Rigetti's Q4 Operating Loss Persists Amid Tech Progress: Buy or Hold?

Rigetti Computing RGTI exited fourth-quarter 2025 with continued technological progress but ongoing operating losses, underscoring the early-stage nature of the quantum computing market. The company generated $1.9 million in quarterly revenue and reported a $22.6 million operating loss, while full-year revenue totaled $7.1 million against an adjusted net loss of $50.5 million as it continued investing heavily in quantum hardware development.

Despite ongoing financial pressures, Rigetti Computing achieved a key milestone by reaching 99.9% two-qubit gate fidelity at a fast 28-nanosecond gate speed on a prototype platform, signaling improving system performance. The company is also gaining early commercial traction, including an $8.4 million order from India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing for a 108-qubit on-premises quantum system expected in the second half of 2026. Rigetti continues advancing Novera system orders and expanding its global research footprint. With $589.8 million in cash and no debt at year-end 2025, the company retains solid financial flexibility to fund its R&D-driven roadmap.

Competition across the quantum computing landscape continues to intensify, adding complexity to Rigetti’s investment narrative. IonQ IONQ has recently strengthened its leadership position with rapid commercial expansion and record financial performance, reporting $130 million in 2025 revenue. Meanwhile, D-Wave Quantum QBTS continues to focus on near-term commercialization through its quantum annealing platform, securing enterprise agreements and system deployments while expanding its hybrid quantum-classical capabilities and pursuing acquisitions to broaden its technology stack. At the same time, Quantum Computing Inc. QUBT is positioning itself around photonics-based quantum technologies and software-driven solutions, often aligned with government and research programs.

RGTI’s Shares Price Performance

Over the past six months, RGTI shares have plunged 11.2%, reflecting continued volatility across the quantum computing sector. The performance has been mixed among peers. IONQ has faced a much steeper correction, with shares down 38.4%, while QUBT has dipped 55.2%, making it the weakest performer in the group. In contrast, QBTS has bucked the broader trend, gaining 6.5% over the same period. Meanwhile, the Zacks Internet-Software industry has declined 21.3%, indicating that Rigetti’s pullback has been less severe than the broader industry downturn.

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Reasons Why RGTI May Still Be a Hold

On-Premises Quantum Systems Driving Early Commercial Momentum: Rigetti’s fourth-quarter update highlighted continued demand for on-premises quantum systems, particularly from government and research institutions that prefer direct access to quantum hardware integrated with high-performance computing environments. The company noted that a portion of the previously announced $5.7 million in Novera system purchase orders is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2026, which management anticipates will drive meaningful year-over-year revenue growth. These systems are designed to be upgradeable, allowing customers to expand capabilities over time, which creates potential follow-on revenue opportunities as quantum workloads become more sophisticated.

In addition, Rigetti secured a Novera quantum processing unit (QPU) order from a Japanese research organization, marking the company’s first QPU deployment in Japan. While these deals remain relatively small in scale, they reflect growing international adoption of Rigetti’s hardware and reinforce the company’s positioning within government and research-driven quantum programs.

Technology Progress Strengthens Rigetti’s Hardware Roadmap: Rigetti’s latest update also underscored continued technical progress across its superconducting quantum platform. The company demonstrated 99.9% two-qubit gate fidelity at a fast 28-nanosecond gate speed on a prototype platform using its proprietary adiabatic CZ gate scheme. Rigetti also reported strong median fidelities across its existing systems — 99.7% on a 9-qubit system, 99.6% on a 36-qubit system and 99% on its 108-qubit platform — highlighting steady improvements in materials engineering, fabrication processes and system architecture.

These performance gains are significant because higher fidelity and faster gate speeds directly influence the reliability and scalability of quantum computations. By continuing to narrow the performance gap between larger and smaller systems, Rigetti is reinforcing confidence that its superconducting architecture can scale effectively toward larger qubit counts.

Chiplet Architecture Offers a Scalable Path to Larger Systems: A key strategic pillar discussed during the quarter was Rigetti’s chiplet-based system architecture, which the company views as the most practical path toward building large-scale quantum computers. Instead of relying solely on increasingly complex monolithic chips, Rigetti uses smaller modular quantum chiplets that can be tiled together to increase qubit counts while maintaining fabrication efficiency and improving manufacturing yield.

Management noted that progress continues toward deployment of its 108-qubit chiplet-based system, where architectural refinements have already helped address tunable-coupler interactions observed at higher qubit counts. These improvements enhance system stability and control, supporting the company’s broader roadmap to scale quantum systems while maintaining performance consistency as complexity increases.

RGTI’s Sales & EPS Growth

In 2026, Rigetti is expected to experience a 257.1% improvement in revenues. On the profitability front, earnings per share are expected to remain negative, but gaining 73.4% year over year.

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Key Challenge for RGTI

Operating Losses Persist Despite Early Revenue Traction: Rigetti’s fourth-quarter results again underscored its core challenge, translating technological progress into a stronger revenue base. The company generated $1.9 million in revenue while reporting a $22.6 million operating loss, reflecting the high-cost structure required to develop advanced quantum hardware. Although recent system orders and international deployments provide some revenue visibility, Rigetti’s business remains largely contract-driven and uneven. Continued heavy investment in R&D, fabrication and system engineering keeps operating expenses elevated, making revenue scale and loss reduction key hurdles as the company works toward broader commercialization of its quantum computing platforms.

RGTI’s Shares Look Overvalued

Rigetti stock is not so cheap, as suggested by the Value Score of F.

Rigetti is currently trading at a price-to-book (P/B) ratio of 10.24X, which is higher than the industry average of 4.4X.

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How to Approach RGTI Stock

Rigetti remains one of the more intriguing, but also higher-risk, names in the emerging quantum computing landscape. The company’s fourth-quarter update highlighted continued technical progress, including improvements in gate fidelity and momentum around its chiplet-based architecture, which underpins its long-term scalability strategy. Rigetti is also gradually expanding its commercial footprint through government and research-oriented deployments. These developments reinforce Rigetti’s position as a credible hardware player in a field where technological progress often precedes large-scale commercialization.

That said, the latest results also underscored the financial realities of building next-generation quantum infrastructure. Revenue remains modest while operating losses stay elevated, reflecting the heavy R&D investment required to advance quantum hardware. With a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), the stock may currently be better suited for patient investors rather than aggressive accumulation. Much of the investment thesis now hinges on whether Rigetti can steadily convert its technology progress into broader system deployments and more consistent revenue streams. Progress on larger qubit systems and continued traction with on-premises deployments will likely be key factors shaping investor confidence over the next few years. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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