Quantum computing stocks spent late 2025 sprinting for the ceiling, but now they’re rediscovering gravity. IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) is down 37% over the past month, and D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS) has fallen by 28% in the same period. Even shares of Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), which doesn’t directly compete in quantum computing despite significant indirect participation, have been drifting sideways as investors rebalance the artificial intelligence (AI) trade.
So are the two beaten-down pure plays worth buying on the dip, or is it better to just buy Nvidia?
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How the pure plays size up
The first thing to know about IonQ and D-Wave is that they’re both banking on the federal government as a major customer, both now and in the future, just like many other quantum computing businesses.
IonQ has over $100 million in Air Force Research Lab contracts, plus extensive DARPA and Oak Ridge work queued up. D-Wave has a $1.6 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, and a $100 million letter of intent for future spending under the Chips Act — but that’s not the same as an order from a paying customer, at least not yet.
In terms of revenue, IonQ brought in $64.7 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 755% year over year, and raised its full-year guidance to between $260 million and $270 million. So it’s not having much of a problem finding sources of growth, though there’s still no timeline on when it might be profitable.
D-Wave’s revenue was only $2.9 million in the same quarter, down 81% compared to a year ago, thanks to a one-time $12.6 million system sale last year, though its Q1 bookings jumped to $33.4 million. It presently looks highly reliant on the proposed Chips Act funding to fill out its top line, as its core revenue isn’t growing much, even after taking into account the big sale from 2025.
Both of these companies are highly risky investments, and they might not ever be profitable enough to return capital to investors.
For the moment, they’re more reliant on narratives and catalysts than their progress toward profitability, as even starting down that road is at least a handful of years into the future for both. Among these two, IonQ thus has a fair bit more traction and $3.1 billion in cash and equivalents, whereas D-Wave only has $588 million.
Why Nvidia is the smarter call
Nvidia isn’t as exposed to quantum computing as IonQ or D-Wave; its intention is to create foundational resources that will drive demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs) and enable it to market various software and hardware solutions specifically for hybrid quantum-classical setups.
To that end, in October 2025, the company launched NVQLink, an interconnect that links quantum processors to GPUs for real-time error correction and hybrid workloads. Seventeen quantum hardware developers signed on, including IonQ and several of its competitors. CUDA-Q, Nvidia’s open-source hybrid programming platform, is the control surface for NVQLink.
The effect of this positioning is that every serious quantum program now needs racks of Blackwell GPUs alongside its qubits. Nvidia doesn’t have to pick a quantum winner to build hardware for, because they all already run on its hardware.
But, as good as that sounds, it won’t move the needle for Nvidia stock in the near term.
It generated $81.6 billion in revenue in the fiscal first quarter of 2027, with $75.2 billion of that sum from its data center segment. The entire quantum computing industry is thus, for Nvidia, mostly optionality that’s bolted onto a business already generating extraordinary sales and cash flow. It’s seeding the growth markets that it wants to sell to today at a small scale, and potentially at a much larger scale in the future.
Therefore, Nvidia is going to win in quantum computing, whether IonQ, D-Wave, one of their peers, or none of them end up solving their various major technical hurdles. It’s almost certainly a better purchase than either of the two pure plays, and it’s much lower-risk in comparison.
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Alex Carchidi has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends IonQ and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
