D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS) has announced its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2026. The quarter was highlighted by record-breaking bookings and the strategic acquisition of Quantum Circuits, Inc., marking D-Wave’s formal entry into the error-corrected gate-model market. The table below summarizes key GAAP financial metrics for Q1 2026 compared with the prior quarter (Q4 2025) and the year-ago quarter (Q1 2025).
| Amounts in $M | Q1’2026 | Q4’2025 | Q1’2025 | % vs Q4’2025 | % vs Q1’2025 |
| Revenue | $2.9 | $2.8 | $15.0 | +3.6% | -80.7% |
| Operating Expenses | $56.5 | $36.6 | $25.2 | +54.4% | +124.2% |
| Operating Loss | ($54.7) | ($34.8) | ($11.3) | +57.2% | +384.1% |
| Net Loss | ($18.4) | ($42.3) | ($5.4) | -56.5% | +240.7% |
| Cash, Cash Equivalents, and Investments | $588.4 | $884.5 | $304.3 | -33.5% | +93.4% |
Financial and Strategic Overview
D-Wave reported $2.9 million in revenue for the first quarter. While this represents a significant decrease compared to the $15.0 million reported in Q1 2025, the company noted that the prior year’s figure included a one-time $12.6 million system sale. However, the forward-looking indicators were exceptionally strong: Bookings hit a record $33.4 million, a nearly 2,000% increase year-over-year. This was driven by a $20 million system purchase by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and a $10 million enterprise agreement with a Fortune 100 company.
The company’s Net Loss was ($18.4) million, an improvement from the prior quarter. This was aided by a $28.5 million income tax benefit stemming from the acquisition of Quantum Circuits. Operating expenses rose significantly to $56.5 million, reflecting $9.1 million in non-recurring acquisition costs and the integration of the Quantum Circuits team.
Liquidity remains robust with $588.4 million in cash and marketable securities. Although cash decreased sequentially from Q4 2025 due to the $250.8 million cash outflow for the Quantum Circuits acquisition, the balance is nearly double what the company held a year ago.
Technology Roadmap and Dual-Platform Strategy
D-Wave is now the industry’s only “dual-platform” company, offering both annealing and gate-model systems.
- Quantum Circuits Acquisition: The integration of Quantum Circuits brings “dual-rail” superconducting qubits to D-Wave’s portfolio. These qubits feature built-in erasure detection, which D-Wave believes will allow them to reach logical qubits with far fewer physical qubits than competing architectures.
- Gate-Model Roadmap: D-Wave unveiled an aggressive timeline for its new gate-model systems:
- 2028: Dual-rail system with ~175 physical qubits.
- 2030: 1,000 physical qubit system with 10 logical qubits.
- 2032: System supporting 100 logical qubits, targeting initial quantum utility.
- Annealing Milestones: The company published research on “multi-color annealing” protocols, which allow some gate-model operations to be performed natively on the Advantage2™ annealing system, further blurring the lines between the two modalities.
Commercial Momentum and Real-World Applications
- Blockchain Security: Collaborated with Postquant Labs on a quantum-classical blockchain Testnet with 18,500 users. D-Wave’s Advantage2 QPU successfully outperformed classical nodes in mining operations.
- Pharmaceutical AI: Completed the second phase of a project with Shionogi, delivering a 10-fold increase in the discovery of desirable drug-like molecules compared to classical machine learning algorithms.
- Hybrid Solvers: Launched new capabilities for the Stride™ hybrid solver, allowing customers to incorporate surrogate machine learning models directly into optimization workflows for predictive maintenance and logistics.
Upcoming Events
D-Wave will host its first-ever Investor Day on June 1, 2026, at the New York Stock Exchange. The company expects to provide deeper technical details on its error-correction roadmap and long-term growth strategy.
Additional information regarding this report can be found in the D-Wave Q1 press release here, the Q1 2026 Results Presentation here, and the company’s SEC Form 8-K filing here.
May 12, 2026