December 25, 2025 — Rigetti Computing, Inc. (NASDAQ: RGTI) is closing out 2025 as one of the market’s most volatile “pure-play” quantum computing stocks—caught between real technical progress, early-stage revenues, and a hype cycle that can re-price the future in a single afternoon.
Because U.S. equities markets are closed for Christmas Day (Dec. 25) and finished early on Christmas Eve (Dec. 24), the latest official pricing reflects a shortened session that often amplifies moves in high-beta names. NYSE calendars show the Dec. 24 early close at 1:00 p.m. ET (with Christmas Day closed). [1]
Rigetti shares last closed around $24.51 (Dec. 24 close), with modest after-hours movement reported by major market data providers. [2]
Below is what’s driving Rigetti Computing stock right now, what Wall Street analysts are forecasting, and the specific company milestones that matter most heading into 2026.
RGTI Stock Price Today: Where Rigetti Shares Stand on December 25, 2025
With markets shut on Dec. 25, “today’s” snapshot is really a holiday-week checkpoint:
- Last close (Dec. 24): about $24.51
- Day range (Dec. 24): roughly $24.04 to $25.22 (varies slightly by feed)
- 52-week range: roughly $5.95 to $58.15
Those numbers underline the core truth about Rigetti stock: it trades like a story stock, not like a mature cash-flow business. [3]
Despite the pullback from autumn highs, the stock’s 2025 performance remains positive by many tracking services—on the order of ~55%+ year-to-date depending on the measurement date used. [4]
Today’s Fresh RGTI News: Short Interest Falls, But the Trade Is Still Crowded
One of the few genuinely “new” datapoints landing on Dec. 25, 2025 is updated commentary around short interest—a key variable for a stock that can squeeze hard on thin liquidity.
Across short-interest trackers, Rigetti’s latest reported short positioning shows:
- Short interest: about 41.25 million shares (as of the most recent settlement report)
- Short float: roughly 12.5%–12.8%
- Days to cover: around ~1 day (varies by methodology and average volume window)
In plain English: short interest has eased versus the prior report, but it’s still high enough that sharp sector rallies can trigger fast covering—especially in holiday conditions or momentum-driven tape. [5]
That short-interest backdrop matters because Rigetti is exactly the kind of stock where price action can create headlines, and headlines can create more price action. (Markets are weird like that.)
Why RGTI Jumped and Then Slipped: Sector-Wide Quantum Momentum, Not Company-Specific News
Rigetti’s most recent big move came earlier this week:
- On Dec. 22, 2025, Rigetti surged over 13% in a broader quantum-stock rally, according to Trefis analysis, which noted no major Rigetti press release or SEC filing as a direct catalyst that day. [6]
- Fast Company reported a holiday-week pop across multiple quantum names (including Rigetti), and suggested the precise catalyst was unclear—potentially sparked in part by peer headlines (such as D-Wave’s CES-related visibility) and generalized “quantum excitement.” [7]
The key takeaway for investors isn’t “quantum is fake” or “quantum is inevitable.” It’s simpler:
Rigetti stock frequently moves on sentiment and positioning first, fundamentals second. [8]
That doesn’t invalidate the technology. It does mean the stock can overshoot both up and down.
