D-Wave CEO’s pitch to the Trump administration: Buy our quantum computers in exchange for an equity stake

Over the past few months, the biggest catalyst for quantum computing stocks has been the prospect of government support. This was nurtured by agreements between pure-play companies in the space and the likes of the Department of Energy and the Air Force Research Laboratory, and gained further traction when the US government highlighted quantum technology as an R&D budgetary priority for fiscal 2027.

But this narrative really kicked into high gear and reached its zenith on October 23, when The Wall Street Journal reported that the US government was in negotiations with several quantum computing companies about giving the US Commerce Department equity stakes in exchange for federal funding. That news was quickly seemingly contradicted by separate reporting from Reuters and Yahoo Finance.

We caught up with D-Wave Quantum CEO Dr. Alan Baratz on Wednesday following the release of Q3 earnings and asked him if the US government amassing an equity position was something he was actively pursuing, and if he wanted the government as a shareholder.

Here’s his response (emphasis added):

“So here’s my take on it. What I would like and think would be of real value to the US government is for them to purchase some of our quantum computers to use them in solving their hard defense problems, military logistics, equipment maintenance, missile placement. These quantum computers are capable of solving these hard optimizations today.

So I’d say to the US government, ‘Purchase some of our systems and we’ll give you some equity as a part of that deal.’ So I have no problem with the US government being an investor in D-Wave, an equity holder in D-Wave, but I don’t think it’s the best use of the taxpayer money for them to kind of provide free dollars to fund R&D when we’re well funded already to fund our R&D.

I want them to get something of value in return, not just equity in the company, but I want them to get products that they can actually use to solve their hard problems. So I want to give them value two ways: I want to give them value by delivering products that they can make use of to solve hard problems, and at the same time, give them some equity so they can benefit from upside in the company.”

D-Wave’s flagship annealing quantum computer system is the Advantage2, which it used to produce its “quantum supremacy” result, in which the computer determined what types of materials would make for good sensors and how to fine-tune those sensors, a task that it said would be time and energy prohibitive for a classical supercomputer. The company recently struck a €10 million deal with Swiss Quantum Technology to deploy one of these systems.

This year, the Trump administration has reached deals to receive an equity stake or warrants in companies considered to be operating in strategically important industries, including rare earths miners MP Materials (in July) and Lithium Americas (in October), and, most famously, chipmaker Intel.