Beyond NVIDIA & AI Bubble Talk, Quantum Upside Builds for IonQ & RGTI

The past few years have seen the rise of the artificial-intelligence infrastructure engine. Companies such as NVIDIA NVDA, Microsoft MSFT, Amazon AMZN and Google have racked up massive gains as the world pours capital into generative AI, large language models (LLMs), cloud infrastructure, data-center growth, GPUs and specialized chips.

This surge has translated into astonishing performance for AI infrastructure. For example, NVIDIA delivered a 114% year-over-year jump in full-year revenues last fiscal. However, while investor attention remains focused on this fast-growing technology segment, signs of growth moderation are prominent. In fiscal 2026, NVIDIA reported year-over-year revenue increases of 69% and 56% in the first and second quarters, respectively, still impressive, but notably slower than the explosive growth seen earlier in the cycle.

At this stage, when AI infrastructure is becoming crowded and valuations are getting overly stretched, according to many market watchers, Quantum Computing is the next frontier to step in. In fact, many are of the belief that AI is merely the warm-up and quantum computing will be the real technological disruption that redefines computational capability and unlocks the next trillion-dollar wave.

Here we have picked two pureplay quantum stocks consistently identified as leaders in the quantum computing space — IonQ IONQ and Rigetti RGTI.

Surging Valuations & Profit Pressure in AI: Bubble to Burst Soon?

Last month, Goldman Sachs cautioned that AI-focused stocks were trading at valuations driven more by future hopes than current profits, raising early bubble signs. According to a Bloomberg report, a Bank of America survey in October showed a shift in sentiment, with 54% of global fund managers now viewing AI as a bubble risk. The alarm grew louder when, around the same time, the Bank of England warned that AI valuations looked “stretched.” As per the report, too much of the market's value depends on a few AI winners. If investors become less confident about AI, those stocks could fall and drag the whole market down. Meanwhile, MIT research already suggested as many as 95% of generative-AI pilots weren’t yet generating returns, highlighting a widening gap between investment and real-world payoff (as published in a Forbes report).

What Makes Quantum a Step Up

Quantum computing is a structural shift in how information is processed. Instead of processing data with binary bits, quantum systems use qubits, units that can exist in multiple states at once through superposition and link information through entanglement. This architecture reveals exponential computational potential that classical machines, even those powered by cutting-edge GPUs, fundamentally cannot match.

AI continues to advance rapidly, yet training and inference still depend on classical silicon, energy consumption and physical transistor limits. Quantum hardware offers a path beyond those boundaries. It holds the potential to solve problems that are currently computationally unreachable, simulating molecules for drug development, cryptography, cybersecurity, supply chain and so on.

The convergence of quantum and AI could compress innovation cycles, transforming workloads that historically took months or years into those completed in days or weeks.

2 Quantum Stocks That Lead the Way

IONQ: For IonQ, this year has been marked by strong performance milestones and strategic technological advancements toward broader utility. The company has achieved a new milestone in trapped-ion hardware, two-qubit gate fidelity of over 99.99% using its Electronic Qubit Control (EQC) architecture, a world-record claim. With this level of precision, fewer physical qubits will need to be devoted to error correction, bringing IonQ a step closer to building fault-tolerant systems and delivering quantum advantage to real-world applications.

This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock is projected to report earnings growth of 37.8% on revenue growth of 115.1% in 2025. Year to date, the stock has rallied 49.3%.

IonQ, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

IonQ, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | IonQ, Inc. Quote

Rigetti: The company has adopted a modular, chiplet-based approach to superconducting quantum hardware. Its latest system, Cepheus-1-36Q, features four interconnected chiplets and is now available on its Quantum Cloud Services platform. According to the company, this architecture has enabled it to halve the two-qubit gate error rate compared to its previous Ankaa-3 system and achieve a median two-qubit gate fidelity of about 99.5%, a meaningful milestone toward larger-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing.

This Zacks Rank #3 stock is projected to report earnings growth of 75% in 2025. Year to date, the stock has rallied 190%. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Rigetti Computing, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Rigetti Computing, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Rigetti Computing, Inc. Quote

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