Quantum computing stocks have not moved in three months, even after the best news the industry has ever received. Google’s chief executive said quantum computing is at the same stage artificial intelligence was five years before AI stock prices took off.

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Good Quantum Computing Stocks: Felix Prehn’s Picks 2026

Felix Prehn, an economist and former investment banker, ranks the stocks he believes are worth watching now, sorted from safest to riskiest.

Key Takeaways

• Felix Prehn sorts quantum computing stocks into three risk tiers, from safest to riskiest.
• Quantum computing stocks stayed flat despite the best news the sector has ever had.
• Google, Oracle, and the US government just proved quantum computing is becoming real business.
• A new quantum computing chip design solves the technology’s biggest error problem.
• The quantum computing market could grow toward $850 billion over the next 15 years.

The Best Quantum Computing Stocks Right Now

Good quantum computing stocks are divided into three risk tiers, according to Felix Prehn. The split depends on how much could be lost at each level.

Tier one covers the safer, established companies. IBM received a billion dollars from the US government and is putting another billion of company money into a factory in Albany, New York, one that will build quantum computing chips at scale. It also bought HRL, a lab working on a chip design meant to cut down errors, something covered in more detail further down the page. Google, for its part, built the Willow chip that kicked off the current wave of quantum computing progress, and it continues spending heavily on quantum research through Google Cloud even as its main business keeps growing independently. Honeywell International has a majority stake in Quantinuum, a quantum computing company, so buying Honeywell shares gives investors a way into quantum exposure without betting everything on a company that has not proven itself yet.

Tier two covers pure play quantum computing companies that already bring in real revenue. IonQ pulled in $80 million last quarter, a 287% jump from the year before, and it still has close to $500 million in orders waiting to be filled. Rigetti Computing keeps growing its revenue and inching closer to breaking even, and unlike some competitors, it manufactures chips in-house. Felix Prehn is waiting for Rigetti’s stock price to climb back above $20 before he buys in.

Tier three covers the riskiest picks, the ones that could pay off big or lose big. Infleqtion took in $100 million from the government and builds its quantum hardware using a method that differs from IBM’s, Google’s, and IonQ’s. Xanadu builds its processors using light, rather than the tiny trapped particles most other companies rely on. It only listed on the stock market in March, and its revenue has already grown four times over since then. D-Wave Quantum, once one of Felix Prehn’s top picks, has slipped down to a smaller position on the list, and its stock, like the others here, has barely moved in three months, which the next section explains in full.

Tier three names carry real risk, the kind that could wipe out most of an investment fast, so Felix Prehn treats them as small side bets rather than a core holding.

Why Quantum Computing Stock Prices Stayed Flat For Long

The so-called good quantum computing stocks have barely moved in three months. IonQ dropped 2%. D-Wave Quantum rose by 2%. Rigetti Computing went up 6%. Every single company named here is still 45% to 70% below where it traded last October, so on paper, recent performance looks poor even with all the good news breaking around it.

Quantum computing stocks went through a wild stretch last year. They rose 800% to 1,000% in a matter of months, then fell 70% from prior highs. Such steep drops tend to scare investors off an entire industry, regardless of any good news they hear later.

New technology tends to follow a pattern that repeats itself more often than people expect. It shows up, prices shoot past what the business is actually worth, then prices crash, and everyone declares the whole idea terrible.

Railways went through it. So did the internet, which fell 90% at its lowest point before eventually going on to run a huge share of the world’s economy. Quantum computing stocks, so far, look like they might be following the same script.

What Changed For Quantum Computing Recently

Four things happened in the last three months, and together they explain why Felix Prehn now believes quantum computing has crossed over from an idea people were speculating on into an actual business, one that makes real money from paying customers.

Google’s chief executive compared quantum computing to early artificial intelligence. He said quantum computing today is roughly where artificial intelligence was five years before AI stock prices took off and adoption spread. The comparison carries some weight, mostly because it is coming from the company behind Willow, the chip that started the wave of progress in the first place.

Oracle placed a working quantum machine inside a real cloud data center. On August 11, Oracle and Quantinuum announced a deal to install a system called Helios inside one of Oracle’s US data centers. The system operates on 98 trapped ion qubits, meaning it stores and processes information using charged atoms kept in place by magnetic fields, rather than the electrical switches found in a normal computer chip. It draws just 60 kilowatts of power, compared to the 16,000 to 39,000 kilowatts a typical supercomputer needs. Electricity has become one of the biggest costs in running large computing systems, so a machine using far less power tends to get noticed by every major cloud company watching.

The US government bought stakes in nine quantum computing companies. Back in May, it put close to $2 billion into the nine companies and bought actual ownership shares instead of simply handing out grants. IBM alone received $1 billion. D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and several others each got close to $100 million. Such a move signals something clear: the government now treats quantum computing as a technology worth having a stake in, not just something to fund from the sidelines.

IonQ posted real revenue growth. Its latest earnings report showed $80 million in quarterly sales, up 287% from a year earlier, with roughly $500 million in orders still lined up. More than half of IonQ’s business now comes from outside the United States, and 60% comes from ordinary companies paying for it, not from government contracts.

