Lottery Tickets.
Buy the House.
Trump's quantum executive orders lit a fire under IonQ, D-Wave and Infleqtion. But quantum is a capital war — and the tiny cash-burners don't have the ammunition. The giants with infinite money and the actual breakthroughs do.
Trump lit the match on June 23. The quantum tickers popped — and the pop is already fading.
On June 23, 2026, President Trump signed two quantum executive orders — one pushing a research-grade quantum computer at a national lab by 2028 (plus military quantum-sensing), the other mandating a federal move to post-quantum cryptography. The pure-play quantum tickers ripped on the headline: D-Wave +~7.5%, Rigetti +~6%, IonQ +~3%. Classic Trump Bump. But look at where they sit one day later:
Every one of them is already red since the speech (Rigetti −6.8% too). That's the tell: these moves are policy sentiment, not contracted revenue. And here's the kicker — the executive order's actual money is technology-agnostic and the biggest federal quantum check this year (a ~$1B letter of intent) went to IBM, not the little guys. Trump lit the fuse under the lottery tickets; the giant is the one who pocketed the prize.
Trump's quantum orders made the small quantum stocks jump for a day — then they all fell back. The pop was excitement, not real new sales. And ironically, the largest government quantum funding this year was pledged to IBM, a giant, not to the tiny names that popped.
The lottery tickets. Tiny revenue, big losses, and a share count that keeps climbing.
| Name | Mkt cap | Revenue (TTM) | Annual cash burn | Cash pile | Dilution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IonQ · IONQ | ~$20.4B | ~$187M (~109× sales) | ~$310–330M | ~$3.1B | shares +~24% / yr |
| D-Wave · QBTS | ~$8.6B | ~$12.5M (>600× sales) | ~$130–180M | ~$588M | shares +~50% / yr |
| Rigetti · RGTI | ~$6.6B | ~$10M (~650× sales) | ~$80M | ~$569M | shares 2× in 2 yrs |
| Infleqtion · INFQ | ~$3.0B | ~$32.5M (~90× sales) | ~$30–50M | ~$569M | 17M→217M shs (SPAC) |
The pattern is identical across all four: a multi-billion-dollar valuation stacked on a rounding-error of revenue, a business that loses far more than it earns, and a cash pile that exists only because they keep selling stock. D-Wave's revenue actually fell 81% last quarter (to $2.9M) as a one-off system sale rolled off. Their technologies are genuinely different and genuinely clever — IonQ's trapped ions, D-Wave's annealer, Rigetti's superconducting chips, Infleqtion's neutral atoms — but every one is a pre-fault-tolerant research machine, years from doing commercially useful work at scale.
The fair caveat: these aren't about to go bankrupt — the dilution bought them multi-year runways (IonQ alone sits on ~$3.1B). But that's the whole point: the cash didn't come from winning, it came from your dilution, and the share count keeps climbing to feed the burn.
Each of these companies is worth billions but earns almost nothing and loses a lot. They stay funded by printing new shares — which shrinks the slice owned by everyone already in. They're not going broke tomorrow, but you're paying a giant price for a science project that keeps diluting you.
The house. Infinite money — and the actual breakthroughs.
Google already pulled off a jaw-dropping quantum result. IBM has the clearest plan to build a truly useful quantum computer (by ~2029) plus huge funding. Amazon built a chip to fix quantum's error problem and rents quantum power to everyone. All three can pay for this forever out of spare cash — while the small names have to keep selling stock to survive.
This is the whole argument in one chart. The pure-plays' entire war chest is a rounding error to the giants.
Google's R&D line alone (~$61B/yr) is roughly 250 times the combined annual revenue of all four quantum pure-plays (~$242M). The giants' combined cash (~$282B) could fund the pure-plays' entire combined cash burn (~$600M/yr) for centuries. When the prize requires a decade of multi-billion-dollar spending before the first dollar of real profit, this gap is the investment thesis.
The big green bars are the giants; the tiny slivers are all four small quantum companies added together. Google spends more on research in about a day than IonQ makes in a whole year. Building a quantum computer takes a decade and billions — and only one side can actually afford that.
The verdict. Two lists: what to avoid, and what to own.
| Ticker | Call | Why |
|---|---|---|
| IONQ | AVOID | ~$20B for ~$187M of revenue, burning ~$320M/yr, diluting ~24%/yr. Best of the small names — still a lottery ticket. |
| QBTS | AVOID | >600× sales; revenue fell 81% last quarter; annealing isn't universal quantum computing. Priced on bookings & hype. |
| INFQ | AVOID | ~$3B on ~$32M revenue, fresh off a SPAC with a $1.1B shelf to issue more stock. Most funding-dependent of the group. |
| RGTI | AVOID | ~650× sales on ~$10M of grant revenue; share count doubled in two years. Same story as the others. |
| GOOGL | BUY | The breakthrough (Willow) + a $160B profit engine that funds quantum forever. You also get AI & cloud while you wait. |
| IBM | BUY | The deepest roadmap (fault-tolerant by 2029), the biggest federal backing, profitable, and pays you a dividend to hold it. |
| AMZN | BUY | Ocelot attacks the error problem; Braket rents quantum to everyone. Wins the quantum-cloud layer no matter who builds the best qubit. |
Skip the four small quantum stocks — they're expensive gambles that keep diluting you. Own Google, IBM and Amazon instead: you get real quantum leadership plus three of the best businesses on earth funding it, and you're paid to wait.
