Let's get one thing straight. When a company's big win is that they lost less money than the geniuses on Wall Street predicted, you're not looking at a healthy business. You're looking at a patient who's bleeding out a little slower than the doctor thought.
This is the story of Rigetti Computing. Their latest quarterly report is a masterclass in corporate doublespeak. They missed revenue targets, bringing in a paltry $1.9 million when the suits expected $2.17 million. That's not a rounding error; it's a miss. And sales are down from last year. But hey, don't worry! Their earnings per share loss was only $0.03 instead of the expected $0.05.
RGTI Earnings: Rigetti Computing Posts Mixed Financial Results
Pop the champagne, I guess? We're celebrating a company for being slightly less unprofitable while its actual sales shrink. This is the kind of logic that only makes sense in the zero-gravity fantasyland of speculative tech stocks, where fundamentals are just a quaint suggestion.
The Quantum Shell Game
The whole quantum computing space feels like a high-stakes shell game, and Rigetti is one of the star players. The stock is up a staggering 117% this year. It more than tripled in a six-week fever dream this fall, rocketing to over $56 a share before crashing back down to reality in the low $30s. What was this meteoric rise based on? Not sales, not profits, not a breakthrough product you can actually use. It was based on whispers, rumors of government money, and a desperate hunger for the "next big thing."
This is a business model built on a narrative. It's like selling blueprints for a time machine. The blueprints might be fascinating, the physics might be groundbreaking, but you can't actually sell the time machine yet. You're just selling the idea of the time machine. Rigetti isn't selling computing power; it's selling a lottery ticket on the future.
So when CEO Dr. Subodh Kulkarni talks about "strong momentum," I have to ask: momentum in what, exactly? Press release production? Generating analyst reports? Because it sure as hell ain't in revenue growth. He says they're seeing demand for their on-premises computers. Okay, how much demand? Enough to generate a measly $1.9 million? Give me a break. This isn't momentum; it's the gentle coasting of a car that ran out of gas a mile back.
The stock market's reaction tells the real story. Down 2% after hours. The air is leaking out of the balloon because hype, unlike energy, cannot be created or destroyed—it just gets transferred to the next shiny object. And right now, the shine is wearing off.
A Roadmap to Neverland
Offcourse, the real product isn't the current hardware. It's the "roadmap." Rigetti expects a 150-plus qubit system by 2026 and a 1,000-plus qubit system by 2027. These are impressive-sounding numbers designed to make your eyes glaze over and distract you from the current balance sheet. It's always two or three years away. The promise of a functional, commercially viable quantum computer is a horizon that just keeps receding the closer we get to it.
This whole thing reminds me of those insane Kickstarter projects for some "revolutionary" new gadget that raises millions and then just...fizzles out. They send you updates for years about "supply chain issues" and "retooling" but the product never ships. Rigetti is a publicly traded Kickstarter campaign.
And what do these future machines even do? What specific, money-making problem does a 1,000-qubit machine solve that justifies this valuation? The answer is always a vague hand-wave about drug discovery or materials science. It’s a solution in search of a profitable problem. I mean, are we really supposed to believe that these timelines are anything more than targets to keep investors from stampeding for the exits?
The analyst ratings are the final punchline. A "Moderate Buy" consensus where the average price target is actually below the current stock price. This is a bad idea. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is Wall Street-grade cowardice. It's the institutional equivalent of shrugging your shoulders. It translates to: "We have absolutely no clue if this is real, but we don't want to look stupid if it is, so... 'buy,' I guess?" It ain't a vote of confidence.
So, We're Just Pretending, Right?
Let's stop kidding ourselves. Rigetti isn't being judged as a real company with a real product and real customers. It's a publicly funded R&D project wrapped in a ticker symbol. Its value isn't tied to its income statement; it's tied to a collective sci-fi dream we've all agreed to believe in for a little while. The numbers aren't "mixed." They're bad. Less revenue and continued losses are objectively bad. We're just grading on a curve so steep it's a circle. The whole thing is propped up by the hope that one day, years from now, they might stumble upon something that changes the world. And maybe they will. But buying this stock today isn't an investment; it's a prayer.
