Rigetti Computing, Inc. (NASDAQ: RGTI) is back in the spotlight on Monday, December 22, 2025, as quantum-computing stocks regain momentum. RGTI traded around $27 in Monday’s session, up roughly 14% on the day—another reminder that quantum “pure plays” can move fast in both directions. [1]
The renewed attention isn’t coming from a single headline. Instead, it’s being driven by a dense cluster of fresh stock-focused commentary published today—including a Zacks deep dive into estimates and valuation, a TipRanks roundup of what Wall Street expects for 2026, and a Motley Fool/Nasdaq comparison of Rigetti versus IonQ. [2]
Below is a detailed roundup of the major RGTI stock news, forecasts, and analyses circulating on Dec. 22, 2025, plus the business fundamentals and near-term catalysts investors are watching heading into 2026.
What’s happening with RGTI stock on Dec. 22, 2025
RGTI’s move on Monday fits a pattern that’s defined quantum stocks through much of 2025: sharp bursts of buying tied to analyst coverage, sector sentiment, and options-driven momentum, followed by equally fast pullbacks when the market refocuses on revenue and execution risk. [3]
While intraday prints vary across data sources, multiple market trackers and feeds showed RGTI solidly higher in Monday trading, with quotes hovering in the mid-to-high $20s. [4]
Today’s key RGTI coverage: the main themes investors are digesting
1) Zacks: “Investor attention” is rising—earnings estimates, revenue trajectory, and valuation matter next
A Zacks commentary published Dec. 22 frames Rigetti as a “trending” stock and emphasizes the factors that tend to drive near-term performance once buzz fades: earnings estimate revisions, revenue expectations, and valuation. [5]
Highlights from the Zacks analysis include:
- A forecast that Rigetti will post a quarterly loss (Zacks consensus cited in the piece), with recent estimate changes tracked over the last 30 days. [6]
- Revenue expectations that remain small in absolute dollars—a key point, because with early-stage quantum hardware companies, price moves often outrun the fundamentals. [7]
- A Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and a Value Style Score of “F”, signaling that the stock screens as expensive on Zacks’ valuation framework. [8]
The takeaway: even when quantum stocks rally, Zacks is effectively reminding investors that estimate direction and valuation gravity still apply—especially into 2026.
2) TipRanks: “What Wall Street expects in 2026” centers on price targets and the superconducting thesis
A TipRanks piece published Dec. 22 compiles analyst expectations for 2026 and points to coverage that remains constructive on the long-term quantum hardware opportunity—while acknowledging big uncertainty about timing. [9]
One specific datapoint emphasized in today’s TipRanks coverage is recent Wedbush initiation with a $35 price target (as summarized by TipRanks). [10]
For investors trying to translate “quantum promise” into a more conventional stock framework, the most watchable signal is the evolving target-price range. MarketWatch’s published analyst snapshot for Rigetti showed an average target price around $39.78 (with 10 ratings listed). [11]
With RGTI trading around ~$27 during Monday’s run-up, that average target implies meaningful upside if Rigetti executes—but targets in early-stage categories can also swing dramatically with sentiment. [12]
3) Motley Fool via Nasdaq: Rigetti vs. IonQ—speed versus error rates, plus the “ecosystem race”
A Motley Fool analysis carried by Nasdaq on Dec. 22 compares Rigetti with IonQ and frames their technical approaches in a way general-market investors can latch onto:
- Rigetti: superconducting qubits (fast operations), with ongoing work to improve fidelity and scale via a chiplet-based approach. [13]
- IonQ: trapped-ion approach (higher stability/accuracy), plus a strategy aimed at building a broader “ecosystem.” [14]
The same piece also notes Rigetti’s linkages to major platforms and buyers—specifically pointing to its NVIDIA-related integration narrative and government ties—while still characterizing the sector as early and milestone-driven rather than revenue-driven. [15]
This comparison matters for RGTI stock because it highlights the core investment question heading into 2026: Does the market reward faster hardware scaling (Rigetti’s pitch), or lower-error architectures and ecosystem breadth (IonQ’s pitch)? [16]
4) Investor’s Business Daily: Wall Street coverage expands—Rigetti gets “mixed reviews” versus peers
An Investor’s Business Daily report dated Dec. 22 zooms out to the broader quantum group and highlights how quickly Wall Street coverage has expanded in 2025—listing major firms that initiated coverage or published in-depth reports. [17]
IBD’s framing is especially relevant for RGTI because it places Rigetti in the “not the favorite, but still on the map” lane:
- It describes IonQ and D-Wave as the names with the strongest buy-rating momentum, while Rigetti receives more mixed analyst views. [18]
- It also underscores the sector’s volatility and the long-horizon nature of the thesis, citing forecasts for quantum market growth through 2030. [19]
For RGTI stock, the practical impact of this kind of coverage is straightforward: as more institutions publish notes, retail-heavy price discovery gets amplified—both up and down.