Analyst Forecasts for Rigetti Stock: New Coverage, Wide Price-Target Dispersion
A major 2025 trend was Wall Street finally initiating broader coverage of quantum pure plays. Investor’s Business Daily highlighted that multiple large firms initiated coverage across the sector during 2025, reflecting rising institutional attention—while still emphasizing volatility and commercialization risk. [9]
The most-cited recent RGTI analyst calls
Here are the biggest rating/target moves that are still shaping the “Street narrative” into year-end:
- Mizuho (Dec. 11, 2025): Initiated Outperform with a $50 price target. Multiple outlets reported the call, emphasizing Rigetti’s scaling roadmap and longer-term opportunity. [10]
- Wedbush (Dec. 17, 2025): Initiated coverage with an Outperform and $35 target (reported in market roundups and analyst coverage trackers). [11]
- Jefferies (Dec. 16, 2025): Initiated at Hold with a $30 target (and a more cautious framing around reliance on government-driven revenue). [12]
- Benchmark (Nov. 2025): Maintained a bullish stance but cut its target to $40 from $50 after Q3 results. [13]
- B. Riley (Nov. 3, 2025): Downgraded Rigetti to Neutral with a $42 target (up from $35), citing risks tied to funding delays and valuation; later reports also referenced further target adjustments. [14]
What the consensus looks like (and why it’s messy)
Depending on the tracker and which analysts are included:
- MarketBeat’s snapshot shows a “Moderate Buy” style consensus with a mean target around the low $30s. [15]
- Other aggregation approaches (FactSet/Fintel-based reporting and some research writeups) show higher averages and higher ceilings—reflecting how recent initiations at elevated targets can swing the mean. [16]
This dispersion is not a rounding error. It’s telling you something real:
Analysts broadly agree quantum is important. They do not agree on who monetizes it—and when. [17]
Rigetti Fundamentals: Tiny Revenue, Big Cash, and a Long Road to Profits
Rigetti is still in the “build it, iterate it, prove it” phase. The latest quarterly financial picture (Q3 2025, reported in November) shows:
- Revenue: about $1.9 million (below consensus expectations cited by multiple sources)
- Operating loss: about $20.5 million
- GAAP net loss: about $201 million, heavily influenced by non-cash accounting items tied to warrants/derivatives in several writeups
- Cash, cash equivalents, and investments: about $558.9 million at quarter-end, rising to ~$600 million after warrant exercises (as of early November)
- No debt cited in earnings coverage and recaps
These are not the numbers of a company being valued on current earnings power. They are the numbers of a company being valued on whether it can reach a technical milestone ahead of competitors—then scale into real demand. [18]
The government-funding wrinkle investors keep circling
In Rigetti’s earnings call transcript, management tied part of the revenue softness to timing and policy uncertainty—specifically referencing the National Quantum Initiative’s expiration and pending reauthorization in Congress as a factor affecting year-over-year revenue. [19]
That’s important because a meaningful slice of Rigetti’s business historically tracks government and research funding cycles, not consumer adoption curves.
The Rigetti Roadmap: 100+ Qubits, Then 150+, Then 1,000+ (and Why Fidelity Matters)
Quantum computing coverage is full of the word “qubits,” but the more important word is usually fidelity—a measure of how reliably operations are performed. More qubits with poor fidelity is like adding more instruments to an orchestra that’s not in tune. It gets louder, not better.
Rigetti’s publicly stated system targets
Rigetti’s roadmap has been updated over time, but several key milestones are consistently highlighted in recent reporting:
- 100+ qubit chiplet-based system targeted by end of 2025, with ~99.5% median two-qubit gate fidelity. [20]
- Longer-term roadmap updates cited in Q3 coverage:
- 150+ qubits by around end of 2026 with ~99.7% median two-qubit gate fidelity
- 1,000+ qubits by around end of 2027 with ~99.8% median two-qubit gate fidelity [21]
The “chiplet” strategy, in human terms
Rigetti is pursuing a modular (“chiplet”) approach—effectively tiling multiple smaller quantum chips into a larger system—rather than trying to manufacture a single giant chip and praying to the semiconductor gods.
A prior SEC exhibit describing Rigetti’s roadmap framed the modular architecture as a path to a 36-qubit system built from four 9-qubit chips, then 100+ qubits thereafter. [22]
Commercial Traction: The Novera On-Prem System Orders
Rigetti’s most concrete “not just R&D” storyline in 2025 has been on-premise system demand:
- Multiple earnings recaps reported ~$5.7 million in purchase orders for two 9-qubit Novera systems, with delivery expected in the first half of 2026. [23]
- Data Center Dynamics added detail: one buyer described as an Asian technology manufacturer, the other a California-based applied physics/AI startup, with both systems intended for internal R&D and benchmarking. [24]
In revenue terms, $5.7M won’t justify an $8B+ market cap by itself. But strategically, on-prem demand is a signal investors obsess over: it hints that quantum hardware is moving from “lab curiosity” toward “infrastructure experiment.”
