D-Wave Quantum: B. Riley Reaffirms Buy Rating as Commercialization Clock Ticks

D-Wave shares fell 4.77% Friday, down 37% this year, as quantum sector weakness outweighs B. Riley's $40 target and new partnerships.

D-Wave Quantum finds itself caught in a widening gap between what its technology can do and what public markets are willing to pay for it. Last Friday the stock fell 4.77%, extending a slump that has now erased 37% of its value since the start of the year, leaving the shares at EUR 14.20 in German trading.

Media reports pointed to no company-specific trigger for the decline. Instead, a broad pullback across quantum computing names dragged the whole sector lower — a reaction that says as much about investor nerves as it does about D-Wave itself. Buyers in this environment want tangible commercial results, not long-range visions, and until broad industrial profitability is proven, the market is likely to stay impatient. That impatience means short-term swings in sentiment will keep dictating the share price.

Analyst Support Meets a Skeptical Tape

Not everyone is backing away. On September 21, Craig Ellis of B. Riley Securities reiterated his buy recommendation and kept his price target at $40. Ellis anchored his optimism partly in signs that U.S. quantum policy is increasingly geared toward rapid commercialization.

The market has yet to follow that lead. Since announcing a strategic partnership with CGI roughly two weeks ago, D-Wave shares have lost 7.0%. The tie-up aims to fold the company's Advantage2 system and hybrid solvers into CGI's existing IT services, with the partners targeting concrete use cases in transport, logistics and supply chain planning. Pairing raw compute power with established service providers is arguably the right approach: quantum machines only generate economic value once they solve real optimization problems inside businesses, and the CGI deal puts D-Wave squarely at that intersection.

A similar pattern followed the announcement of Qubits Asia 2026 about three weeks ago — the stock has shed 7.8% since. The user conference is scheduled for October 28, 2026 in Seoul, where progress on annealing and gate-model systems will share the agenda with hands-on customer applications.

Product Openings and a Boardroom Addition

On the product side, the company has hardly stood still. D-Wave recently opened its test environment to outside partners, giving selected institutions access to a gate-model quantum computer simulator for error-aware programming. Among the participants are BBVA, FirstQFM, Florida Atlantic University and the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, all of whom can reach the tools through the company's Leap cloud service and the Ocean software package.

D-Wave also broadened its leadership bench. On September 21, Bernard Gavgani joined the Board of Directors and its Cybersecurity Committee. Gavgani previously served as Group CIO of BNP Paribas, where he now advises the executive management. His background could help persuade large financial-sector clients of the security of the company's systems — a network effect that, if it translates into rising orders, could trigger a meaningful revaluation.

What Has to Happen Next

The debate ultimately hinges on when technological cooperation turns into durable, growing revenue. Quantum computing spent years as a pure future story with very long development cycles; investors now want evidence of value in day-to-day industrial use. Partnerships with IT service providers demonstrate genuine interest from established corporations, but the decisive question is whether customers will pay for recurring software and cloud revenue. If that transition stalls, the stretch between heavy research spending and hesitant bookings could weigh on investor confidence for a long while.

Institutional caution remains a real obstacle. Friday's selloff showed how sensitive the entire sector is to doubts about profitability, and a lack of new customer wins could cement the downward trend. A key risk lies in the length of customer onboarding: many industrial firms are testing quantum approaches in pilot projects only, without committing long-term budgets. Should the broader climate for unprofitable growth companies tighten, capital could become scarce. The distance to the 200-day moving average of EUR 17.91 underscores the persistent pressure the stock has been under for months.

Near-term direction will come down to concrete operational milestones. As long as the current annual low of EUR 11.12 holds, the broader recovery scenario for the share price stays intact; a sustained break below that mark under heavy selling would likely invite follow-on losses. The next fixed date on the calendar is already set — October 28, 2026, when D-Wave hosts Qubits Asia 2026 in Seoul, with customer deployment reports and fresh research findings on the docket. Those presentations will reveal how far real-world industrial adoption has actually progressed.