Taken together, the four events show quantum computing is pulling in real money and real customers. What they do not settle, though, is whether the hardware itself works well enough yet to justify all the money.

The Chip Design Fixing Quantum Errors

Quantum computers process information using qubits, tiny units that can have two different states at once, unlike a regular computer, which only ever works with a one or a zero. The same trait that gives qubits their power also makes them fragile, and the fragility is exactly why quantum computers tend to make more mistakes than a normal computer chip.

For years, the technology faced one main criticism: bigger chips kept producing worse error rates, which made it look like a quantum computer could never get bigger and better at the same time. Google’s Willow chip flipped the pattern on its head. As researchers made the chip bigger, the error rate fell instead of climbing, which counts as a genuinely huge step forward in solving quantum computing’s error correction problem.

A lab called HRL took a different route entirely and built something called a spin qubit, a design that uses the natural spin of tiny particles rather than trapped atoms or light, and it managed to reach an error rate around 0.02%. IBM bought HRL not long after the breakthrough. Spin qubits matter for a simple reason: manufacturers can build them using the same equipment already used to make chips for ordinary phones and computers.

Most other quantum computing approaches, including the trapped ion qubits Oracle just installed, need equipment cooled to temperatures colder than deep space, which drives up cost and makes scaling a real headache. Spin qubits sidestep the cooling problem entirely, which is what turns quantum hardware from a lab curiosity into something factories could eventually produce in large numbers.

The cooling advantage is also why IBM’s factory in Albany, New York matters so much. A chip that manufacturers can build on ordinary equipment is a chip that can reach the scale real businesses need.

So the hardware itself now seems to work well enough to run inside a real data center, and the Oracle deal proves it. Market size, though, is still a separate question, one that decides whether all of it matters.

How Big Quantum Computing Could Grow

One forecast puts the quantum computing market at $850 billion, growing around 30% a year for 15 years straight. Steady, compounding growth at that pace adds up fast, which is part of why the US government, along with tech giants like Google and Oracle, is putting real resources behind quantum computing now instead of waiting to see how things play out.

The industry already has government money behind it, some of the largest technology companies in the world building on top of it, and paying customers using what it produces. The technology works well enough today that a company as cautious as Oracle is willing to install it inside data centers people rely on every day.

Still, a market worth $850 billion only ends up benefiting an investor who keeps the gains, and plenty of quantum computing investors have not managed it.

The Selling Mistake That Erased Gains

Picking good quantum computing stocks only solved half the problem last year. Felix Prehn’s original picks gained as much as 1,000%, and yet a lot of the people who bought them still ended up losing money. The reason has nothing to do with which stocks got picked and everything to do with when someone finally decided to sell.

A $10,000 investment that grew to $115,000 later took a hard hit once the sector turned and prices fell back from their peak. Most buyers never got in at the start of the run. Many instead bought in near the top, caught up in the excitement, and are now sitting on steep losses despite the original pick having been the right one all along.

The pattern keeps happening because most investors never set a rule for when to sell in the first place. They watch a stock climb, keep waiting for just a little more, and then the price drops back down before they act, and the gain shrinks or disappears while they hesitate.

Felix Prehn’s Free Quantum Research Tools

Felix Prehn put together a full research report covering every company named above, complete with the numbers, charts, and price targets behind each pick, and it is free to download at the link below.

He also built the Winston Stock App, which pulls up the same data he personally uses to evaluate quantum computing companies: revenue growth, cash reserves, insider buying activity, market cap, and analyst sentiment, all in one place. A 30-day free trial is available for anyone who wants to try it.

And for the selling problem described above, Felix Prehn runs a live seminar called When to Sell, which walks through the same rules used on Wall Street for exiting a position at the right time. It is free, hosted on Zoom, and open to people across the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is IonQ developing quantum hardware beyond its own chips?

IonQ bought SkyWater, a chip factory, and Nexus, a light-based quantum technology business, giving it more control over hardware development rather than depending on outside suppliers.

Does Rigetti Computing have research partnerships outside the United States, and who is its parent company?

Rigetti Computing has research partnerships in Taiwan and the United Kingdom. It operates independently and focuses only on quantum computing, so it has no parent company.

What does Infleqtion’s quantum systems business do?

Infleqtion builds quantum systems for navigation and timing, sold mostly to defense customers who are already using the products today, not years down the line.

Are Quantum Computing Inc or Cambridge Quantum Computing among Felix Prehn’s picks?

No. Felix Prehn’s picks are IBM, Google, Honeywell International, IonQ, Rigetti Computing, Infleqtion, Xanadu, and D-Wave Quantum.

Do quantum computers rely on quantum physics, quantum mechanics, or machine learning?

Quantum computers draw on ideas from quantum physics and quantum mechanics to work the way they do. What a qubit is gets explained in the section above, though machine learning is not something the article gets into.

When will practical quantum computing solve real world problems with real practical applications?

Where quantum computing is already being used today is covered in the sections above. Wider, everyday use still looks to be years away.

Can quantum computing help with drug discovery, materials science, or complex optimization problems?

The article sticks to stocks, hardware, and revenue, so drug discovery and materials science fall outside what it covers. D-Wave Quantum’s method, though, is built for certain kinds of tricky math and scheduling problems.

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Video published on August 14, 2026

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