Rigetti Stock Crashed 76% From Its Peak — Here’s Why Investors Are Still Holding On

There are businesses that produce goods that people already require, and there are businesses that are creating something that the world hasn’t yet figured out how to use. Rigetti Computing is unquestionably in the second group. The company, which is based in Berkeley, California, a city known for its ambitious and slightly out-of-the-ordinary ideas, is attempting to accomplish what IBM, Google, and a few well-funded startups are all vying for at the same time: make quantum computing work at scale, commercially, and without depleting every dollar in the treasury before the market catches up. One of the more genuinely open questions in technology today is whether Rigetti succeeds.

On Wednesday, Rigetti’s stock closed at $14.19, up 5.11% for the day. For a brief moment, it seemed like momentum was returning, but after-hours trading cut the gain by a few cents and reminded everyone that this stock doesn’t stay comfortable for very long. With a high of $58.15 and a low of $6.86, the 52-week range speaks for itself. A great deal of investor hope, disappointment, and recalibration reside somewhere between those two figures. As part of a larger retreat from quantum computing names that Wall Street had aggressively bid up during 2025’s tech enthusiasm, the stock is down about 42% year to date. This retreat began when valuations began to appear difficult to justify against actual revenue.

And what matters is the revenue. Rigetti’s total sales at the end of 2025 were $7.1 million, a 34% decrease from $10.8 million the previous year. In the meantime, research costs increased by 23% to $61.3 million. For a pre-commercial technology company, the resulting operating loss of $84.7 million is not out of the ordinary, but it does force investors to accept a certain amount of math. There are 163 workers at the company. It has a $4.71 billion market capitalization. A certain amount of silent scrutiny is invited by those two figures seated next to one another.

The financial situation is what prevents this from being a simple cautionary tale. With $443.5 million in cash and short-term investments at the end of 2025, Rigetti was able to purchase a significant amount of runway while attempting to bridge the gap between its laboratory accomplishments and its balance sheet. The money might be sufficient. Commercial traction might also need to happen more quickly than the burn rate would comfortably permit. One of the main reasons Rigetti is worth keeping an eye on is the way management handles that conflict, quarter by quarter.

The technology is genuinely credible. Rigetti’s strategy focuses on superconducting qubits, which are generally regarded as one of the more developed and scalable paths in the quantum field. The company manufactures its chips internally at Fab-1, a facility dedicated to the production of quantum devices, giving it end-to-end control that most rivals cannot match. Serious research circles pay attention to gate speeds of 50 to 70 nanoseconds, which the company claims are about a thousand times faster than ion-trap alternatives. For a business this size, the recently implemented Cepheus-1-36Q system—the largest multi-chip quantum computer in the industry when it debuted in 2025—represents a significant milestone.

There have been conflicting but encouraging commercial signals recently. Recent months have seen the arrival of purchase orders from Japan and India. The $8.4 million order from India alone technically surpasses the company’s total 2025 revenue figure, which, depending on how generously you interpret it, could be interpreted as either a positive indication of momentum or a reminder of how thin the current revenue base actually is. A Novera Quantum Processing Unit, a 9-qubit system intended for research institutions, was recently acquired by the University of Saskatchewan, adding another name to the expanding list of government and academic customers. These contracts are legitimate, but they are not enormous.

Contrary to what the recent stock performance may indicate, the analyst picture is more optimistic. With an average twelve-month price target of $31.54, which is more than twice the current price of the stock, 77% of the thirteen ratings that cover Rigetti recommend buying. This kind of discrepancy between the current price and the analyst target either indicates a true mispricing or illustrates how challenging it is to model a business whose revenue trajectory is so early that projections are more uncertain than usual. It’s difficult to ignore the fact that the same analysts who established those goals have seen the stock drop by almost 60% in just six months without significantly changing their opinions.

By comparison, D-Wave Quantum, the nearest competitor in the field of quantum computing, is doing better in 2026, in part because it expanded its technical approach with the acquisition of Quantum Circuits in January. For the time being, Rigetti is still dedicated to its vertically integrated, gate-model approach, which is a wager on concentration rather than scope. Even though the market hasn’t yet fully rewarded it, there is a logic to that.

It is anticipated that the next earnings report will be released on May 12. It will be necessary for CEO Subodh Kulkarni, who assumed the position in late 2022 and has been steadily advancing the business toward commercial relevance, to demonstrate that the foreign purchase orders are translating into something long-lasting rather than sporadic. Consensus estimates for Q1 2026 are roughly five cents per share, which is modest by quantum computing standards and possibly beatable considering the company’s recent EPS beat pattern. The standard isn’t unachievable. However, in an industry where investors have previously been burned by the gap between promise and proof, each data point is given more weight. Right now, it’s difficult to hold rigetti stock. Seldom has it been.