Rigetti's Quantum Gamble: Investment Hype vs. Earnings Reality

So another press release from the quantum dream factory landed in my inbox this morning. I can almost smell the recycled air of the conference room where they drafted it, the faint scent of stale coffee and desperation. This time it's Rigetti, crowing about the "general availability" of its shiny new 36-qubit machine. Right on its heels, of course, was the real news: a fat new equity offering to keep the lights on.

Let's be real. In the world of quantum computing, the product isn't the computer; the product is the press release. The goal isn't to solve humanity's greatest problems; it's to solve the company's Q3 cash-flow problem.

They tell us progress is defined by "engineering advances," not short-term earnings. That’s a beautiful little piece of linguistic gymnastics, isn't it? It’s the corporate equivalent of a kid showing you a macaroni necklace and calling it fine art. You’re supposed to applaud the effort, not ask what it’s for. And God forbid you ask what it's worth.

This whole industry feels like a group of physicists who accidentally discovered how to print money, but only if they promise to one day build a god from silicon and superconductors. So they have 36 qubits now. Fantastic. What can it actually do? Can it figure out my 401(k)? Can it tell me which line at the grocery store is going to move fastest? Or is it just a very, very expensive toy for other physicists to play with?

The Quantum Money Machine

The announcement of the 36-qubit machine wasn't the main event. It was the opening act. The headliner was the equity offering. You see, you can’t just tell Wall Street, "Hey, give us a giant pile of cash so we can keep our very smart, very expensive employees from getting jobs at Google." No, you have to give them a story. You have to dangle a shiny object, a "36-qubit multi-chip quantum computer," and hope they're too mesmerized to notice you're picking their pockets.

Rigetti isn't alone, offcourse. The whole sector—IonQ, D-Wave, you name it—spent the better part of 2025 talking about "liquidity" and extending their "operational runway." Investing in Quantum: IONQ, Rigetti & D-Wave Ahead of Q3 2025 Earnings. "Runway" is another one of those great terms. It makes it sound like they're about to take off, soaring into a new era of computational supremacy.

The reality is less like a 747 and more like a car running on fumes on a desert highway. The "runway" is just the stretch of road you have left before you run out of gas and have to flag down the next passing venture capitalist for a siphon.

This is the central bargain of deep-tech investment. It's like funding a mission to Alpha Centauri. You pour in billions for decades. You get thrilling press releases about a new alloy for the ship's hull or a more efficient plasma conduit, and everyone celebrates the "engineering advance." But nobody's actually going anywhere for a hundred years, if ever. And the people who funded the start of the project will be long dead before it even leaves the solar system. Is that progress, or is it just a perpetual motion machine for burning cash?

What Are We Actually Buying Here?

Let’s talk about "general availability." For most of us, that phrase means you can go to a website, put in your credit card, and have something delivered to your door. In the quantum world, it means that if you are a research institution with a budget the size of a small country's GDP, you can now pay for access to their machine through the cloud. This is a bad idea. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a fundamentally dishonest framing of the situation.

It's not a product for sale; it's a lab experiment for rent. And we, the public, are expected to cheer this on as some monumental leap forward for humanity. Give me a break.

The truth is, nobody knows what a truly useful, fault-tolerant quantum computer will look like, or when it will arrive. We're still in the vacuum tube era of this technology. We're celebrating the invention of a single, fuzzy pixel on a screen that might one day, decades from now, be able to display a cat video. And every company in the race is screaming that their pixel is the fuzziest, most promising pixel of all.

Maybe I'm the crazy one. Maybe I'm just too cynical to appreciate the slow, methodical march of science. But when I see a company touting a scientific milestone in one breath and begging for more cash in the next, my brain ain't wired to see a visionary. I see a business model. A business model based on selling the future, because the present is, frankly, a bit of an expensive disappointment. They keep talking about changing the world, and I just think... how many stock offerings will that take?

The Hype Train Keeps on Rolling

So, what's the real story here? It's the same one we've seen a dozen times before, from the dot-com bubble to the crypto craze. The narrative is simple: we have a revolutionary technology that is just on the cusp of changing everything. It’s complicated, you wouldn’t understand it, but trust us—it’s the future. Now please, give us your money so we can continue our very important work.

The 36-qubit machine isn't the point. The next funding round is the point. The cycle will continue. In a year, it’ll be a 64-qubit machine, or a 128-qubit machine, attached to another, bigger equity offering. The numbers will go up, the promises will get grander, and the actual, practical use cases will remain stubbornly "five to ten years away." They always are. The destination is always just over the horizon. It's a beautiful, profitable, and perfectly self-sustaining mirage.