The one catch — and why it still doesn't change the call. The giants give you almost no "pure" quantum leverage.
Be clear-eyed: for Google, IBM and Amazon, quantum is a rounding error. It generates ~zero revenue and won't move a multi-trillion-dollar stock for years. So if quantum suddenly "works," IonQ could 10× while GOOGL barely twitches — that's the bull case for the lottery tickets, and it's real. The trade-off is simple: the pure-plays offer explosive upside with a real chance of going to ~zero (or bleeding out via dilution); the giants offer quantum optionality for free, wrapped inside great businesses, with almost no downside from the quantum bet itself. This piece argues you take the second deal — and if you absolutely must own a lottery ticket, size it like one: tiny, and money you can lose.
Owning Google for quantum is like buying a casino instead of a single slot machine — steadier, but you won't get a single jackpot ticket's payout. The small names could rocket if quantum breaks out. Just remember they can also crash to nothing. If you want that gamble, keep it tiny.
John's read. Don't gamble on the tiny names burning cash. Buy the giants with infinite money and the actual breakthroughs.
- The Trump pop is a trap. The EOs made IONQ/QBTS/INFQ/RGTI jump for a day, then every one rolled over. A headline is not a business — and the real federal money went to IBM.
- These are money-burners, plain and simple. Billions in market cap on pennies of revenue, kept alive by selling more and more stock. The cash on their balance sheets is your dilution, not their success.
- Quantum is a capital war, and the giants have infinite ammo. Google already had the breakthrough (Willow). IBM has the only credible roadmap to a fault-tolerant machine plus ~$1B in backing. Amazon built Ocelot to kill errors and rents quantum to everyone through AWS. They can fund this forever; the little guys can't.
- You get paid to wait. Buy GOOGL, IBM, AMZN and you own AI, cloud, and the best balance sheets on earth — with quantum as a free call option on top. The pure-plays give you the option and a cash-burning, diluting business attached to it.
- Bottom line: don't buy the lottery tickets — buy the house. If you can't resist a moonshot, keep it tiny and sized to lose. The giants are how you actually win the quantum decade.
Comment "quantum" and I'll DM you the full breakdown.
Follow @Nefarioustrading for more →Figures from Q1 2026 (quarter ended Mar 31, 2026) filings and primary announcements, independently fact-checked. Pure-plays: IonQ — ~$20.4B cap, ~$187M TTM revenue, FY25 net loss $510M, FY26 adj-EBITDA-loss guide ($310–330M), ~$3.1B cash, shares ~373M (+~24% YoY); Q1'26 GAAP "net income" was a non-cash warrant gain, not profit. D-Wave (QBTS) — ~$8.6B cap, ~$12.5M TTM revenue (Q1'26 fell 81% to $2.9M), FY25 net loss $355M, ~$588M cash, shares ~370M (+~50% YoY), Advantage2 annealer + Quantum Circuits gate-model acquisition. Rigetti (RGTI) — ~$6.6B cap, ~$10M TTM revenue, ~$80M/yr burn, $569M cash/zero debt, ~332M shares (~2× in 2 yrs), Ankaa-3 84-qubit superconducting. Infleqtion (INFQ) — ~$3.0B cap, ~$32.5M revenue, ~$569M cash, ~17M→~217M shares via Feb 2026 SPAC + $1.1B shelf, Sqale neutral-atom. Giants: Alphabet — ~$4.2T cap, ~$422B TTM revenue, ~$160B net income, ~$61B R&D, ~$127B cash; Willow (105 qubits) per Google's Dec 9, 2024 announcement: RCS benchmark in under 5 min vs Google's estimate of ~10²⁵ ("10 septillion") years for a classical supercomputer — a synthetic benchmark with no commercial use, and a Google-chosen (contested) classical estimate; the more meaningful result was below-threshold error correction. IBM — ~$244B cap, ~$67.5B FY25 revenue, ~$10.6B net income, ~$14.7B FCF; "Starling" fault-tolerant target 2029 (200 logical qubits) per IBM's June 10, 2025 roadmap; the ~$1B "government backing" is a May 21, 2026 Dept. of Commerce CHIPS Letter of Intent funding IBM's "Anderon" quantum-foundry subsidiary (with a U.S. govt minority equity stake) — proposed, not finalized — separate from IBM's own $10B+ quantum commitment; "largest/most-advanced" is a defensible but contested positioning (Google leads on certain error-correction physics). Amazon — ~$2.6T cap, ~$743B TTM revenue, ~$148B TTM operating cash flow, ~$143B cash; Ocelot cat-qubit prototype (Feb 27, 2025) Amazon says could cut error-correction cost "up to 90%" (a 5-qubit research chip, not yet on Braket); AWS Braket (GA Aug 2020) rents third-party QPUs. "Since EO" returns measured from the June 23, 2026 close to June 24, 2026 via Interactive Brokers price data. Trump quantum executive orders signed June 23, 2026; a ~$2.0B Dept. of Commerce package included IBM ($1B LOI), GlobalFoundries ($375M) and up to $100M each for D-Wave, Infleqtion, Rigetti and others.