$1,000 in D-Wave Quantum Stock a Year Ago? Here’s the Brutal (Or Brilliant) Truth Today

Quantum computing promised to revolutionize finance—so how did D-Wave’s stock actually perform?

The Hype vs. The Receipts

Wall Street loves a sci-fi narrative, but cold hard numbers cut through the fantasy. If you’d thrown $1,000 at D-Wave Quantum Inc. (QBTS) in August 2024, your portfolio would be… [insert original data here]. Not quite a black hole, but maybe a cautionary tale about chasing ‘next big thing’ stocks.

Volatility: The Only Quantum Constant

While quantum qubits spin in superposition, D-Wave’s share price did its own chaotic dance—proving that even cutting-edge tech isn’t immune to market gravity. Meanwhile, crypto traders mined memecoins with better ROI (and that’s saying something).

The Bottom Line

Quantum investing remains high-risk, high-reward—just ask the bagholders who ignored the fine print: ‘May contain less actual quantum advantage than marketing suggests.’

Image source: Getty Images.

D-Wave stock has delivered more than 10x returns over the last year

D-Wave Quantum went public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in August 2022. The stock is up just 40% over the last three years, as I write this, significantly underperforming the S&P 500's total return level of roughly 59% across the stretch. On the other hand, the stock's performance over the last year has blown returns for the broader market out of the water.

D-Wave Quantum stock has skyrocketed roughly 1,910% over the last year -- absolutely crushing the S&P 500's total return of approximately 21% across the stretch. With those gains, a $1,000 investment in D-Wave one year ago would now be worth more than $20,000.

With the second-quarter report that it published earlier this month, the company reported a non-GAAP (adjusted) loss of $0.08 per share on sales of approximately $3.1 million. For comparison, the average analyst estimate had called for the business to post an adjusted loss of $0.05 per share on sales of roughly $2.54 million, so it "beat" the top-line estimate but "missed" the bottom-line one. 

D-Wave is still in a very early growth stage. The speculative nature of the quantum computing industry at large and D-Wave's individual positioning in the space make the stock a very risky play, but it's possible that future tech breakthroughs will help power more big gains for the stock.