Rigetti Computing, Inc. (NASDAQ: RGTI) is back in the spotlight today as its hyper‑volatile stock trades modestly lower while fresh analyst commentary, ETF launches and eye‑catching distribution headlines keep quantum computing firmly on traders’ screens.
RGTI stock price today: small red day after a huge year
As of early afternoon on November 26, 2025, Rigetti shares are trading around $25–26, down roughly 1–2% on the day after opening near $26.4 and moving between roughly $25.3 and $26.5. [1]
Even with today’s dip, the context is extreme:
- Over the last 12 months, RGTI has delivered around a 950–1,000% gain, according to historical data from Investing.com. [2]
- The 52‑week range runs from about $2.30 to just over $58, underlining just how violent the 2025 rally has been. [3]
In other words, today’s seemingly mild move sits on top of one of the biggest single‑year runs of any U.S. listed tech stock.
What’s new today (26 November 2025)?
Several fresh pieces of coverage dropped today that directly mention or focus on Rigetti. Here are the key ones investors are watching.
1. Simply Wall St: “rich valuation” after earnings miss
A new Simply Wall St note titled “Rigetti Computing (RGTI): Evaluating Valuation Following Losses, Revenue Misses, and Key Quantum Partnerships” was published on November 26, 2025. [4]
Key points from that analysis:
- Rigetti’s Q3 2025 results showed steep net losses and lower‑than‑expected revenue, reviving concerns about how long the company can operate before meaningful commercialization.
- The stock is flagged as expensive on fundamentals, trading at about 23x price‑to‑book, compared with roughly 3–6x for typical U.S. semiconductor peers. [5]
- Despite a one‑month slide of more than 30%, Simply Wall St notes that Rigetti’s one‑year total shareholder return is still above 1,000%, a reminder of how stretched sentiment became during the rally. [6]
Their punchline: Rigetti’s partnerships and technology roadmap are real, but its valuation assumes a lot of future success for a business that is still tiny in revenue terms and deeply unprofitable.
2. Zacks: IonQ vs Rigetti – which quantum bet looks stronger?
Zacks Investment Research released a comparative piece today, “IONQ or Rigetti: Which is the Better Quantum Bet as 2025 Nears End?” (syndicated via Finviz) dated November 26, 2025. [7]
Highlights on the Rigetti side:
- Roadmap:
- 100+ qubit, chiplet‑based system with ~99.5% median two‑qubit gate fidelity targeted by the end of 2025.
- 150+ qubit system in 2026 and a 1,000+ qubit system by 2027, with fidelity goals up to ~99.8%. [8]
- Recent milestones:
- A 36‑qubit multi‑chip system debuted earlier in 2025, with about a 2× reduction in two‑qubit gate error versus prior generations. [9]
- Two Novera™ 9‑qubit systems sold via purchase orders totaling $5.7 million, scheduled for delivery in early 2026. [10]
- A $5.8 million, three‑year contract with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to advance superconducting quantum networking. [11]
- Performance vs peers: Over the last three months, Zacks notes that Rigetti shares are up about 69%, versus roughly 14% for IonQ and about 6% for the S&P 500. [12]
Zacks concludes that:
- IonQ currently has stronger revenue momentum and a more diversified commercial footprint.
- Rigetti offers more “high‑beta” upside if it executes on its technology roadmap and continues to improve earnings trends, but both stocks carry a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), underscoring the speculative nature of the trade. [13]
3. Motley Fool: billionaires prefer Alphabet to pure‑play quantum names
In a fresh article cross‑posted on Nasdaq and elsewhere, The Motley Fool’s Sean Williams looks at billionaire 13F filings in “Billionaires Have a Clear Favorite Quantum Computing Stock (and It’s Not IonQ, Rigetti Computing, or D-Wave Quantum)”, dated November 26, 2025. [14]
Key takeaways for RGTI:
- The article highlights that high‑profile billionaires have heavily favored Alphabet (Google) as their “quantum computing” exposure rather than speculative pure plays like Rigetti, IonQ, or D‑Wave.
- It notes that pure‑play quantum names have posted triple‑ and quadruple‑digit returns over the last year, with valuations (price‑to‑sales multiples) that would have looked extreme even at the height of the dot‑com bubble. Rigetti is singled out as one of the stocks whose price has run far ahead of current revenue. [15]
- The message is not that quantum computing is fake, but that risk‑tolerant retail investors may be driving a bubble in a handful of small‑cap names, while large institutions prefer diversified tech giants with quantum projects inside much larger businesses.
