D-Wave Quantum: Bookings Tell One Story, the Share Price Another

D-Wave finalized a CHIPS Act award worth up to $100 million, giving Washington a minority stake, as H1 revenue fell 67% but bookings surged.

D-Wave Quantum has just banked the most consequential endorsement of its corporate life, and the market responded with a shrug. The Burnaby-based quantum computing firm finalized a CHIPS Act award with the US Department of Commerce on Tuesday worth up to $100 million, earmarked for research into superconducting quantum systems spanning both its annealing and gate-model architectures.

Washington isn't handing over the money for nothing. In return, the government receives a minority, non-controlling equity stake in D-Wave — and neither the Commerce Department nor the company has disclosed how large that slice actually is. That silence is the awkward heart of the arrangement: a listed quantum company now counts the US state among its shareholders, with the public kept in the dark about the exact percentage.

A sector-wide play, not a one-off

D-Wave is not walking this path alone. Rigetti Computing and Quantinuum have each signed separate CHIPS Act agreements worth up to $100 million, likewise paired with federal minority holdings. Together the three commitments add up to $300 million. What's emerging is a government portfolio of quantum computing stakes, mirroring the playbook Washington previously ran with conventional semiconductor projects. The stated aim is to keep process technology, qubit counts, error rates and packaging capabilities on American soil.

The compensation side of the D-Wave deal is concrete: the company issued 7.1 million shares to the Commerce Department. That dilution is real and belongs in any valuation exercise. At the same time, a government position is not same-day selling pressure — it is a long-held stake with industrial-policy motives behind it.

Revenue shrinks, orders explode

Strip away the headlines and D-Wave's operating picture is more nuanced than the top line suggests. First-half 2026 revenue fell 67% to $5.9 million, a decline driven largely by the absence of a large system sale that flattered the prior-year comparison. Judged on that number alone, the verdict would be grim.

Bookings tell a different story. Orders climbed 59% in the second quarter to $2.1 million, and for the first half as a whole they surged 1,120% to $35.5 million. A single $20 million system sale — to Florida Atlantic University — accounted for a chunk of that total. Bookings are contracts that convert to revenue over time, which makes them a forward-looking gauge of demand sitting in the pipeline before it ever reaches the income statement. The gap between shrinking revenue and ballooning orders reads more like a transition phase than a collapse in demand.

Customer mix reinforces the point. Commercial customers generated 62.4% of quarterly revenue, and 47.7% came from Forbes Global 2000 enterprises. That is not a niche business sustained by a handful of research labs; it is increasingly mainstream corporate demand — a detail that tends to get lost in the noise surrounding the stock.

The price chart refuses to celebrate

Since the award was announced, the shares have added just 0.9%. At EUR 14.49, D-Wave trades roughly 64% below its 52-week high of EUR 40.41, set in October. The stock also sits about 22% under its 200-day moving average and 30% above the low it struck in March. Over the past 30 days it has shed 19%, and 30-day volatility stands at 71% — a reading that says the market cannot confidently price the opportunity and the dilution risk sitting side by side.

The muted reaction suggests investors now treat the federal funding as a foreseeable milestone rather than a surprise. That is a reasonable read for a stock whose market capitalization of just over EUR 5.3 billion dwarfs a quarterly revenue base in the low single-digit millions.

Management churn and legal noise

Less reassuring is the turnover at the top of the finance function. CFO John Markovich retired effective September 2, with Senior Vice President Greg Golkov stepping in on an interim basis. A change in the CFO seat is rarely a comforting signal for stability, even absent any indication of discord. Combined with the July move of its listing from the NYSE to the Nasdaq, the picture is one of a company reworking its structures on both the operational and organizational fronts.

Separately, several law firms are reported to be examining possible securities-law violations tied to the company. Details remain thin, though such inquiries commonly trail periods of high volatility and intense public attention.

Smaller signals, mixed direction

Other disclosures round out the mosaic. Institutional investor Manulife added to its position in early September, picking up shares worth roughly $4.9 million. On the other side of the ledger, director John DiLullo sold 1,100 shares for about $19,800 under a pre-arranged trading plan — a transaction that looks administrative rather than alarming.

The central question for any state-backed future technology applies here with full force: does the business stand on its own without the subsidy? The FAU contract proves paying customers exist. But with quarterly revenue in the low single-digit millions, a federal award of up to $100 million remains by far the largest lever in D-Wave's hands. The booking momentum and the government's backing point to structural confidence in the technology; the dilution from the federal stake tempers that story without erasing it.