Key Points
First-half 2026 revenue fell 67% year over year to $5.9 million.
First-half bookings of $35.5 million topped the company’s revenue for all of last year.
Even a tripled top line would leave the stock trading at about 90 times sales.
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Quantum computing companies are finally starting to generate real revenue. IonQ (NYSE:IONQ), for instance, raised its full-year 2026 revenue outlook to a range of $450 million to $460 million ahead of its first joint investor day on Tuesday — helped by the addition of SkyWater Technology, the chipmaking business it acquired at the end of July.
D-Wave Quantum (NASDAQ:QBTS) is at a much earlier stage. The quantum computing specialist’s revenue for the first half of 2026 fell 67% year over year to $5.9 million.
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Even so, I predict the company’s revenue triples before 2030. The case doesn’t rest on D-Wave’s recent growth rate — there isn’t one to lean on. It rests on what customers have already contracted to spend.
To be clear, I’m predicting what the business does, not what the stock does. The growth stock trades near $18 as of this writing, less than half its 52-week peak of $46.75, and I think even a tripled top line would leave shares expensive.
Image source: Getty Images.
A lumpy revenue base
D-Wave’s full-year 2025 revenue was $24.6 million, up 179% from $8.8 million in 2024. That jump, however, leaned heavily on a single event. The company’s first-ever sale of an annealing quantum computing system contributed $12.6 million to first-quarter 2025 revenue. So when 2026 lapped that deal, the comparisons turned ugly. Revenue fell 81% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, and revenue in the second quarter was essentially flat at $3.1 million.
Set the system sale aside, and the ongoing business (mostly selling access to D-Wave’s machines over the cloud) still generates only a few million dollars a quarter. Any credible forecast has to start there, with a base that is tiny and bumpy.
The order book is soaring
Bookings, which capture the value of contracts customers signed during the period, totaled $35.5 million in the first half of 2026. A year earlier, that figure was just $2.9 million. Notably, that six-month figure topped the company’s revenue for all of last year.
The haul included a $20 million system purchase by Florida Atlantic University and a $10 million, two-year cloud-access agreement with a Fortune 100 company.
Signed contracts pile up in remaining performance obligations (revenue customers have signed for but D-Wave hasn’t yet delivered). A year ago, that backlog was just $5.3 million. As of June 30, it stood at $40.7 million. And the company expects about 57% of that backlog to become revenue over the next 12 months, with 72% arriving inside two years.
There’s a likely inflection point on the calendar, too. D-Wave expects installation of the Florida Atlantic system to begin before the end of 2026 — and 2025 showed what a single delivered system can do to the revenue line.
Meanwhile, the tech company can afford to be patient. Operating expenses are running far ahead of revenue (up 93% year over year to $55 million in the second quarter), but D-Wave held about $550 million in cash and marketable securities as of June 30.
And on Tuesday, D-Wave announced it had finalized an agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce that gives it access to up to $100 million in CHIPS and Science Act funding for research and development. The government will receive a minority equity stake in return.
What would tripling be worth?
The math is simple enough: tripling 2025’s $24.6 million means annual revenue reaching about $74 million in 2029, the last full year before 2030. If the Florida Atlantic system is delivered in time to keep 2026 near last year’s level, the following three years would require about 44% annual growth.
Sure, that’s a demanding pace for a company whose sales just shrank. But the first half’s $35.5 million of bookings shows what the demand side can deliver, and a single system sale can move a full year’s revenue by itself. A couple more deals on Florida Atlantic’s scale, layered on top of a growing cloud business, could close most of the remaining gap.
Getting there wouldn’t make the stock cheap, though. With a market capitalization of about $6.6 billion, D-Wave would still fetch about 90 times sales measured against the 2029 revenue I’m predicting. For comparison, IonQ (hardly a bargain itself) is valued at about 56 times the revenue its quantum business is guided to produce this year.
So, will D-Wave’s revenue triple before 2030? I think so. The order book points that way, even if the quarterly numbers stay lumpy in the meantime.
Ultimately, however, a tripled D-Wave would still be a $74 million revenue company carrying a multibillion-dollar valuation. The business appears to be heading in the right direction. At this price, though, I’d opt to stay on the sidelines.
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Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends IonQ. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