5) Simply Wall St headline in today’s feeds: Novera orders + “mixed signals”
A Simply Wall St article distributed in today’s market-news feeds (timestamped Dec. 22) points back to Rigetti’s Novera purchase orders and highlights “mixed signals,” including the push-pull between commercial traction and the realities of near-term financial performance. [20]
Even without treating any single aggregator commentary as decisive, the repeated appearance of the same theme across multiple outlets is notable: Rigetti’s “real-world” traction is increasingly framed around tangible system sales and partnerships, not just lab milestones. [21]
The fundamentals investors keep coming back to: tiny revenue, huge cash cushion, ambitious roadmap
To understand why RGTI can jump double digits on a Monday without a brand-new earnings report, it helps to look at what the company itself last reported—and what those results signal about “runway.”
In its Q3 2025 financial release (covering the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2025), Rigetti reported:
- Revenue:$1.9 million
- Operating loss:$20.5 million
- GAAP net loss:$201.0 million (and a much smaller non-GAAP net loss cited in the same release)
- Cash, cash equivalents, and available-for-sale investments:$558.9 million as of Sept. 30, 2025, rising to roughly $600 million as of Nov. 6, 2025 (including warrant exercise proceeds) [22]
This combination—very small revenue but very large cash reserves—is a major reason analysts can justify long time horizons here. Rigetti is not being valued like a normal software company; it’s being valued like a high-risk R&D platform with a long runway. [23]
The roadmap: what Rigetti says it aims to deliver by end of 2025, 2026, and 2027
Rigetti’s stock narrative is tightly coupled to its hardware roadmap—because in quantum, milestones are the “product” long before profits arrive.
From the company’s Q3 2025 release:
- Rigetti said it remains on track to deliver a 100+ qubit chiplet-based system with an anticipated 99.5% median two-qubit gate fidelity by end of 2025. [24]
- It expects to deploy a 150+ qubit system by around end of 2026 with 99.7% median two-qubit gate fidelity, and a 1,000+ qubit system by around end of 2027 with 99.8% median two-qubit gate fidelity. [25]
Those are aggressive targets—especially the fidelity improvements. In plain English, scaling qubits is not the whole game; scaling reliable qubits is the game.
Rigetti also highlighted support for NVIDIA NVQLink (aimed at tighter quantum/AI supercomputer integration) as part of its hybrid-computing strategy. [26]
Commercial traction: Novera orders, delivery timelines, and why “on-prem” matters
A key element of Rigetti’s 2025 story is that it has been able to book purchase orders for on-premises systems—an important psychological shift for investors who worry quantum is perpetually “five years away.”
Rigetti’s Q3 release reiterated that in September 2025 it secured approximately $5.7 million in purchase orders for two 9-qubit Novera systems, with delivery expected in the first half of 2026. [27]
Why this matters for RGTI stock:
- On-prem sales are still small in dollars, but they suggest institutional and enterprise buyers want direct access to hardware for research, benchmarking, and error-correction work. [28]
- Delivery timelines (first half of 2026) create a concrete “watch window” where investors will look for follow-on orders, upgrades, and additional deployments. [29]
The debate under the rally: catalysts versus constraints
Bull-case catalysts investors cite heading into 2026
Across the day’s coverage, the optimistic angle tends to cluster around:
- Roadmap execution (100+ qubits, then 150+ and beyond) [30]
- Hybrid integration narratives (especially anything tied to NVIDIA ecosystems) [31]
- Growing analyst coverage and expanding institutional “permission” to talk about the sector [32]
- High volatility itself, which can attract momentum traders and options-driven flows [33]
The recurring constraints (the reasons analysts still call it mixed)
The caution flags are also consistent:
- Valuation tension: Zacks explicitly flags Rigetti as expensive on its value framework. [34]
- Revenue scale: even the company’s own reported revenue remains extremely small versus the market’s expectations for what quantum could become. [35]
- Execution and adoption timing: IBD emphasizes uncertainty about mainstream adoption and execution hurdles, plus competition from big tech incumbents. [36]
In other words, RGTI is not trading like a company with stable, compounding cash flow. It’s trading like a public-market proxy for a difficult engineering race.
What to watch next for Rigetti stock (RGTI) as 2026 approaches
If you’re tracking RGTI as a news-and-catalyst story, the next checkpoints that matter most—based on company guidance and today’s analyst framing—are:
- End-of-2025 milestone execution: updates around the 100+ qubit chiplet-based system and fidelity targets. [37]
- On-prem delivery follow-through: progress toward delivering the two Novera systems in H1 2026, and whether that expands into additional orders. [38]
- Coverage evolution: whether “mixed reviews” shift toward more uniform Buy ratings, or whether valuation concerns dominate as targets get refreshed. [39]
- Volatility regime: quantum stocks have been unusually sensitive to options activity and sentiment swings. [40]
Bottom line
On Dec. 22, 2025, Rigetti’s stock jump is being fueled by a familiar quantum cocktail: fresh analyst discussion, sector momentum, and a milestone-driven narrative—with investors weighing an ambitious hardware roadmap and strong cash runway against the hard reality of small revenue and high uncertainty. [41]
References
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