This fits neatly with the cautionary tone coming from several other recent pieces that warn of “bubble‑like” pricing across quantum pure plays.
4. TechStock² recap: insider selling, volatility and ETF flows
While it focuses on November 25 trading but was published today, a long TechStock²/TS² piece titled “Rigetti Computing (RGTI) Stock on November 25, 2025: Volatile Pullback as Insider Selling, NQI Funding and New ETF Collide” remains highly relevant to today’s session. TechStock²+1
The article pulls together several recent developments:
- Price action: RGTI closed at $26.57 on November 24, then gapped down to around $25.49 on November 25 and traded lower on heavy volume. TechStock²+1
- Insider selling: MarketBeat and TipRanks data cited in the piece show roughly 405,900 shares sold by insiders over the last 90 days, worth almost $9.6 million, including fresh sales from the CFO and CTO around the $26 level. TechStock²+1
- Analyst stance: The article notes a “Moderate Buy” consensus from MarketBeat (majority Buy ratings, one Hold, one Sell) with an average price target around the mid‑$20s, close to where the stock trades now. TechStock²
- Government funding: TS² also highlights that renewed U.S. National Quantum Initiative (NQI) funding is viewed as a potential tailwind for Rigetti’s government contract pipeline, even as near‑term revenue remains lumpy. TechStock²+1
The overall tone: fundamentals are mixed, but flows, leverage and options activity are playing a huge role in how RGTI trades day‑to‑day.
5. GraniteShares & RGYY: new ETF and today’s distribution headline
While not about Rigetti’s operations directly, ETF news around RGTI is another story investors are watching this week — and it continued today.
- On November 25, GraniteShares issued a GlobeNewswire release announcing two new YieldBOOST™ ETFs tied to quantum names:
- RGYY – GraniteShares YieldBOOST RGTI ETF, linked to Rigetti.
- QBY – GraniteShares YieldBOOST QBTS ETF, linked to D‑Wave. [16]
- RGYY is designed to generate income by selling options on leveraged ETFs that track 2x daily moves in RGTI, effectively turning RGTI’s volatility into an options‑premium income strategy. [17]
Today (Nov 26), GraniteShares followed up with a separate press release announcing weekly distributions for its YieldBOOST lineup, including RGYY. For RGYY, the table shows: [18]
- A weekly distribution of $0.66223 per share,
- An indicative annualized distribution rate above 140% (a number that reflects the fund’s options structure rather than a guaranteed yield).
For RGTI shareholders, the key takeaway is not the ETF’s yield per se, but that yet another derivatives product now amplifies trading activity around the stock, on top of leveraged long and short RGTI ETFs that already exist.
Earnings backdrop: Q3 2025 numbers still driving the debate
Behind all the headlines, Rigetti’s recent earnings remain the core fundamental story.
According to the company’s Q3 2025 earnings materials and independent summaries (TipRanks, Investing.com, Simply Wall St): [19]
- Revenue: About $1.9–1.95 million for Q3 2025, down from roughly $2.4 million in the prior‑year quarter and below analyst expectations of around $2.2 million.
- Margins: Gross margin fell sharply from ~51% to ~21% year‑over‑year, reflecting higher costs and an R&D‑heavy model. [20]
- Losses:
- Operating loss of roughly $20.5 million.
- GAAP net loss near $201 million, inflated by non‑cash warrant and valuation items. TechStock²+1
- On a non‑GAAP basis, EPS was about –$0.03, slightly better than the –$0.04 to –$0.05 many analysts expected. [21]
- Balance sheet:
- Around $558.9 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments at September 30.
- Approximately $600 million in cash as of early November after warrant exercises.
- No debt on the balance sheet. [22]
Those numbers underscore the paradox that keeps turning up in today’s commentary:
Very small revenue, very large losses, but a big cash pile and an ambitious roadmap.
That’s what makes Rigetti feel less like a traditional chip company and more like a venture‑style bet that just happens to trade on the Nasdaq.
