Good news for advanced-computer technology investors: Quantum computing stocks are back on the upswing. Industry stocks have returned 45.4% year to date as of Aug. 11, according to the benchmark S&P Kensho Global Quantum Computing Technologies Index.
What’s more, the index is up 8.7% in August. That wouldn’t deserve much attention, except for the fact that the index dropped over 20% in the first three weeks of July. At this point, an uptick is more than welcome. So, why the run-up in quantum stocks over the past few weeks?
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First, the August rally means things are getting back to normal after a massive summer sell-off. As recently as July 17, certain quantum computing leaders were roughly 60% to 75% off their 52-week highs, with some of them dropping another 17% to 20% in a single week.
Additionally, the federal government’s recent announcement that it’s injecting $2 billion into the U.S. quantum computing market shows Uncle Sam is serious about becoming a quantum champion. The Trump administration’s move to take equity stakes in quantum computing startups in exchange for funding reinforces the notion that the industry is a U.S. technology priority, instead of a lower-caste corner of the tech market that must sustain itself on private capital.
“The U.S. Department of Commerce’s recent $2 billion in proposed CHIPS Act incentives for quantum companies deliberately spans multiple approaches, which is itself a signal,” said Christopher Gannatti, global head of research at WisdomTree, in a recent research note. “The government does not know which architecture wins, and neither does the market.”
What investors can do now, Gannatti advises, is “start building a framework for monitoring how the thesis evolves.”
Additionally, while many companies in the space are still private, there are some compelling opportunities in the public space. Much attention is given to public companies D-Wave Quantum Inc. (ticker: QBTS), IonQ Inc. (IONQ) and Quantinuum Inc. (QNT), for example, but they’re far from the only game in town. Matt Gallagher, a registered investment advisor at Odinic Advisors, believes that some interesting opportunities exist in the other layers. “ASP Isotopes Inc. (ASPI), for example, is interesting from the raw materials and isotopes angle, since it is the only public pure play on quantum isotope supply,” Gallagher says. “Infleqtion Inc. (INFQ) is interesting in the quantum sensing stack as the maker of atomic clocks and GPS-independent timing arrays for drones and other military apparatus.”
Due diligence is key when seeking out foundational quantum computing stocks that can benefit the riskier corner of a regular investor’s portfolio. These eight stocks remain at the top of the list for now:
| Stock | Market Capitalization | YTD Performance* |
| Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) | $2.9 trillion | +18% |
| Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) | $3.6 trillion | +4.6% |
| D-Wave Quantum Inc. (QBTS) | $7.6 billion | -22.6% |
| Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) | $5.4 trillion | +16.8% |
| IonQ Inc. (IONQ) | $17.7 billion | -3.2% |
| Rigetti Computing Inc. (RGTI) | $6 billion | -18.3% |
| International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) | $218.8 billion | -17.8% |
| Quantinuum Inc. (QNT) | $17 billion | N/A |
*As of the Aug. 11 market close.
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)
Amazon’s making news in August with a research and development partnership with Wall Street giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) to “explore how quantum technologies may help address complex optimization problems in finance and beyond,” Amazon Web Services states. “This sustained, multi-project research program has enabled shared methodologies and co-designed algorithms and experiments, deepening our understanding of how quantum and classical resources can work together in practice.”
Amazon also climbed back above the $3 trillion valuation mark thanks primarily to robust earnings results from AWS, which analysts say could propel AMZN to a $5 trillion market cap by 2029. That could help the company buy some time for its quantum computing program, as Peter DeSantis, Amazon’s AI chief, recently told CNBC, “I actually do believe, over the next five to seven years, we’re going to start to see the first commercially useful small-scale quantum computers.”
“From there, we’re going to see something that looks a lot like Moore’s Law, where they’re going to get bigger and bigger every year, and they’re going to be able to tackle more and more interesting problems,” DeSantis added.
