QBTS Accelerates Commercial Push, Investors Skeptical on Peer Pressure

D-Wave Quantum QBTS is intensively focusing on translating its quantum technology into real commercial deployments. In the second quarter of 2025, the company publicly launched its Advantage2 annealing system as generally available, positioning it as a commercial-grade machine built for real-world optimization, materials simulation and AI workloads. Management emphasized that this system already surpasses prior generations. It has roughly double the coherence time, 40% higher energy scale and increased qubit connectivity (from 15 to 20) to tackle larger problems more robustly.

To support scale and manufacturability, D-Wave announced a strategic development initiative around advanced cryogenic packaging, aimed at improving multichip packaging and superconducting interconnects, a critical enabler for both its annealing and planned gate-model architectures. In partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), D-Wave has demonstrated superconducting interconnects between chips, which support its roadmap toward scaling to 100,000 qubits.

On the commercial front, QBTS is actively converting interest into contracts. The company highlighted new and renewed customer engagements across major firms (E.ON, GE Vernova, Nikon, NTT, Sharp, the U.K. National Quantum Computing Center, etc.). It also spotlighted proof-of-concept work like optimizing police patrol deployment via a hybrid quantum model, beating expectations on response times using just 10 seconds of solve time. The Leap Quantum LaunchPad program (a 3-month trial access with support) has seen strong demand (>1,300 applications), helping accelerate customer onboarding into proof-of-concepts and deployment.

Financially, QBTS is fueling these commercialization efforts through aggressive capital raising. In July 2025, it completed a $400 million at-the-market equity offering to bolster its cash reserves, enabling further R&D and go-to-market investments. The strengthened balance sheet gives it the scope to invest heavily in sales, professional services, infrastructure and potential strategic acquisitions to complement its hardware and software stack.

What are QBTS' Peers Doing?

IonQ IONQ: IonQ is advancing its commercialization push through strategic acquisitions and partnerships. In September 2025, IonQ closed its acquisition of Oxford Ionics, integrating the UK quantum startup into its technology platform. The acquisition strengthens IonQ’s trapped-ion capabilities through Oxford Ionics’ innovations in ion trap control and semiconductor-based architectures and gives IonQ a U.K. footprint to facilitate collaboration with European institutions and government bodies.

Also, IonQ announced a $1.0 billion equity offering to strengthen its balance sheet and support expansion efforts, resulting in pro forma cash of about $1.68 billion. Moreover, the company expanded geographically via a collaboration with Emergence Quantum in Australia to deepen its presence in the APAC region and localize development momentum. On the application side, IonQ reported a quantum-accelerated drug development demonstration in collaboration with AstraZeneca, AWS and NVIDIA NVDA, achieving an estimated 20× speed-up over prior benchmarks.

Rigetti RGTI: Rigetti is also actively focusing on maturing its commercialization. In early 2025, it announced a strategic collaboration with Quanta Computer to jointly invest over $100 million each over five years to co-develop and commercialize superconducting quantum processors. To fuel its growth, Rigetti completed a $350 million at-the-market equity offering, bolstering its cash reserves and enabling investments in scaling its systems.

Technically, the company also disclosed a demonstration of its largest multi-chip system to date: a 36-qubit modular assembly (four chiplets) with a median two-qubit gate fidelity of 99.5%, halving its previous error rates. That platform milestone is positioned as a stepping stone toward a >100 qubit chiplet-based architecture.

QBTS Three Months Price Performance

Average Target Price for QBTS Suggests Limited Upside Potential

Based on short-term price targets offered by 10 analysts, D-Wave Quantum’s average price target represents a decline of 28.75% from the last closing price of $32.70.

D-Wave Quantum currently carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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