New York, May 24, 2026, 09:04 EDT
Rigetti Computing heads into a holiday-shortened U.S. trading week after one of the sharpest moves among quantum names: RGTI closed regular trading Friday at $26.42, up 19.87% on the day and about 48% from the prior Friday close of $17.85. The after-hours quote slipped to $25.86, a small giveback after a week of heavy turnover.
The stock’s run matters now because the latest rally was not just a growth-stock bounce. It followed Rigetti’s May 21 letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for an award of up to $100 million over three years to speed superconducting quantum computing research and development; a letter of intent is a preliminary agreement before final contracts are signed.
The broader market helped, but only at the edges. On Friday, the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.19% and the S&P 500 gained 0.37%, while Rigetti’s move was roughly 20%, leaving investors to treat the federal quantum package as the week’s real driver.
Rigetti CEO Subodh Kulkarni said the investment would help the company tackle “key scaling bottlenecks” and move closer to “utility-scale quantum computing,” meaning systems powerful enough to solve useful problems beyond lab demonstrations. Quantum computers use qubits — quantum bits that can handle more complex states than the 0-or-1 bits in ordinary computers — but making them stable at scale remains hard.
Washington’s package also put Rigetti in a wider policy trade. Reuters reported that the U.S. government would take $2 billion in equity stakes across nine quantum-computing companies, with IBM getting $1 billion for a quantum chip venture, GlobalFoundries receiving $375 million, and D-Wave, Rigetti and Infleqtion each getting about $100 million. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the investments would advance “American quantum capabilities.” Reuters
TD Cowen analysts, cited by The Motley Fool, viewed Rigetti as one of the three biggest beneficiaries of the Commerce Department’s quantum investments, along with D-Wave Quantum and GlobalFoundries. The analysts said the move “underscore[s] the strategic value” of the sector, a useful phrase for a market that has been trying to decide whether quantum stocks are policy-backed hardware plays or long-dated science projects. The Motley Fool
Rigetti’s latest numbers explain why the funding drew attention. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $4.4 million, an operating loss of $26.0 million, and cash, cash equivalents and available-for-sale investments of $569.0 million as of March 31. It also made its 108-qubit Cepheus-1-108Q system generally available through Rigetti QCS, Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure Quantum and qBraid.
But the upside case has a clean risk attached. Rigetti’s filing says the Commerce deal still needs definitive agreements, and the contemplated government stake would come through new common shares, with the implied issuance price based on the lowest of several closing prices and a 15% discount; dilution means existing holders own a smaller piece when new shares are issued.
The week ahead starts slowly. Nasdaq is closed Monday, May 25, for Memorial Day, so Tuesday will be the first regular session for investors to price the deal after the weekend and to watch whether the rally holds, fades, or spreads again through quantum peers.
Related articles: NASDAQ:RGTI
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