AWS is also partnering with QuEra Computing to bring fault-tolerant quantum systems to the cloud by 2028. Additionally, Amazon’s new Ocelot chip has made major strides in advancing quantum computing error correction, a major roadblock so far for quantum engineers. In a recent research note, Amazon touted Ocelot as AWS’ pioneering effort to develop, from the ground up, a hardware implementation of quantum error correction that’s both resource-efficient and scalable.
“We believe that scaling Ocelot to a full-fledged quantum computer capable of transformative societal impact would require as little as one-tenth as many resources as common approaches, helping bring closer the age of practical quantum computing,” the company said.
Trading at $272 per share as of Aug. 11, AMZN shares are up 18% year to date, thanks in large part to 20% net sales growth and $123 billion in cash on the company’s balance sheet in the second quarter.
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)
Microsoft is on track to meet its ambitious quantum computing goals, as it recently announced that it’s way ahead of schedule for a scalable quantum computer by 2029. That timeline has accelerated, driven by the AI-redesigned Majorana 2 chip, which the company reported has achieved a 1,000-fold increase in qubit lifetime. The Majorana chip, which is redesigned using AI, is pegged to be “commercially useful” for quantum computing by 2029, Microsoft stated. The company also accelerated its Quantum Safe Program and advanced new software tracks for its academic research initiatives. Microsoft’s quantum team says its quantum systems will soon be able to master long-term problems in healthcare, chemistry and cybersecurity that would otherwise take traditional computing models decades to solve.
At the end of June, Microsoft flexed its financial muscles, reporting an 18% revenue hike on a year-to-year basis, to $331 billion, with operating income rising 21% to $155 billion. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s yearly earnings-per-share growth crested 20%, putting the company on firm financial footing for 2027 and beyond.
Is there enough in the bank to fund quantum computing, too? Analysts think so, as Microsoft recently said it was set to spend $10 billion on quantum computers. More importantly, Microsoft thinks so, too. “We need to make improvements each year that will get us closer to delivering a computer that we believe will have massive commercial and societal value,” said Chetan Nayak, Microsoft technical fellow, in the company’s Majorana 2 release. “We’ve got to keep marching to that roadmap to accomplish that, but where are we relative to last year? We’re 1,000 times better.”
Analysts are bullish on MSFT shares, with a consensus “buy” call on the stock and a $556 price target, indicating 10.4% upside potential.
D-Wave Quantum Inc. (QBTS)
Palo Alto, California-based D-Wave may actually have the clearest answer to the question that quantum cynics habitually ask: “Is anyone using this technology?” The company’s clients think so, as D-Wave reported first-half bookings of $35.5 million, up 1,120% year over year.
On the downside, second-quarter revenues, at just $3.1 million, disappointed analysts, who expected a number closer to $4.1 million. Additionally, the bulk of D-Wave’s bookings came from a previously announced $20 million system sale to Florida Atlantic University.
Even so, investors aren’t shying away from adding QBTS shares to their portfolios, with the stock up about 11% in the past month, though it has sunk 23% year to date. D-Wave is also expected to receive $100 million as part of the U.S. government’s recent quantum funding deal.
As a result, technology analysts love the stock. A review of 14 analysts shows 13 “buys” and one “hold,” with an average target price of $35.20, which represents about 76% upside from its current $20 share price.
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)
IBM’s C-suite remains fully committed to its quantum computing strategy, noting that a big financial return from its work with the technology is right around the corner. “I think that in 2028 or 2029, you’ll see it have a measurable impact on our top line and bottom line,” CEO Arvind Krishna told CNBC. “By the end of the 2030s, we are now pretty convinced this is a trillion dollars of value.”
On the quantum front, IBM is also a $1 billion beneficiary of Uncle Sam’s investment largesse, and in mid-July, the company confirmed its intent to deliver a large-scale quantum computer within the next three years. It plans to spend $10 billion on quantum computing in the next half-decade, with a chunk of cash expected to flow into IBM’s proposed Anderon quantum wafer foundry. In a letter to investors on July 14, Krishna said IBM’s big quantum spend is “spanning R&D, capex, manufacturing scaling, M&A and ecosystem expansion. We remain on track to deliver the first large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029.”
