Friday, September 25, 2026 · 06:30 ET

All Signal. Zero Noise.

Quantum computing had its loudest day in weeks. IonQ jumped 5.74% to $44.98 after confirming a real-time error-correction breakthrough and a new partnership installing its Superion 256 system at Nvidia’s Accelerated Quantum Research Center. D-Wave (QBTS) added 3.99% to $17.48 on fresh CHIPS Act funding plus commercial deployments with AT&T and NTT DOCOMO. Rigetti (RGTI) rose 3.09% to $16.50 on a new HPE-backed testbed partnership. IBM — the group’s one profitable incumbent — fell 2.45% to $227.06. The tape rewarded commercial proof points, not brand names.

Here’s the tell: three trading days ago, this same cohort was the subject of an $895 million insider-selling warning, with IonQ, Rigetti and D-Wave insiders net sellers against price-to-sales multiples running from 56x to nearly 500x. None of that slowed today’s buying.

It wasn’t isolated, either. Space names ran hot (Rocket Lab +4.69%, AST SpaceMobile +1.80%, Virgin Galactic +2.56%), alongside pops in Recursion Pharmaceuticals (+5.14%) and Hims & Hers (+3.13%). Defense primes (RTX -1.86%, NOC -1.06%) and gold miners (NEM -1.82%) both slipped. This was a risk-on rotation day — money moved out of quality and into story stocks, and quantum was simply where the story was loudest.

IONQ $44.98 (+5.74%) — A validated error-correction milestone plus an Nvidia tie-up gave the sector’s most-watched pure play its best catalyst in months, even as skeptics call the 37x forward-sales multiple ahead of itself.

QBTS $17.48 (+3.99%) — CHIPS Act funding and live deployments with AT&T and NTT DOCOMO are the revenue-adjacent proof points this group has lacked; the stock still carries the group’s richest valuation.

RKLB $73.61 (+4.69%) — Space held its bid on operational cadence (96th Electron launch this month) rather than a single headline, a steadier kind of momentum than the quantum names are running on.

IONQ · QBTS · RGTI · IBM · RXRX · HIMS · RKLB · ASTS · LUNR · SPCE · URA · AMD

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