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Rigetti Computing ( RGTI -0.53% ) generated $7.1 million of revenue in all of 2025. So a prediction that the quantum computing specialist tops $50 million a year before 2029 calls for the business to grow about sevenfold in three years. I think it happens.
Revenue through June was $9.5 million, up 191% year over year and more than the company collected in all of last year. And on Tuesday, Rigetti said it had signed a definitive agreement with the U.S. Commerce Department for an award of up to $100 million of research and development (R&D) funding.
The operating loss is growing alongside the revenue, however, and it is many times larger. Image source: The Motley Fool. A flipped revenue mix A year ago, most of Rigetti's revenue came from collaborative research -- development work funded by governments and partners.
That mix has flipped. Sales of quantum computers and components brought in $7.1 million through June, a line that was zero in last year's first half. Total revenue in the second quarter came to $5.1 million, up 185% year over year.
Collaborative research and professional services revenue went the other way, falling 26% through June to $2.3 million. And selling access to its machines over the cloud remains a tiny business for now. The hardware is more profitable, too.
Gross margin reached 43% in the second quarter, up from 31% in the year-ago quarter. And the biggest delivery is still ahead. Rigetti's $8.4 million order from India's Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) for a 108-qubit system is expected to become revenue in the fourth quarter, after installation and acceptance testing.
That single order is bigger than Rigetti's entire 2025 revenue. Management has targeted three system deliveries for 2026 (two of its 9-qubit Novera machines plus the C-DAC unit) and said in August it remains on track. If that delivery lands on schedule, the fourth quarter could carry nearly half of the full year's revenue, and 2026 may finish around triple 2025's total.
What has to ship to reach $50 million? If 2026 lands near $20 million, reaching $50 million by 2028 would require the top line to grow close to 60% a year for two years -- slower than the company is growing now, but off a much bigger base. At the India order's pricing, $50 million a year is about six 108-qubit-class machines.
At Novera pricing (two earlier orders totaled $5.7 million), it would take far more units. The likely path is a mix: a few large systems for national programs, a steadier stream of Noveras for universities and labs, and research contracts underneath. On last month's earnings call, CEO Subodh Kulkarni named recent Novera wins including the University of Saskatchewan and the research arm of a large Japanese conglomerate.
Rigetti is also working with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center on a $5 million National Science Foundation-funded testbed pairing a Novera with HPE's high-performance computers, with full operations expected in 2027. The dollars there are modest, but each deployment plants a Rigetti machine at an institution that could later buy a bigger one. The current flagship, the 108-qubit Cepheus-1-108Q, became generally available in April, and Kulkarni said the company's objective remains about 1,000 qubits in about three years.
The new award is pointed at exactly that kind of work. Notably, the money is R&D funding, not product orders, and it arrives in three parts, with the later two tied to milestones. The government also takes a minority stake in Rigetti as part of the deal.
The risk, I'd argue, is timing more than demand. Rigetti books the C-DAC sale only when the machine is installed and accepted. So one slipped delivery can push a big share of a year's revenue into the next one.
The operating loss is widening, too The growth is nowhere near covering the company's spending. Second-quarter gross profit was $2.2 million, while R&D expense alone was $20.7 million. The quarter's operating loss reached $28.1 million, an $8.2 million increase from the year-ago period -- bigger than the revenue gain over the same stretch.
Of course, the tech company can afford this for a long while. Cash and investments stood at $541 million at midyear, giving it years of runway at this pace. Premium Feature Moneyball Superscore 52 /100 Today's Change ( -0.53 %) $ -0.08 Current Price $ 15.16 Ultimately, I expect the revenue side of this story to deliver.
I think annual sales clear $50 million before 2029. The stock is a different matter. From a 52-week high of $58.15, the growth stock has dropped about 74%, to around $15 as of this writing.
Even so, Rigetti is still valued at about $5.2 billion. That is about 100 times the sales figure I am predicting for 2028, a valuation that already assumes those deliveries happen, and then some. I would avoid buying shares here.
Source: The Motley Fool