How overvalued is RGTI? Views from different frameworks
Several recent analyses, including today’s Simply Wall St piece and prior work from The Motley Fool and others, converge on a similar theme: Rigetti’s valuation is extreme by conventional metrics. [23]
A few data points:
- Price‑to‑book (~23x): Far above both semiconductor peers (roughly 3–6x) and broader equity markets. [24]
- Price‑to‑sales (>1,000x at prior peaks): Earlier in the rally, some analysts estimated RGTI was trading at well over 1,000× revenue, compared with high‑growth software or chip names that might trade at 10–30×. TechStock²+1
- 1‑year return (≈900–1,000%): Even after the pullback from October highs near the $50s, the stock is still up nearly tenfold year‑on‑year. [25]
This is why one camp — including some Seeking Alpha contributors and multiple Motley Fool writers — has described RGTI as “massively overvalued” or as a potential bubble candidate, particularly after the company’s CEO previously sold millions of dollars’ worth of stock into the rally. [26]
At the same time, the bull camp argues that quantum computing is a winner‑takes‑most market, that Rigetti’s technology is improving quickly, and that the company’s large cash balance buys it enough runway to try to reach “quantum advantage” in the second half of the decade. [27]
Analyst sentiment: from “Sell it” to “Could double from here”
Analyst and commentator opinion is all over the map:
- Downgrades & caution:
- A recent Barron’s‑covered move from B. Riley Securities cut Rigetti from Buy to Neutral even while raising the price target to about $42, stressing that much of the long‑term addressable market might already be priced in. [28]
- Several Motley Fool and Nasdaq‑syndicated pieces over the last month have recommended selling or avoiding Rigetti, citing the risk of a 20–50% drawdown if sentiment turns. [29]
- Still bullish (but nervous):
- StockAnalysis and MarketBeat both show a Buy‑leaning consensus, with many targets in the mid‑$20s to low‑$30s, suggesting limited upside from current prices unless analysts raise their numbers again. [30]
- TipRanks aggregates a “Moderate Buy” rating based on seven analysts, with an average target around $40.6, implying substantial upside from today’s mid‑$20s levels if Rigetti executes. [31]
- Short sellers & skeptics:
- Short interest remains elevated, and high‑profile short sellers have called out quantum pure plays as poster children for speculative excess in 2025. [32]
Net result: consensus is not really consensus — opinions range from “this could halve” to “this could still double,” which is exactly what you’d expect from a high‑risk, high‑reward frontier‑tech stock.
What today’s move really means for investors
Putting all of this together, today’s modest decline in RGTI around the mid‑$20s looks less like a dramatic turning point and more like another step in a noisy consolidation after a parabolic run:
- Fundamentals show:
- Very early revenue traction,
- Heavy ongoing investment,
- Big contracts in absolute terms but still small versus the valuation,
- Plenty of cash and no debt — but raised via heavy dilution. [33]
- Sentiment is split between:
- Bulls focused on the roadmap (100+ / 150+ / 1,000+ qubits, NVIDIA partnership, defense and academic collaborations), and
- Bears focused on bubble‑like valuations, insider selling and shrinking revenue. [34]
- Market structure is increasingly complex:
- Leveraged long and short ETFs on RGTI,
- The new YieldBOOST™ RGYY ETF selling options on a 2x RGTI product,
- Active options trading and significant short interest — all of which can magnify daily swings independently of fundamentals. [35]
For traders, that means volatility is the feature, not a bug. For long‑term investors, it means any thesis on Rigetti needs to be built less on short‑term price action and more on:
- Whether the company truly can hit its technical milestones on time. [36]
- Whether those milestones translate into repeatable commercial revenue, not just one‑off contracts.
- How much dilution might be required along the way.
Important note
This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Quantum computing stocks like Rigetti are highly speculative, extremely volatile and may not be suitable for most investors. Always do your own research and consider seeking independent financial advice before making investment decisions.
References
1. www.investing.com, 2. www.investing.com, 3. www.investing.com, 4. simplywall.st, 5. simplywall.st, 6. simplywall.st, 7. finviz.com, 8. finviz.com, 9. finviz.com, 10. finviz.com, 11. finviz.com, 12. finviz.com, 13. finviz.com, 14. finviz.com, 15. finviz.com, 16. www.globenewswire.com, 17. graniteshares.com, 18. www.globenewswire.com, 19. www.tipranks.com, 20. www.tipranks.com, 21. www.tipranks.com, 22. www.tipranks.com, 23. simplywall.st, 24. simplywall.st, 25. www.investing.com, 26. finance.yahoo.com, 27. www.tipranks.com, 28. www.reuters.com, 29. www.nasdaq.com, 30. stockanalysis.com, 31. www.tipranks.com, 32. www.reuters.com, 33. www.tipranks.com, 34. finviz.com, 35. www.globenewswire.com, 36. finviz.com
