Will Renewed NQI Funding Fuel Rigetti's Government Sales Pipeline?

Rigetti Computing RGTI is leaning heavily on government partnerships as a core piece of its commercialization path, and the timing could work in its favor. Per the third-quarter earnings call, management was explicit that revenue softness was tied directly to the expiration of the U.S. National Quantum Initiative (“NQI”), which slowed federal purchasing cycles. Third-quarter revenue came in at $1.9 million compared with $2.4 million a year ago, and the company cited the lapse of NQI funding as a meaningful contributing factor.

Now, with the program officially reinstated at $625 million over five years, Rigetti expects momentum to improve as national labs and government agencies re-engage. Management also emphasized that NQI expansion discussions continue in Washington, and larger funding levels are still on the table. For RGTI positioned as a key supplier to public-sector quantum programs, renewed visibility and predictability in U.S. spending could become a powerful demand tailwind over the next several quarters.

Even before the reinstatement, Rigetti was already securing high-value government-linked wins that are likely to flow into revenue in the fourth quarter and 2026. The company recently announced a three-year, $5.8 million contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory to advance superconducting quantum networking and booked $5.7 million in purchase orders for two complete 9-qubit Novera systems, both fully upgradable and aimed at deep research and benchmarking use cases.

These wins bolster confidence in a stronger government pipeline and diversify beyond earlier project-based work into hardware deployment. With significant cash and no debt, Rigetti has the runway to scale delivery and deepen federal partnerships as NQI funding starts to flow again. If execution aligns with its roadmap milestones and hybrid initiatives around NVIDIA NVQLink, federal contracts could shift to steady contributors, which would be a meaningful catalyst for revenue stabilization and margin recovery after the third quarter dip.

Peers Updates

D-Wave Quantum QBTS has transitioned its new Advantage2 annealing system from limited preview to full commercial availability, representing a significant milestone in its commercialization efforts. The platform now offers more than 4,400 qubits with enhanced connectivity, improved coherence, and higher energy performance. It is accessible to enterprise and research customers across more than 40 countries through the Leap cloud service. In parallel, the company is expanding its hybrid capabilities that blend quantum annealing with classical compute, targeting real-world adoption in areas such as logistics optimization, AI-driven decision systems, and financial modeling.

Quantum Computing Inc. QUBT has delivered its first commercial entangled-photon source to a leading research organization in South Korea, signaling the market launch of its telecom C-band photonic platform built for quantum networking and secure communications. In parallel, the company is scaling production at its photonic foundry in Tempe, AZ, while expanding into quantum sensing and cybersecurity through initial customer pilots. Although revenue contribution remains at an early stage, these developments highlight QCi’s shift from pure research toward commercial deployment and product-led growth.

Rigetti’s Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Shares of RGTI have gained 74.1% in the year-to-date period against the industry’s decline of 0.1%.

From a valuation standpoint, Rigetti trades at a price-to-book ratio of 22.2, above the industry average. RGTI carries a Value Score of F.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Rigetti’s 2025 earnings implies a significant 88.9% decline from the year-ago period.

The company currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). 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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