IBM’s share price is on the mend, returning 13% over the last month, although the stock is down 18% year to date. The one-month pop was likely fueled by an early-August $240 million pact with startup Together AI to build a massive AI inference cluster on IBM Cloud. Currently, the average 12-month price target for IBM is $264 per share, representing about 13% upside, according to TipRanks’ ratings tables.
Nvidia Corp. (NVDA)
On the quantum front, Nvidia is betting big on Ising, the first open-source AI model family designed specifically for quantum processor calibration and error correction. The company’s CUDA-Q open-source program is already widely used by quantum hardware developers, giving Nvidia the same middleware-market vibe in the quantum realm that it has already mastered in AI semiconductors.
“AI is essential to making quantum computing practical,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, in a statement after Ising was released in April 2026. “With Ising, AI becomes the control plane, the operating system of quantum machines, transforming fragile qubits to scalable and reliable quantum-GPU systems.” Citing figures from the analytical firm Resonance that quantum computing will grow to an $11 billion market by 2030, Nvidia hopes to be among the first in line to “help researchers and enterprises build quantum processors capable of running useful applications,” the company stated.
Nvidia shares are up 17% year to date, and the company financials warrant a bigger stock price in the second half of 2026. For the quarter ending in April, Nvidia reported revenue of $81.6 billion and a net profit of $58.3 billion. That’s up from $44.1 billion in revenue and $18.8 billion in net profit in the same quarter of 2025. Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers issued a “buy” call on NVDA in early August with a $315 price target. The stock is currently trading around $224 as of midday Aug. 12.
IonQ Inc. (IONQ)
Trading around $43 per share, about $10 higher than in mid-July, IonQ’s shares are on the rebound, albeit at a loss of 3% year to date but up 16% over the past month.
As usual, company finances tell the story, and it’s a promising one for IonQ investors. IonQ’s Q2 numbers are dramatically different from what investors were seeing from quantum companies even a year ago. Revenues reached $80.1 million, up 287%, beating expectations of about $66 million. Additionally, IonQ raised 2026 revenue guidance to between $280 million and $290 million, a promising guidepost for shareholders who are seeing IonQ’s revenues and business activity scale at an accelerated rate compared with other quantum pure-play competitors.
IonQ is aggressively assembling a vertically integrated quantum business. Its acquisitions include Oxford Ionics, Vector Atomic, Lightsynq Technologies and Capella Space, and it recently agreed to acquire semiconductor foundry SkyWater Technology for about $1.8 billion.
Over the long term, expect IonQ to benefit from its pivot from pure quantum computing to a broader computing platform that encompasses computing, networking, sensing and security services. Given IonQ’s high stature in quantum computing, however, its expansion into more diverse computing services should translate into more revenue and contracts from companies that want to be in business with a burgeoning technology innovator.
While investors may have to ride out a wave or two with IonQ, its updated consensus analyst price target is on the bullish side, at $65, representing a 51% boost from the company’s current price.
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Rigetti Computing Inc. (RGTI)
Berkeley, California-based Rigetti provides full-stack quantum computing services to a growing list of global enterprise, government and research clients through its Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services platform. Rigetti has also benefited from recent federal support, signing a letter of intent for up to $100 million from the Commerce Department investment deal. That funding is reportedly earmarked for more robust hardware scaling solutions, especially for improved readout electronics and cryogenic systems.
Rigetti is also getting busy abroad, as the company intends to steer $100 million into the U.K. to build a quantum computer with more than 1,000 qubits by 2030. In doing so, Rigetti is partnering with the U.K. on an expected 2-billion-pound ($2.7 billion) quantum computing investment, which is designed to take Britain into the large-scale quantum computing realm by 2035.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S., Rigetti announced in late July that it will team up with HPE and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to build the TangleLab supercomputing testbed, which is being funded by a $5 million National Science Foundation grant. The deployment is expected to feature a supercomputer powered by a 9-qubit Novera quantum computing system integrated with a classical high-performance computing system, which is an area of keen interest to Rigetti’s leadership team.
