NEW YORK, December 30, 2025, 21:48 ET — Market closed
- Rigetti shares closed up 0.7% at $22.41, after trading between $22.08 and $22.95.
- Quantum-computing stocks have swung sharply into the final week of the year amid profit-taking and thin holiday liquidity.
- Investors are watching Rigetti’s end-2025 hardware milestone and the next earnings report date.
Rigetti Computing, Inc. shares closed up 0.7% at $22.41 on Tuesday. About 24.9 million shares changed hands, a level traders flagged as elevated for the stock.
The move mattered because quantum-computing “pure plays” have been a fast-money trade in late December, with sharp rallies followed by quick pullbacks as liquidity thins. Investors.com said the group saw a brief surge on Dec. 22 before a three-day sell-off tied to profit-taking and lighter institutional activity during the holidays. 1
Fresh coverage has kept the sector on traders’ screens even as questions linger over timing for commercial adoption. Barron’s said Jefferies rated Rigetti “Hold” on concerns about reliance on government contracts, noting that 90% of its 2024 revenue came from such work. 2
A Tuesday analysis on Nasdaq.com by Zacks Investment Research compared Rigetti with larger peer IonQ and pointed to the company’s near-term execution risk. “Rigetti remained focused on execution within superconducting quantum hardware,” Zacks writer Urmimala Biswas said, while noting the company’s end-2025 goal for a 100+ qubit “chiplet” system—multiple smaller chips packaged together to scale performance—and a cash position of about $600 million with no debt. Zacks also said estimates for Rigetti’s 2026 loss widened to 18 cents a share from 16 cents over the past month and put the stock’s price-to-sales multiple at roughly 220 times. 3
Quantum computers use “qubits,” or quantum bits, that can represent multiple states at once, which can help with certain specialized calculations. The hard part is keeping error rates low; “gate fidelity” is a measure of how often quantum logic operations run correctly.
Rigetti trades alongside a small group of U.S.-listed quantum names, including IonQ and D-Wave Quantum, and the stocks often move as a basket on sector headlines. That correlation can amplify swings when the tape is thin.
Investors are focused on whether Rigetti can turn pilots into repeatable cloud revenue—often described as quantum computing as a service—and reduce dependence on research and government programs that can make results lumpy. They are also watching for any update on system performance targets as the company pushes toward larger systems in 2026 and 2027.
Before the next session, the next scheduled company catalyst on many market calendars is Rigetti’s earnings report. Investing.com lists March 5, 2026 as the next earnings release date; traders typically zero in on revenue timing, gross margin and cash burn given the sector’s long development cycles.
Before the next session, U.S. stock trading resumes at 9:30 a.m. ET and ends at 4 p.m., with after-hours trading running until 8 p.m., Nasdaq’s trading schedule shows. The exchange calendar also lists the market closed on Jan. 1 for New Year’s Day.
On the chart, traders point to $22 as near-term support after Tuesday’s low, with $23 a level to watch on the upside. In thin markets, extended-hours moves can look outsized because fewer shares are trading.
Any new analyst note or sector headline can ripple through the group, where momentum trading can dominate on quiet days. For Rigetti, the next test is whether the company can hit its near-term technical targets and show a clearer path to recurring revenue as 2026 approaches.
