NEW YORK, March 23, 2026, 12:10 PM EDT
- IonQ climbed roughly 4% by midday Monday, while QTUM advanced over 2%. Rigetti and D-Wave joined the move higher.
- IonQ’s 2025 revenue landed at $130 million, dwarfing D-Wave’s $24.6 million and Rigetti’s $7.1 million.
- QTUM’s assets have topped $3.5 billion, yet the fund’s exposure to four U.S. pure-play quantum stocks comes in at only 2.92%.
Quantum-computing stocks saw gains Monday—IonQ advanced roughly 4%, while Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum also traded higher. By midday in New York, the Defiance Quantum ETF had added over 2%. Still, recent earnings reports suggest that significant revenue remains largely limited to a handful of players.
The split’s getting attention as investor flows chase the quantum theme ahead of mainstream takeup. Defiance reported QTUM crossed $3.5 billion in assets last month. Over in public markets, IonQ became the first quantum pure-play to hit $100 million in annual GAAP revenue—a milestone both D-Wave and Rigetti missed by a wide margin, booking $24.6 million and $7.1 million respectively for 2025.
IonQ stands out as the most straightforward growth play here. Revenue in 2025 soared 202% to $130 million, with commercial clients making up over 60% of that figure. Looking ahead, the company projects $225 million to $245 million in 2026 sales. “Strategic and financial inflection point”—that’s how CEO Niccolo de Masi described 2025. IonQ Investors
Still, IonQ’s story is all about the long runway. The company logged a net loss of $510.4 million for 2025, and as of Monday, its $18.3 billion valuation came in at over 140 times last year’s revenue. That’s before anyone knows if management’s $1.8 billion SkyWater agreement will actually give it the manufacturing muscle they’re aiming for.
D-Wave’s numbers are running hot. The company reported 2025 revenue up 179% to $24.6 million. By Feb. 25, first-quarter-to-date 2026 bookings were already past $32.8 million. CEO Alan Baratz put it plainly: D-Wave is heading into 2026 with “exceptional momentum.” D-Wave
Rigetti posted just $7.1 million in revenue for 2025. Still, Chief Executive Subodh Kulkarni pointed to growing interest from governments and research outfits—highlighting an $8.4 million order from India’s C-DAC for a 108-qubit system. For reference, a qubit is the basic unit of quantum information.
QTUM’s structure sheds some light on its wider appeal, outpacing the interest typically seen in single-stock bets. As of March 23, Nvidia and Alphabet each made up roughly 1.19% of the portfolio. IonQ, D-Wave, Rigetti, and Quantum Computing Inc—taken together—represented only 2.92% of assets.
QTUM isn’t strictly a quantum play—it’s more of a catch-all covering semis, software, and a spread of advanced computing names. Back in February, Defiance reported the ETF had topped $3.5 billion in assets. As of Feb. 28, its website showed a 49.26% one-year market-price return.
Government backing is propping up the sector, too. Last week, Britain pledged as much as 2 billion pounds for quantum technologies, with procurement programs aimed at pushing commercial-scale systems out of labs and into real-world domestic use.
Public markets keep betting on potential rather than profits. Steve Sosnick at Interactive Brokers summed it up: it’s about “the right price to pay for a piece of the future.” Defiance CIO Sylvia Jablonski points to the appeal—”science fiction has moved” into the business world. That disconnect is still the sector’s main play. Reuters
