What's Behind D-Wave's Spring Rally, and Will It Continue?
Shares of D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS) gained nearly $8 over a five-day period in mid-April, rising about 54% in the process.
Good news for a company that has been plagued by a stagnating share price so far this year, right?
Zooming out to look at the quantum computing industry as a whole, it's clear that the rally is not specific to D-Wave: rivals like IonQ Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) and Rigetti Computing Inc. (NASDAQ: RGTI) also surged by about 64% and 37%, respectively, in the same five-day window.
Yes, the rally happened to coincide with World Quantum Day on April 14, but there was likely a more influential driver at work: NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA).
NVIDIA's AI Tools to Build Quantum Processors Could Be Transformational
The largest publicly traded company in the world took advantage of the enthusiasm generated by World Quantum Day to announce Ising, a family of open source AI models aiming to speed up the development of quantum processors. These models may be able to detect and correct errors in the quantum computing process at a faster rate than prior methods.
The launch of a new suite of AI tools from one of the biggest names in tech is undoubtedly a boon for D-Wave and its peers. Even smaller, new-to-market quantum companies have gotten a boost from the news: Infleqtion Inc. (NYSE: INFQ) already partners with NVIDIA and quickly soared to an all-time high after NVIDIA made the announcement.
A primary benefit of NVIDIA's AI-based approach is that the quantum computing industry is so heavy on hype and expectation, while being fairly light on real-world results. There seems to be general agreement among investors that quantum could someday be a truly transformational corner of the tech space. Quantum processors could someday solve problems at a scale and in ways unheard of by classical computing systems.
Why NVIDIA's Boost May Not Be Enough—Or at Least, Not Yet
It's unlikely that the boost to QBTS shares was due to a shift in the company's fundamentals. The company issued no major press releases during the week, including World Quantum Day and is not due to report its Q1 earnings until a month after that point.
D-Wave remains a firm with a tremendous amount of hype and investor enthusiasm—even if it has waned a fair amount since the company reached its all-time high share price in the fall of 2025—but only about $25 million in revenue in the last fiscal year. When stacked against a market capitalization of $8 billion, the disconnect between investor interest and company performance becomes even more stark.
Any number of valuation metrics show that D-Wave is out of balance in this way—a price-to-sales ratio of 326X, for example, reveals how highly investors have valued the company even after shares have fallen some 37% in the last six months.
What to Watch for From D-Wave
Investors eager for signs that the quantum industry could turn around after its run of declines in the last several months may be eager to see the mid-April rally continue. A set of free AI tools specifically made to help enhance the development of quantum processors is likely to help, not hurt, momentum. However, D-Wave and its competitors are still faced with the same challenge as before World Quantum Day: at some point, these companies must successfully make the case that their technology is worth buying and utilizing.
So far, D-Wave's revenue growth is exciting on a percentage basis: revenue for the last fiscal year surged by 179% year-over-year. However, it remains very low on an absolute basis. Sales are growing, but are still primarily from major institutional clients like university systems and governments.
Investors will likely need to see something truly disruptive from D-Wave or another quantum firm in order for the recent rally to seem likely to stick. As the quantum computing threat to Bitcoin appears to be growing, this could become a catalyst for long-term growth. More durable, though, would be tools or services that have direct appeal and real-world usefulness for a broad swath of potential customers, potentially allowing D-Wave to build up its recurring revenue base through subscriptions or a similar offering.
Until such a time, investors might take note of developments like these—however exciting they are—but recognize that enthusiasm does not equal fundamentals.
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