating loss was about three times revenue. IonQ is shown with its adjusted EBITDA loss rather than an unverified GAAP operating-loss estimate, and that difference in metric is clearly identified rather than treated as directly comparable.
Sources: Company Q3 2026 earnings announcements and filings
The financial implication is not that the companies have identical technologies or business models. Rather, their reported revenue remains insufficient to absorb current development and operating expenses without continued reliance on substantial financial reserves. The next phase of commercialization must improve both the volume and economics of revenue, not merely the number of announced partnerships or acquisitions.
IBM's advantage is the breadth of its approach. Its November 6 announcement of an operational Quantum System Two at the University of Chicago's Hyde Park Labs illustrates the integration of quantum processors, control electronics, software, cryogenic systems, and conventional computing resources. IBM's roadmap targets a fault-tolerant system in 2029 with 200 logical qubits and 100 million quantum gates. Those remain future objectives, not proven commercial outcomes.
IBM can also draw on enterprise relationships, software expertise, and existing computing infrastructure. These capabilities may matter as much as individual processor specifications when customers attempt to move from demonstrations to repeatable applications. IBM does not disclose quantum-specific revenue and profit in a way that permits a clean valuation, however, and its diversified operations mean quantum progress may not materially move its consolidated earnings for years.
Intel's proposed acquisition of Classiq adds quantum software to its silicon spin-qubit and semiconductor manufacturing efforts. Intel may eventually benefit from applying conventional semiconductor fabrication and packaging experience to quantum devices, but the company still must prove that its chosen architecture scales reliably. Quantum is a long-term option, not a near-term remedy for Intel's foundry economics.
Nvidia is pursuing a different position. CUDA-Q and NVQLink are designed to connect quantum processors to conventional accelerated computing for simulation, calibration, control, and error correction. Those classical workloads could expand even if the industry remains divided among superconducting, trapped-ion, photonic, and silicon-based quantum processors. Nvidia therefore does not need to own the winning quantum architecture to participate in the ecosystem.
This helps reconcile Huang's earlier skepticism with Nvidia's subsequent investments. A long commercialization timeline can coexist with a compelling reason to build the tools needed for that commercialization. Whether quantum becomes a material revenue driver for Nvidia remains uncertain, but the company can develop its position without relying on the financial survival of any single pure-play quantum vendor.
The latest earnings make the gap between quantum computing progress and commercial profitability difficult to ignore. Rigetti's sales declined despite technical milestones; D-Wave's bookings increased while operating expenses remained many times revenue; IonQ's dramatic revenue growth was partly attributable to an acquired semiconductor foundry; and QUBT's acquired photonics businesses produced very low gross margins. These developments support renewed attention to Huang's warning about the time required to achieve broadly useful, economically viable quantum computing, without proving that his specific 20-year forecast will be correct.
The more consequential development may be the industry's emerging division of labor. Quantum processor companies need manufacturing, packaging, software, control systems, error correction, and classical computing resources. IBM, Intel, and Nvidia are positioned across different portions of that infrastructure, potentially allowing them to capture value from quantum adoption without depending on a single processor architecture. Their diversified businesses also offer more financial resilience, although quantum may remain immaterial to their near-term earnings.
Investors should therefore focus on recognized recurring revenue, customer acceptance, gross margins, operating losses, and cash consumption alongside technical benchmarks. The companies that make the most impressive quantum processors may not be the companies that ultimately capture the largest share of industry profits. That is the investment distinction the recent quarterly results bring into sharper focus.
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