D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) trades near $17.50, about 61% below the high it set inside the past year. Nothing in the market broke to do that. The S&P 500 returned close to 18% over the same twelve months. The stock has already fallen a shock-sized amount without a shock, which is what makes the next leg hard to size.
D-Wave Quantum Is Spending Faster Than It Sells
Revenue in the second quarter of 2026 was $3.1 million, essentially flat with the second quarter of 2025. The adjusted EBITDA loss in that quarter was $37.1 million, 85% wider than a year earlier. Management attributes the increase to accelerated product development and go-to-market spending.
That is the business sitting under a market value of about $6.5 billion. Hardly any of that price is paid for what D-Wave sells today. It is paid for what its quantum computers might sell later.
What Is D-Wave Quantum Buying With That Money?
Real customers, and a long wait. AT&T has expanded an agreement to apply D-Wave’s technology to optimization problems across its network operations, where one early application cut a process from about an hour to under 15 seconds. Florida Atlantic University bought a $20 million annealing quantum computer, part of $35.5 million in first-half bookings against $2.9 million a year earlier. Management still expects to ship two systems over the balance of 2026, both likely in the fourth quarter.
The gate-model machines are the other half of the plan, and they sit much further out. Two government contracts are already generating initial revenue on those systems, but management does not expect significant revenue from selling access to them until the 2032 time frame. Cash and marketable securities stood at $546.2 million at the end of June 2026.
So the business is not breaking. It is losing more per dollar of revenue than it has averaged, at an operating margin near -1,370% over the trailing twelve months, against a three-year average of about -750%.
How Much Further Could D-Wave Quantum Stock Fall?
Across the five market shocks it has traded through since 2022, D-Wave Quantum fell an average of 51% peak to trough while the S&P 500 fell 13%. The worst of those episodes was a 73% drop in the yield shock of late 2023. Those are shock-window figures, measured inside each episode. Across its entire trading history, the all-time peak-to-trough drawdown reached about 97%—and that is the one to plan around, where a position sized at a tenth of your portfolio cuts roughly 10% from the total value, and about 20% at a fifth. There are stocks that fall less than the market when it falls, and D-Wave Quantum is not one of them.
Depth is only half of it. The way back has usually been quick: a median of about three months from the low, though the slowest, after the 2022 inflation shock, took about 31 months. If the fall itself is the attraction, our dip-buying screen ranks fallen names on whether the business can carry them back.
So What Size Of D-Wave Quantum Could You Live With?
Easy to answer now, looking back at a fall that has already happened. The test is the month it happens, when the payoff is still years out and the price is still falling. The size that works is the one where a repeat of that fall is a loss you could sit through. If you would rather not make that call holding by holding, look at our rule-based High Quality Portfolio. The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio has a track record of outpacing its benchmark—a blend of the three major indices.
