D-Wave Quantum (NYSE:QBTS) has been on a rally that exceeded bullish expectations several times over. This is largely thanks to the company’s management pulling off a PR offensive and then turning it into a windfall for the company’s balance sheet.
In turn, investors got even more bullish, and QBTS stock has been on a relentless rally. All that said, the past month has been less bullish. QBTS stock is only up 1.2% in the past month after falling from its peak.
Bulls expect QBTS stock to keep rallying higher in the coming months, or even years. Bears believe this is a bubble on the cusp of popping. We’ll take a look at where most traders stand. But first, let’s look at what has been powering D-Wave’s rally and whether or not the strategy is sustainable.
Earlier this year, the company went on a high-profile investor conference blitz. This included the B. Riley Virtual Quantum Computing Day (March 7), the Stifel Technology One-on-One Conference in New York (March 11), the Roth Annual Conference in Dana Point (March 17-18), and the Craig-Hallum Virtual Quantum Computing Conference (March 24).
From its trough in March to its peak that month, QBTS stock popped by over 141%.
The company also claimed “Quantum Supremacy” during this period, which was a pivotal moment. Many investors now truly believed D-Wave Quantum was spearheading the industry.
However, this is a quantum annealing company, which basically means D-Wave works on quantum computing optimization. D-Wave’s supremacy claim was based on a study that simulated the quantum dynamics of complex magnetic materials in minutes. This was a task that would allegedly take the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory nearly one million years to complete.
The Advantage2 quantum annealer simulated the task in minutes. Almost immediately, researchers from the Flatiron Institute and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) challenged these claims. The Flatiron team developed a classical approach using belief propagation algorithms, while EPFL researchers Linda Mauron and Giuseppe Carleo reported solving similar problems using four GPUs in three days.
D-Wave still received far more publicity than it otherwise would’ve.
The momentum then accelerated after D-Wave’s results were boosted by an Advantage quantum system sale to a research institution in May.
D-Wave’s PR offensive wasn’t just for the sake of publicity. The company needed it to raise cash, which it did quite aggressively. The cash balance soared from $29 million in Q3 2024 to $819 million in Q2 2025. Q3 2025 results are slated to come out on November 6, 2025.