Up 19% over the past four weeks (but still down 18% year to date), RGTI’s price target sits around $25 per share, indicating 39% upside potential, according to TipRanks.
Quantinuum Inc. (QNT)
Quantinuum saw huge institutional demand during its June IPO at a $60-per-share entry price. QNT’s price shot up about 22% intraday Aug. 12 after the company reported a 279% revenue increase year over year due to growth in cloud services.
Despite operating losses for the second quarter swelling to $555 million from $51 million in the same period last year, perhaps a red flag, a new deal with Oracle to integrate quantum hardware directly inside Oracle’s data centers should help fill Quantinuum’s coffers going forward.
QNT is also making inroads on Wall Street, where Quantinuum’s expertise in logical qubits and error rates is seeing big demand among tech-needy brokerage firms. Quantinuum also just announced a multiyear partnership with Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC (OTC: RYCEY), Riverlane and the University of Edinburgh’s EPCC to study the application of quantum computing in industrial design and simulation.
Quantinuum also already boasts a $17 billion market cap and has analysts lining up to back the stock. Among 12 tech analysts, 11 have “buy” recommendations with a $92 consensus average price target, indicating a healthy 34% upside on QNT shares even after the mid-August rally.
Quantum Investors: Diversify With AI Stocks
If you’ve earned some value points as a quantum investor this year, good for you. Just don’t get too comfortable, industry pros say, especially if you’re locked into the notion that quantum computing stocks are low-hanging fruit.
“Quantum stocks should not be treated as a single category,” said Lior Prosor, a partner at Deep33, a venture capital firm that regularly invests in the quantum computing industry. “The modalities are fundamentally different, the scientific progress toward quantum advantage varies significantly by company, and investors who understand those differences have a real opportunity to generate alpha.”
What makes the quantum market particularly interesting right now is that many of the strongest companies are still private. “As commercially useful quantum computers come online and those companies enter the public markets, the composition of the sector could change dramatically,” Prosor says. “That’s before you even get to the picks-and-shovels opportunities across the supply chain, particularly in lasers, optics and other highly specialized components.”
It’s also helpful for quantum investors, particularly newer ones, to properly understand the emerging partnership between artificial intelligence and quantum computing, which is already underway.
“When Nvidia announced Ising, a family of AI models designed specifically for quantum calibration and error decoding, it was easy to file the news under ‘interesting research project,'” Gannatti says. “In our view, it deserves to be thought of as a strategic declaration.”
Gannatti notes that Nvidia, the technology company that became the infrastructure layer of classical AI, is methodically positioning itself “as the infrastructure layer for quantum computing.”
AI may also boost quantum computing sooner than even seasoned tech investors think, and vice versa. “That asymmetry in timing is, itself, the investment insight,” Gannatti said in his note, and Nvidia’s product roadmap, including Ising, NVQLink and CUDA-Q, is evidence.
“It’s not immensely helpful to ask simply, ‘Will AI help quantum?'” he said. “The more precise framework of questions could be: In what sequence, through what mechanisms and with what investable expression at each stage? Nvidia, characteristically, is not waiting for the answer.”
Try a Quantum Computing ETF
If all that proves too complex for investors new to the quantum investing space, exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, are a savvy way to play the quantum computing theme because this market will produce big winners but also generate plenty of downside volatility.
“Defiance Quantum ETF (QTUM) is attractive because it gives diversified exposure to quantum computing, machine learning, chips, software and enabling technologies rather than forcing investors to pick one fragile pure play,” says Mark Vena, CEO and principal analyst at SmartTech Research. “WisdomTree Quantum Computing Fund (WQTM) is also interesting because it is more explicitly built around the quantum ecosystem, including pure-play pioneers and diversified global leaders.”
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8 Best Quantum Computing Stocks to Buy in 2026 originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 08/12/26: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
