Berkeley, California, May 21, 2026, 04:13 PDT
Rigetti Computing stock moved higher ahead of Thursday’s U.S. open after Reuters reported, via the Wall Street Journal, that the Trump administration will hand out $2 billion in grants to nine quantum-computing firms and plans to take equity in the companies. Rigetti is listed among recipients set to get about $100 million, according to the report.
Timing is key. Rigetti was coming off a week defending a tough pitch—revenue is jumping, there’s a new 108-qubit machine, yet the stock keeps its future-winner price tag, not the typical loss-making hardware discount. Shares finished Wednesday at $16.88 and early premarket quotes put it at $19.10, an increase of 13.2% before regular Nasdaq hours started at 6:59 a.m. New York time.
New government money would go into a field still looking for commercial traction. IBM is picked for $1 billion, GlobalFoundries for $375 million, and D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti, and Infleqtion are each in line for $100 million, the Journal reported via Reuters.
Rigetti reported first-quarter revenue of $4.4 million, up from $1.5 million a year ago, but said its operating loss grew to about $26.0 million. Cash, cash equivalents and available-for-sale investments totaled $569.0 million at the end of March.
Rigetti CEO Subodh Kulkarni said the company’s 108-qubit Cepheus-1-108Q system is now up on Rigetti QCS, as well as Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure Quantum and qBraid. Qubits are the building blocks of quantum computing, but more qubits only matter if the system runs with low enough errors to actually get useful results.
“We are also seeing growing adoption of Rigetti systems across government, academic, and commercial customers,” Kulkarni said. He mentioned recent sales of on-premises Novera quantum processing units. Quantum processing units, or QPUs, are the chips that perform quantum computations.
Washington’s funding is the key question now. A valuation update linked by Yahoo Finance on Thursday said Rigetti’s strong quarter and launch of its flagship system have put the bullish view back in play. One narrative has the stock trading 31.1% below fair value.
Skeptics are looking at those numbers and coming to another view. Motley Fool’s Anthony Di Pizio wrote Tuesday that Rigetti’s price-to-sales ratio is still high by this measure. He said if progress doesn’t win investors over, the shares could be under $10 in a year.
The stock has shown how fast sentiment can swing. Back on May 18, 24/7 Wall St. pointed to a broad quantum-stock drop. Rigetti and Quantum Computing Inc. each dropped about 10%, while IonQ and D-Wave also fell. The move was tied to profit-taking, not company news.
Peers like IonQ and D-Wave have tracked alongside Rigetti, with the group often trading as a basket. IBM remains the big-cap name attached to the reported government support. Cantor Fitzgerald’s Troy Jensen is keeping a Buy on Rigetti, telling Barron’s that technical markers—qubit fidelity and logical qubit count—matter more than near-term sales right now.
Big risks remain. Rigetti’s filing reported a $25.95 million operating loss for the quarter. The company’s GAAP net income got a boost from a $53.7 million change in the fair value of derivative warrant liabilities, a non-cash line connected to warrant values. Delays, shortfalls, or new terms on federal funding could hit the rally fast if investors don’t like what they see.
Technology remains an open issue. Reuters reported that quantum computers today use most of their power correcting errors, meaning they aren’t faster yet than classical computers. Rigetti said its goal of fault-tolerant quantum computing is still a long-term target.