The NVIDIA NVQLink Angle: Why It Shows Up in So Many RGTI Bull Cases
Late in 2025, quantum hardware companies increasingly positioned themselves as future co-processors attached to classical AI/HPC stacks.
NVIDIA introduced NVQLink, an open platform aimed at tightly integrating quantum processors with accelerated computing (GPUs) to enable real-time workflows like calibration and quantum error correction. NVIDIA’s own materials and press release list Rigetti among participating quantum hardware builders in the NVQLink ecosystem. [25]
Rigetti also announced its support for NVIDIA NVQLink in distributed press release coverage. [26]
For RGTI stock, the “NVQLink narrative” matters because it reframes quantum from a standalone science project into an eventual data-center subsystem—closer to how investors understand scaling businesses.
Insider Selling: A Data Point the Market Watches Closely
Rigetti saw notable insider-trade headlines in December:
- A director sale reported through SEC Form 4 filings showed 150,000 shares sold on Dec. 9, 2025, flagged as executed under a 10b5-1 plan (a pre-arranged trading plan). [27]
Insider sales don’t automatically mean “bad news.” But in momentum-heavy names, they often become part of the online narrative—fair or not.
The Macro and Policy Wildcards: “Government Stake Talks” and Why Quantum Stocks Reacted So Hard
One reason quantum stocks stayed headline-sensitive in 2025 was the sector’s exposure to policy narratives.
Reuters reported in October that quantum computing firms’ shares jumped after a Wall Street Journal report suggested the U.S. government was discussing potential equity stakes in exchange for federal funding—though a Commerce Department official denied negotiations with the companies in question at the time. [28]
Even without follow-through, that episode is a good example of how RGTI can trade on policy optionality—not just product launches.
Valuation Reality Check: The Bear Case Isn’t About Quantum, It’s About Time
If the bull case is “Rigetti reaches quantum advantage and scales,” the bear case is usually “sure… but not on the market’s timeline.”
Reuters described quantum pure plays as extremely richly valued relative to current revenue, noting that Rigetti has traded at eye-watering sales multiples and that consensus expectations didn’t foresee profitability until years out. Reuters also cited forecasts that revenue could rise from single-digit millions toward larger figures later in the decade, but from a very small base—highlighting how much execution is still required. [29]
Trefis likewise breaks down how much of Rigetti’s multi-year stock move can be explained by changes in valuation multiples rather than revenue growth. [30]
This is the core risk: the stock can price in a decade of success long before the income statement shows it.
What to Watch Next for Rigetti Stock Heading Into 2026
With markets reopening on Dec. 26, traders and longer-term investors are likely to focus on a handful of specific catalysts:
- Proof-of-roadmap execution: Any confirmation (or delay) around the 100+ qubit system targeted for end-2025 will matter because it’s a narrative linchpin. [31]
- Revenue conversion from announced orders: Watch whether the Novera purchase orders begin turning into recognized revenue as deliveries approach in 2026. [32]
- Government funding and program timing: Management explicitly pointed to U.S. policy timing as a revenue factor; any clarity on reauthorization cycles could change investor confidence. [33]
- Ecosystem positioning (NVIDIA NVQLink): Investors will watch whether NVQLink becomes a real go-to-market advantage or just a badge in a crowded partner slide. [34]
- Short-interest and sentiment: With short interest still elevated, sharp moves—up or down—can self-reinforce. [35]
Rigetti Computing stock is, at its core, a bet on technical compounding: incremental fidelity improvements, modular scaling, and an ecosystem that eventually treats quantum as a co-processor rather than a novelty. The stock can absolutely soar on that story—especially when the market is in “future tech” mode. It can also crater when timelines slip or liquidity dries up.
References
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