Quantum computing has spent years living in the “someday” corner of the market. As 2025 winds down, it’s suddenly behaving like a “right now” trade — with headlines tying together three forces that don’t usually move in lockstep: big-tech platforms like Amazon, pure-play quantum names like Rigetti, and a fresh wave of Wall Street coverage heading into 2026.
The story taking shape on December 22, 2025 is less about one company and more about a fast-evolving playbook: investors looking for the next computing wave are mixing steady cash-flow giants (Amazon and Alphabet) with high-volatility specialists (Rigetti, IonQ, D-Wave). And the “why” is becoming clearer: quantum is starting to show early commercial traction — but the timeline, execution risk, and valuation math remain punishing.
Below is what today’s news flow says about where this theme is headed — and why 2026 may be the year that separates quantum momentum from quantum durability.
Billionaires reduced Amazon — but the rotation isn’t as simple as it looks
A key spark for the current conversation came from a recent look at hedge-fund positioning: three billionaire hedge fund managers (Israel Englander of Millennium Management, Ken Griffin of Citadel Advisors, and Steven Schonfeld of Schonfeld Strategic Advisors) reduced Amazon holdings in the third quarter while initiating or adding small stakes in Rigetti Computing (RGTI). [1]
The specifics matter because they show risk management, not necessarily a loss of conviction in Amazon:
- Englander reportedly sold 787,900 Amazon shares (reducing his position by 17%) and added 522,100 shares of Rigetti. [2]
- Griffin reportedly sold 1.6 million Amazon shares (reducing his position by 35%) and added 51,700 Rigetti shares. [3]
- Schonfeld reportedly sold 253,700 Amazon shares (reducing his position by 72%) and added 8,900 Rigetti shares. [4]
That’s a striking headline — but it’s also a reminder of how hedge funds often operate: trimming mega-caps after a run, then taking small, asymmetrical shots in high-beta themes.
Importantly, this doesn’t read like “Amazon is over.” In the same discussion, Amazon is framed as a company aggressively using AI across commerce and cloud, including claims that its AI shopping assistant Rufus is on pace for $10 billion in sales and improves purchase likelihood for engaged shoppers, alongside “more than 1,000” generative AI tools used internally for logistics and forecasting. [5]
So why sell at all? The honest answer is that the “Amazon vs. quantum” framing can be misleading. A growing cohort of investors isn’t choosing one — they’re building a barbell: keeping the platform winners and selectively speculating on the companies trying to build the next compute stack.
Berkshire’s “quantum stocks” are Amazon and Alphabet — and that’s a telling signal for 2026
One of the most widely shared quantum-related stories today is a reminder that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has exposure to quantum — just not through the speculative pure plays.
As of today’s coverage, Berkshire has around $7.7 billion invested in two “quantum computing stocks”: Amazon and Alphabet. [6]
That framing matters because it mirrors how many institutions are approaching the sector:
- Amazon participates through AWS. The reporting points to Amazon Braket, AWS’s quantum service for experimenting with quantum algorithms and hardware, and also says Amazon introduced its Ocelot quantum computing chip earlier in 2025, with a claim of supporting quantum error reduction by up to 90%. [7]
- Alphabet participates through Google Quantum AI, cited for major milestones — including a 2019 claim of a computation done in ~200 seconds that would have taken classical supercomputers far longer, and work toward logical qubits (with a prototype referenced in 2023). [8]
The implication for 2026 is straightforward: if quantum’s commercialization takes longer than markets hope, Amazon/Alphabet can still compound on their core businesses. If quantum accelerates faster than expected, the giants are positioned to benefit — potentially without the same existential funding risk smaller players face.
Rigetti’s “mixed signals”: real orders, real roadmaps, and real execution pressure
Rigetti sits at the center of your three linked narratives because it embodies the quantum market’s current tension: credible technology direction + early commercialization + volatile valuation.
Novera orders: the most concrete demand signal in today’s storyline
Rigetti’s Novera system keeps coming up for one reason: it’s a tangible product sale in an industry that often talks more about research than purchase orders.
Rigetti says it secured approximately $5.7 million in purchase orders for two 9‑qubit Novera quantum computing systems, with delivery expected in the first half of 2026. The company also notes the systems are upgradeable, giving customers an expansion path as their needs grow. [9]
From a commercialization standpoint, that “upgradeable” point is quietly important: it reframes early quantum deployments as long-lived platforms rather than one-off science projects.
What Novera actually is (and why buyers care)
Rigetti positions Novera as a 9‑qubit QPU designed to be accessible for hands-on R&D, based on its Ankaa-class architecture and built with a tunable-coupler approach. The Novera product information also highlights performance metrics (including reported median gate fidelities) and its 3×3 layout concept. [10]
In plain English: Novera is trying to make quantum experimentation more “ownable” — something you can run without competing for shared lab time, and something that can plug into research workflows as the ecosystem matures.
Wall Street’s 2026 Rigetti view: optimism — with explicit caveats
As of today, the bigger change around Rigetti isn’t just product progress — it’s that Wall Street is attaching fresh numbers to the story.
