Three of these companies are pure plays burning cash in pursuit of a market that barely exists yet. For the other three, quantum computing is a sideshow -- so far.
Three of these companies are pure plays burning cash in pursuit of a market that barely exists yet.
For the other three, quantum computing is a sideshow -- so far.
Over the last few years, the development of quantum computing has mostly been bankrolled by stock sales and legacy cash flows, not by customers, and the latest quarterly filings from the biggest names in that race show just how wide that gap remains. For investors, the real question isn't which companies have the coolest qubits, but which ones have the financial capacity to stay afloat for the years it will take for their quantum computing revenues to start mattering.
Three numbers from the most recent quarter, straight from some quantum computing companies' own filings, show how far "someday" still is from "now."
IonQ (IONQ +9.32%) booked $80.1 million in revenue for the second quarter. D-Wave Quantum (QBTS -2.85%) booked around $3 million. Rigetti Computing (RGTI -2.85%) booked $5.1 million. None of those revenue figures covered the millions the companies spend annually on hardware. So, for investors interested in this niche of the tech sector, the real question is which quantum computing stock is closest to running on revenue rather than on the next stock or debt sale.
$34.35+$2.93 (+9.32%)
NYSE · As of 4:00 PM ET 10/15/26
Revenue today: IBM and IonQ
IBM (IBM +1.14%) doesn't report its quantum computing revenue separately, and that tells you most of what you need to know: Within the multibillion-dollar business that is IBM, the quantum computing operation still amounts to a rounding error. What IBM has instead is scale and patience. It runs 13 utility-scale quantum computing systems (100-plus qubits each), has booked more than $1 billion in cumulative quantum business, and is putting $10 billion behind its efforts to develop the technology over five years. But that effort is funded by the tens of billions of dollars in free cash flow its mainframes and software throw off every year. CEO Arvind Krishna said in a July interview on CNBC that quantum computing won't move the profit needle for his company until 2028 or 2029. But IBM can wait that long.
IBM International Business Machines
Averytin News Financial update.