New York, Jan 15, 2026, 19:54 EST — After-hours.
- D-Wave shares fell 4.7% to $28.72 in after-hours trading.
- SEC filings showed stock sales by CEO Alan Baratz, CFO John Markovich and legal chief Diane Nguyen, with several tied to tax withholding or a preset plan.
- Traders are watching the Quantum Circuits deal timeline and D-Wave’s Qubits 2026 conference later this month.
Shares of D-Wave Quantum Inc fell 4.7% to $28.72 in after-hours trading on Thursday after a filing showed Chief Executive Alan Baratz sold 35,013 shares. The stock ranged from $31.25 to $28.65 during the session, and about 43.7 million shares changed hands. (SEC)
The sales are landing on a jumpy tape for quantum-computing names, where price swings can outrun the news. Traders tend to scan insider filings for clues on whether executives are taking money off the table, or just cleaning up tax bills.
That matters now because D-Wave is in the middle of a big shift in its product story and its balance sheet. In an 8-K filing, the company said it signed a merger agreement to buy Quantum Circuits for $550 million — $300 million in stock and $250 million in cash — with the share count based on a 10-day volume-weighted average price, subject to a collar, and a long list of closing conditions. (SEC)
A separate Form 4 showed Chief Financial Officer John Markovich sold 9,179 shares on Jan. 14 at a weighted average price of $28.0623. The filing said the sale was required to cover tax withholding tied to vesting restricted stock units — a “sell-to-cover” transaction — and not a discretionary trade. (SEC)
Another Form 4 showed Diane Nguyen, D-Wave’s executive vice president and chief legal officer, sold 20,000 shares on Jan. 13 at a weighted average price of $28.8579 under a Rule 10b5-1 plan — a preset trading plan — adopted on Aug. 14, 2025. The filing also showed a 4,519-share sale on Jan. 14 that it described as another sell-to-cover for tax withholding. (SEC)
D-Wave’s move came with other listed quantum-computing stocks lower in late trade. IonQ was down 6.5%, Rigetti Computing slipped 3.9%, and Quantum Computing Inc fell 2.5%.
D-Wave has pitched the Quantum Circuits deal as a way to broaden beyond quantum annealing — a method often used for optimization problems — into “gate-model” systems, the style more commonly associated with general-purpose quantum computing. “It’s a pivotal milestone,” Baratz said in the company’s announcement, while Quantum Circuits co-founder Rob Schoelkopf said “fault-tolerant error-corrected quantum computing is within our reach.” (D-Wave Quantum)
Earlier this month, D-Wave also disclosed what it called a gate-model milestone: a demonstration of scalable on-chip cryogenic control of qubits, aimed at reducing wiring needs without degrading fidelity, according to an 8-K filing. (SEC)
But the insider tape cuts both ways. Even when sales are automatic or plan-based, they can weigh on sentiment in a stock that already trades in big, fast bursts — and any delay in the Quantum Circuits closing would give short-term traders another reason to lean on it.
The next hard date is Jan. 27-28, when D-Wave holds its Qubits 2026 conference in Boca Raton, Florida. Investors will look for deal updates, product timelines, and any fresh disclosures that hit the SEC feed. (D-Wave Quantum)
