D-Wave Quantum: Wall Street Cuts Price Targets Even as Orders Explode 1,120%

D-Wave's bookings jump 1,120% to $35.5M, but Q2 revenue flat at $3.1M; analysts split as cash burn rises with acquisition.

The disconnect between D-Wave Quantum's income statement and its order book has rarely been starker. The quantum computing specialist reported second-quarter revenue that barely moved the needle, missed analyst expectations on both the top and bottom lines, and yet saw its shares climb 6.16% on Friday to close at €17.91. The market, it seems, is pricing in a future that hasn't shown up in the financials yet.

That future is taking shape in the bookings pipeline. First-half order intake surged to $35.5 million, a staggering 1,120% jump from the $2.9 million recorded in the same period last year. The backlog — contracted but not yet delivered — stood at $40.7 million as of June 30, up 668% year over year, with roughly 57% of that sum expected to convert to revenue within the next twelve months. A single $20 million order from Florida Atlantic University accounts for a significant chunk of the intake.

Analysts Split Between Softer Targets and Bullish Ratings

The mixed picture has produced an unusual split on Wall Street. Roth Capital cut its price target from $40 to $30, while Canaccord's Kingsley Crane lowered his from $41 to $35 — though he maintained a buy rating. Jefferies also trimmed its target, from $45 to $40. Yet the revisions haven't translated into downgrades: Evercore ISI reaffirmed its buy rating, Rosenblatt Securities initiated coverage with a buy, and TD Cowen's Krish Sankar pointed to growing commercial traction and the anticipated revenue ramp from Advantage2 systems this year.

The tension is easy to understand. Revenue for the quarter came in at $3.1 million, essentially flat year over year and well short of the roughly $4 million consensus estimate. The GAAP loss per share narrowed from $0.55 to $0.13, but that improvement masked a widening adjusted EBITDA deficit, which expanded 85% as the company poured money into product development and sales. Analysts had penciled in a smaller per-share loss of $0.10.

The Cash Burn Behind the Growth Story

D-Wave's balance sheet tells a story of aggressive investment. Liquid assets and marketable securities totaled $546.2 million at the end of June — down $273.1 million, or 33%, from the prior-year date. According to company filings, more than 90% of that decline traces to the all-cash acquisition of Quantum Circuits, completed in January 2026.

Management, led by CEO Alan Baratz and CFO John Markovich, used the earnings call to lay out an ambitious hardware roadmap: a 17-qubit system by the end of 2026, a 49-qubit system in 2027, and annealing technology scaled to 20,000 qubits by 2029 and 100,000 by 2031. The longer-term target for 2032 is 100 logical qubits and one million reliable operations. Two annealing systems are slated for delivery in the fourth quarter of 2026, though revenue recognition is expected to spill into 2027.

Commercial Validation Beyond the Numbers

The company is also working to shed its reputation as a research curiosity. Roughly 37% of revenue from its Quantum Computing as a Service cloud business now comes from production workloads rather than pilot projects — a metric that could determine whether customers are genuinely adopting the technology or merely kicking the tires.

Recent partnerships lend some credence to that shift. An expanded collaboration with AT&T, announced just over a week ago, will see D-Wave's technology integrated more deeply into the telecom giant's network optimization work, following an early application that cut processing time for an optimization task from about an hour to under 15 seconds. Separately, Nasdaq Verafin — which serves more than 2,800 financial institutions with combined assets of $13 trillion — is evaluating D-Wave's annealing technology for financial crime detection.

A Valuation That Prices in Decades

The market capitalization of €6.22 billion against $3.1 million in quarterly revenue underscores just how much of D-Wave's valuation rests on expectations rather than results. The stock remains far below its 52-week high of €40.41 from mid-October, though it has climbed 14.37% over the past week and sits well above its yearly low of €11.12. On a 12-month basis, the shares are still down 20.96%.

With annualized volatility around 106% — a figure more typical of speculative crypto assets than established technology companies — the equity is clearly sensitive to headlines about orders and backlog rather than the actual revenue line. The average analyst price target of €31.71 implies roughly 77% upside from Friday's close.

The central question for investors is straightforward: can D-Wave convert its $40.7 million backlog into reliable, recurring revenue, or will that promise keep sliding further into the future? The comparison with rival IonQ, which posted a record quarter with $80.1 million in revenue — more than twenty times D-Wave's take — suggests the gap between narrative and execution remains wide. For now, D-Wave remains a stock driven less by its balance sheet than by the story of a future that has yet to be written.