D-Wave’s Big Deal, Bigger Question: Can Sales Catch Up to the Hype?

Key Points

• D-Wave announced two major contracts worth a combined $30 million in late January, shortly after revealing shelf registrations totaling $330 million.
• The company's revenue doubled year over year in the last reported quarter, but it remains very low in absolute terms.
• One of the contracts, in particular, is for quantum-computing-as-a-service tools and could lead to recurring revenue beyond the initial two-year agreement, a positive sign for D-Wave.

It has been a big year so far for D-Wave Quantum Inc. NYSE: QBTS, as the company closed on its $550-million cash and stock acquisition of Quantum Circuits in January, dramatically increasing D-Wave's capabilities in the gate-model quantum tech space. While investors may increasingly see D-Wave as a leading quantum computing player with key advantages over its competitors in the wake of the acquisition, shelf registrations totaling $330 million in the first month of the year may also set off alarm bells about further dilution risk.

Investors are clearly cautious, as QBTS shares have fallen 27% year to date. The Quantum Circuits deal, while exciting from a technological perspective, does not immediately address a major investor concern: how will D-Wave grow its sales while narrowing its losses or even achieving profitability?

2 Sales Landmarks to Start the Year

In late January, D-Wave attempted to ease investor fears about its capacity to generate revenue by announcing two new significant contracts. Florida Atlantic University is committed to buying and installing an Advantage2 annealing computer system for $20 million, while an unnamed Fortune 100 company now has a contract for quantum-computing-as-a-service (QCaaS) tools from D-Wave for two years, at a value of $10 million.

Undoubtedly, this represents a pick-up in sales for D-Wave and bodes well for the new year. The company's revenue growth has been steady but still modest in absolute terms—revenue more than doubled year over year in the third quarter of 2025, but only to $3.7 million. The question is whether this is enough to convince investors that D-Wave is on track to see the kind of sales growth necessary to fuel more optimism after its 255% rally in the last year.

Concerns About Top- and Bottom-Line Performance Linger

The issue for some investors may not be the number of sales contracts that D-Wave is reporting, but rather the nature of the contracts themselves. One-off system sales of the company's increasingly popular Advantage2 system can give a big boost to revenue, but they are limited and don't generate recurring revenue for D-Wave. The QCaaS sale, although short on specifics for now, may be more promising, as it could lead to additional contracts or add-ons for the company making use of D-Wave's quantum products.

Still, even if these sales do pick up, it's not clear that they will, in and of themselves, be enough to swing D-Wave to profitability. The company still seems to have ambitious expansion plans that will stretch its cash reserves and demand additional capital raises—and that will likely keep expenses high for the foreseeable future. Additionally, sales to large-scale organizations like city governments and universities have represented a number of D-Wave's Advantage2 sales, and the company has yet to make convincing inroads with a large number of corporate clients.

Considerations for Investors

With all of these considerations in play, D-Wave may still be too speculative for many investors. The path to quantum computing technology having a major role in day-to-day life for most businesses and individuals remains difficult to surmise and perhaps years away still.

However, D-Wave's advantage as a dual-focused company specializing in both gate-model and annealing tech may prove to be transformational as the industry continues to grow. It does continue to gain commercial traction as well, supported by strong technological achievements throughout the past year.

Further, there is a question about D-Wave's valuation and whether its share price has risen too fast, too soon. Even after the recent sell-off, D-Wave stock has more than tripled in the last year, bringing the company to a sky-high price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 888.4. Investors may therefore need to evaluate whether the latest dip is enough to warrant taking a chance of QBTS shares with the expectation that they will reverse course and continue to ascend going forward.

Analysts do seem to think that's likely to happen. Thirteen of 15 have rated D-Wave a Buy, and the consensus price target across Wall Street is $38.21, about 88% above the price as of early February 2026. Investors may find this vote of confidence, combined with D-Wave's recent high-profile sales agreements, to be sufficient to make the case that the share price still has room to run.