Quantum computing stocks did something absurd over the past year: some ran up as much as 6,200%. That is the kind of number that pulls people in right before it hurts them. This is not a tip sheet and it is not investment advice. It is a plain-English map of who the public players are, what they actually sell, and why the valuations should make you nervous.
The four names
The pure-play public market is basically IonQ (IONQ), Rigetti (RGTI), D-Wave (QBTS) and Quantum Computing Inc (QUBT). Everyone else serious about quantum, Google, IBM, Microsoft, is a giant where quantum is a rounding error on the balance sheet, so buying them is not really a quantum bet.
IonQ: the biggest of the small
IonQ is the largest pure-play by revenue, with roughly $130m in 2025 sales and 2026 guidance of $225m to $245m. Its trapped-ion hardware runs on AWS Braket, Microsoft Azure and US government programmes, and 9 of 17 analysts rate it a buy. It is the closest thing the sector has to a flagship, which is not the same as saying it is cheap.
The technologies, quickly
| Approach | Who | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Superconducting | Google, IBM, Rigetti | Most mature at scale |
| Trapped ion | IonQ | High fidelity, slower |
| Photonic / other | QUBT | Earlier stage, long-term bet |
Now the uncomfortable part
These are speculative stocks wearing milestone press releases as armour. IonQ, Rigetti and D-Wave carry price-to-sales ratios of roughly 59, 398 and 542. To put that in human terms: investors are paying hundreds of dollars for every single dollar of sales at some of these companies, on the promise of a payoff that is years out and not guaranteed. Fundamentals like that leave no cushion when sentiment turns, and in a speculative sector sentiment turns hard.
How a sensible person approaches this
If quantum genuinely interests you, treat any position as venture-style money you can afford to lose entirely, size it accordingly, and expect stomach-churning swings. The technology may well be transformational over a decade. That tells you nothing about whether today’s share price is right, and conflating the two is exactly how retail investors get hurt. None of this is investment advice; do your own research and, if it is a serious sum, talk to a professional.
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Did you know: a price-to-sales ratio in the hundreds means the market is valuing a company almost entirely on a future it has not delivered yet. It is a bet on the story, and stories can be repriced overnight.