According to TipRanks’ reporting on what analysts expect for Rigetti in 2026, the stock has been up 56% year-to-date (despite a pullback over the last month), and the Street’s posture is described as “cautiously optimistic.” [11]
Key takeaways from the analyst narrative:
- Roadmap targets: Rigetti is described as targeting a 150+ qubit system by around end of 2026, and a 1,000+ qubit system by around end of 2027. [12]
- Nvidia ecosystem tie-in: the company highlights a partnership supporting NVIDIA NVQLink, described as an open platform for AI supercomputer–quantum integration. [13]
- Initiations and targets:
- Consensus snapshot: TipRanks describes a Moderate Buy consensus, with an average price target of $39.75 (implying significant upside from the referenced level at the time). [17]
This is exactly the kind of coverage shift that can keep momentum alive into 2026 — because it gives traders and investors a shared set of “goalposts.”
But those same notes also underline the key risk: delivery consistency. After prior roadmap delays (as referenced in the Jefferies view), the burden of proof is no longer just “build cool tech.” It’s “hit the timeline, repeatedly.”
Today’s broader quantum-stock headline: at least 60% upside forecasts — and diverging tech bets
Quantum isn’t a one-stock story, and today’s coverage shows analysts treating 2026 as a multi-horse race.
A separate TipRanks roundup published today argues that IonQ (IONQ), Rigetti (RGTI), and D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) are positioned for “stellar growth” in 2026, with Wall Street analysts projecting a minimum of 60% upside over the next 12 months for these pure plays — and “some even forecasting more than 100% growth.” [18]
It also lays out why comparisons are messy: these companies are not building the same kind of quantum computer.
- IonQ: trapped-ion approach, described as operating at room temperature; cited for a roadmap targeting a 256-qubit system by 2026 and momentum in networking/sensing. [19]
- Rigetti: superconducting qubits requiring extreme cooling. [20]
- D-Wave: quantum annealing using superconducting qubits, optimized for certain optimization problems. [21]
This matters for SEO-minded investors because it’s where 2026 debates will concentrate: which modality scales, which delivers commercial value first, and which has the cleanest path to revenue that doesn’t depend on perpetual hype.
The “mixed signals” investors keep circling: traction vs. valuation
Even the bullish coverage tends to rhyme with a warning: quantum investing is still early — and the price you pay matters.
The earlier hedge-fund piece notes that Rigetti has surged roughly 3,050% since January 2023, while arguing that widely useful fault-tolerant quantum systems may be a decade or two away, potentially requiring 10,000 to 1 million physical qubits to become broadly useful. [22]
It also points to a mismatch between fundamentals and valuation — including a discussion of low revenue relative to losses, heavy dilution, and a very high price-to-sales multiple at the time referenced. [23]
That’s the core “mixed signal” dynamic investors are trying to trade around heading into 2026:
- Bull case: real orders (Novera), clearer roadmaps (150+ qubits), partnerships (Nvidia ecosystem), new analyst coverage.
- Bear case: error correction is brutally hard, revenue visibility is limited, and valuations can front-run reality for long stretches — then snap back violently.
Why December 22 matters: the quantum “investment narrative” is maturing, not settling
If you zoom out, today’s news flow is less about a single catalyst and more about quantum crossing a threshold:
- Institutions and analysts are actively covering the space, assigning targets, and mapping 2026 milestones. [24]
- Big tech is building quantum as part of a broader compute strategy (AWS Braket, Google Quantum AI), offering a different risk profile than pure-play stocks. [25]
- Industry media is framing 2025 as a pivotal business year for quantum, reflecting broader ecosystem movement and deal flow. [26]
That combination is exactly how themes graduate from niche speculation into mainstream capital rotation — even if the underlying technology is still years from its most valuable applications.
What to watch in 2026: the checkpoints that could move Amazon, Rigetti, and quantum stocks
If you’re trying to understand what could actually change the narrative in 2026 (beyond day-to-day volatility), these are the clearest checkpoints implied by today’s coverage:
- Rigetti delivery performance
- Commercial mix vs. government dependence
- Analysts explicitly flag reliance on government business as a visibility issue. More diversified customer wins would matter. [29]
- Ecosystem integration
- Partnerships aimed at hybrid AI–quantum workflows (like NVQLink support) could shape adoption pathways. [30]
- Big-tech quantum progress that “escapes the lab”
- For Amazon and Alphabet, quantum progress that translates into developer adoption, tooling, and credible error reduction could quietly compound — even if it doesn’t show up as a standalone revenue line immediately. [31]
Bottom line
The most important insight from today’s quantum coverage is that the market is no longer treating quantum as a single bet. It’s increasingly a spectrum:
- Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet (GOOG/GOOGL) as quantum exposure inside dominant platforms, with AI and cloud as the near-term engines. [32]
- Rigetti (RGTI) as the high-risk, high-volatility pure play — now supported by real purchase orders and a more explicit 2026 roadmap, but still judged by execution and valuation. [33]
- IonQ (IONQ) and D-Wave (QBTS) as alternative pure-play routes with very different technical approaches and analyst narratives going into 2026. [34]
For Google News and Discover readers, the practical takeaway is this: 2026 is shaping up to be a milestone year for quantum investing not because the technology is “done,” but because the market is starting to demand measurable progress — and is pricing that expectation in real time.
References
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