Quantum Computing Outlook Shines: 2 Stocks to Watch Heading into 2026

The year 2025 delivered clearer engineering roadmaps, major capital commitments and steady commercial traction in quantum computing. IBM IBM unveiled a new IBM Quantum data center and a multi-year path toward fault-tolerant systems, giving markets confidence in its technical timetable. Amazon’s AWS AMZN introduced its first quantum chip, Ocelot, designed to cut error-correction overhead by up to 90%—a step that could significantly accelerate practical quantum hardware.

Honeywell’s Quantinuum raised about $600 million at a near-$10 billion valuation, underscoring strong private-capital conviction and gaining added credibility through a DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative contract. Meanwhile, Google’s GOOGL 105-qubit Willow chip ran the “Quantum Echoes” algorithm, achieving the first verifiable quantum advantage, reportedly 13,000× faster than classical supercomputers for a molecular-simulation task—widely viewed as the first real-world quantum application. IonQ IONQ and D-Wave Quantum QBTS enter 2026 as rising contenders, with IonQ advancing its roadmap and cloud access and D-Wave expanding its hybrid platform as customer adoption increases.

Together, these developments have shifted investor expectations from distant scientific promise to nearer-term commercialization. This momentum suggests continued capital deployment in 2026, more customer engagements and deeper industry-government collaborations, especially in materials science, pharmaceuticals and cloud services, supporting selective revenue growth and further valuation gains for platforms that deliver.

That said, the progress still comes with real risks. True fault-tolerant quantum computers are years away, and until companies can demonstrate millions of stable logical qubits running real workloads, investment outcomes will remain uncertain. The rewards could be large, but timelines may stretch. As a result, many investors choose staged, milestone-based funding rather than committing all their capital upfront.

Currently, it will be sensible to consider pure-play quantum stocks, provided investors understand the sector’s high-risk, high-reward profile. These companies offer the most direct exposure to breakthroughs in quantum hardware and software, but they are also more volatile and heavily dependent on technical execution. For long-term, disciplined investors, a small, diversified allocation can provide early exposure to a technology that may ultimately reshape computing, AI and cybersecurity, while keeping overall portfolio risk in check.

IONQ & QBTS YTD Stock Performances

2 Pureplay Quantum Computing Picks

IonQ: It has delivered a strong show so far in 2025. In its third quarter, the company recorded 222% year-over-year revenue growth and also beat the high end of its guidance by 37%.  The company also hit a major technical milestone, world-record 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity and achieved its “#AQ 64” target three months ahead of schedule, meaning its “Tempo” system now unlocks a vastly larger computational space than competing commercial superconducting systems. On the corporate side, IonQ expanded aggressively. After a $2 billion equity raise, it carried $3.5 billion in pro-forma net cash and completed to strengthen its full-stack quantum platform.

This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock is expected to report 2026 earnings growth of 66.2% on sales growth of 69%. Year to date, the stock has gained 26.1%.

D-Wave Quantum: Its 2025 performance indicates the company is making real commercial progress. In May, D-Wave announced general availability of its sixth-generation annealing quantum computer, Advantage2, a 4,400+ qubit system described as production-ready for real-world optimization, materials-simulation and AI workloads.

In the last-reported third quarter, D-Wave reported $3.7 million in revenues, up 100% year over year, along with improved gross margins and a €10 million 50%-capacity system deal with an Italian quantum-computing alliance for 2025–2026. Moreover, the company announced that its Advantage2 system is now operational at a major U.S. government defense subcontractor’s facility, indicating growing adoption of its quantum annealing systems for mission-critical workflows.

This Zacks Rank #3 stock is expected to report 2026 earnings growth of 9.3% on sales growth of 61.3%. Year to date, the stock has surged 221.4%. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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