Rigetti Drops 7%, IonQ Sinks 6%, D-Wave Falls 4%: What’s Behind the Quantum Stock Selloff?

David Moadel

Thu, August 20, 2026 at 7:35 PM GMT+3 3 min read

Quick Read

Rigetti and IonQ drop 7% and 6% in a catalyst-free selloff as 4.71% Treasury yields punish unprofitable long-duration quantum stocks.
QTUM's 37% YTD gain obscures the quantum selloff since most returns come from semiconductor and AI holdings, not pure plays like QUBT.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and IonQ didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Quantum-computing names are being sold as a category midday Thursday, with no company-specific news behind the declines. Rigetti Computing (NASDAQ:RGTI) stock is down 7% to $15.73, while IonQ (NYSE:IONQ) shares are sliding 6% to $40.60.

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Furthermore, D-Wave Quantum (NYSE:QBTS) stock is falling 4% to $18.60, and Quantum Computing Inc. (NASDAQ:QUBT) shares are dropping 4% to $8.09. Nothing in the news flow ties back to a company update, but bond-market sentiment may hold clues for investors.

A Category-Level Unwind with No Catalyst in Sight

There's no earnings news, guidance revision, analyst action, or contract announcement to explain today's move. All four reported Q2 FY2026 results earlier this month, and the group has traded largely on macro cues in the weeks since.

The backdrop matters here. Long-dated Treasury yields sit near multi-decade highs, with the 10-year at 4.71% in its latest reading, and elevated rates weigh on companies whose valuations rest on cash flows far in the future. Unprofitable quantum names sit at the extreme end of that long-duration growth spectrum.

Rotation Is Indifferent to Where Each Name Started the Year

Coming into today, these four stocks weren't lined up in a neat row. IonQ stock was down 3% year to date (YTD) through Wednesday's close, essentially flat on the year, while Quantum Computing shares were down 18%, Rigetti Computing stock was down 23%, and D-Wave Quantum shares were down 26%.

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IonQ came into Thursday close to flat for the year with a market cap of $16.48 billion. D-Wave stock was down 26% YTD, with a $6.88 billion market cap. Opposite positions on the scoreboard, different sizes, same direction today — sweeping up the strongest and weakest names regardless of prior YTD performance.

ETF Performance Tells a Very Different Story

Defiance Quantum ETF (NASDAQ:QTUM) shares trade at $148.81 and are down 1% today but are still up 34% year to date. QTUM holds a broad basket of semiconductor, computing, and AI-adjacent names, and the vast majority of the fund's YTD gain comes from holdings outside the pure-play quantum group.

For anyone using QTUM as dedicated quantum exposure, the fund is a thematic wrapper where the theme's namesake stocks are a small share of what drives performance. When the label sells off, the fund often doesn't, which can obscure how badly the underlying category is being treated on a given day.

What Comes Next for the Quantum Group

With no fundamental catalyst behind today's session, the real question is whether rates stabilize and speculative technology gets a bid back. IonQ's investor day at the New York Stock Exchange on September 8 is the next scheduled event that could pull sentiment back toward company-specific fundamentals.

Investors may want to size positions carefully, and treat any quantum allocation as speculation money with rules attached (we wrote a free playbook on keeping speculative bets to 5% of a portfolio here: Small Stakes, Big Swings). Four quantum tickers offer far less diversification than four tickers imply when they trade as a single block, and the correlation on down days is the risk that gets missed until it shows up on the screen.