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D-Wave Quantum Stock Tumbles on Earnings. Plus, IonQ and Quantinuum Make Moves.

Nov 06, 2025 08:21:00 -0500 by Mackenzie Tatananni | #Technology #Earnings Report

D-Wave Quantum posted $3.7 million in revenue in its third quarter. (D-WAVE QUANTUM)

Key Points

D-Wave Quantum posted higher revenue and bookings in its latest third quarter, but one glaring flaw in the earnings report caused shares to fall sharply on Thursday.

Revenue grew to $3.7 million from $1.8 million last year, marking a 100% increase. The number also was slightly higher than the $3.1 million reported in the second quarter.

CEO Alan Baratz highlighted the company’s bookings, which represent customer orders that are expected to generate revenue in the future. D-Wave ended the quarter with bookings of $2.4 million, up 80% sequentially.

“Our computers can actually solve businesses problems today, and deliver value,” Baratz said in an interview with Barron’s. “We’ve got customers that are willing to stand up and say D-Wave is delivering value to their businesses.”

It can be difficult to benchmark D-Wave’s performance. Numbers can whipsaw wildly between quarters. As a system sale delivers a large amount of revenue in one shot, this can result in so-called lumpiness—the phenomenon in which revenue arrives in large chunks at irregular times.

Shares pared earlier gains to fall 8.4% on Thursday. Peers IonQ and Rigetti Computing ended the session up 3.7% and down 7.9%, respectively. Rigetti is slated to report third-quarter earnings on Nov. 10.

A weak point was D-Wave’s net loss in the period, which climbed to $140 million in the third quarter, compared with a year-earlier loss of $22.7 million. The company attributed the wider net loss to more than $120 million in noncash, nonoperating charges tied to the company’s warrants, as well as realized losses stemming from warrant exercises.

“Really, it was an on-paper loss,” Baratz told Barron’s. “If you do the adjusted version, the loss was very reasonable.” D-Wave’s adjusted net loss came to $18.1 million, narrower than the adjusted loss of $25.3 million reported last quarter.

The company raised $39.9 million in cash from the exercise of warrants in the third quarter, with an additional $21.3 million raised after the end of the quarter.

Still, a wider net loss doesn’t inspire confidence in the world of emerging technology. Quantum remains a speculative investment for most on Wall Street, and the explosive gains of D-Wave and peers over the past year largely reflect quantum’s future potential.

Baratz told Barron’s the company plans to launch Advantage3, its next quantum system, before the end of the decade. It has also been making progress on its gate-based model program, which explores a different type of architecture than the annealing quantum D-Wave is known for.

Investors might be looking for more substantial developments to justify D-Wave’s sharp increase in price over the past year. Including Thursday’s losses, shares remain up nearly 240% this year, outpacing peers IonQ and Rigetti Computing, which have gained 38% and 125%, respectively.

Baratz asserted that the steep gains reflect current potential, too.

“We signed a number of important new customers this year including one of the largest airlines in the U.S.,” he said. “We’re making great progress commercially, we’re making great progress technically, and the financials look good.”

He cited the company’s consolidated cash balance, which reached a “record” $836.2 million, up from the same period last year as well as last quarter. “That’s way more than enough cash than we need to execute and drive to profitability,” Baratz added.

The CEO has been one of the loudest voices in the quantum computing industry, frequently touting D-Wave’s roster of commercial clients. However, his confidence wasn’t enough to inspire investors, many of whom are looking for more substantial developments in D-Wave progress toward profitability.

The company’s market capitalization stood at $10.61 billion on Thursday, making D-Wave the third-largest publicly traded quantum pure play. The biggest is IonQ, with a market cap of $19.3 billion.

The broader quantum category has seen rapid growth this year, and that growth has brought changes. D-Wave noted in a securities filing in August that it would no longer quality as an “emerging growth company” as of Dec. 31. The label currently allows D-Wave to take advantage of “certain reduced disclosure requirements,” according to the filing.

D-Wave’s earnings report Thursday came on the heels of announcements from industry peers IonQ and Quantinuum. Publicly traded IonQ posted Wednesday higher-than-expected revenue in the third quarter.

Revenue came to $39.9 million, marking a 222% increase from a year earlier. The figure was 37% above the top end of the company’s own guidance range.

However, IonQ also posted a wider loss. The figure swelled to $1.1 billion from $52.5 million in the same period last year and $177.5 million last quarter. The company’s adjusted Ebitda loss came in at $48.9 million, wider than a loss of $36.5 million last quarter and $23.7 million last year.

A boost to IonQ’s full-year outlook appeared to overshadow this flaw. IonQ hiked its guidance for the second time, saying it now expects revenue in the range of $106 million to $110 million, up from $82 million to $100 million previously. Analysts polled by FactSet are looking for $101.6 million.

Other players in the space also have been making noise. On Wednesday, Quantinuum announced the commercial launch of Helios, its next-generation quantum computer. The company plans to deliver the computer to Singapore in 2026, and will work extensively with the country through a strategic partnership to advance the adoption of quantum computing.

The private company is majority-owned by Honeywell and is set to go public between the end of 2026 and sometime in 2027, a source told Barron’s earlier this year.

Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com