Julich Research Center Inaugurates Europe's First 5,000+ Qubit Quantum Computer

The Advantage quantum computer, the predecessor to D-Wave’s new system (Lukas Schulze/Getty Images)

Ride the Wave

D-Wave Quantum jumps as its breakthrough computing system hits the market

D-Wave’s Advantage2 system, used to produce its “quantum supremacy” scientific breakthrough, is now available as a service and for sale.

Luke Kawa

5/20/25 8:10AM

Shares of D-Wave Quantum are soaring premarket after announcing that its Advantage2 quantum computing system is ready for prime time.

The new model can now be accessed by customers as part of D-Wave’s “quantum computing as a service” business as well as for on-site installation.

What’s special about this quantum computer? Well, for starters, D-Wave used the prototype of this system to produce its “quantum supremacy” result, in which it solved a practical business problem — determining what types of magnetic materials could make good sensors and how to make them the most sensitive sensors they can be — that would be energy- and time-prohibitive for a classical supercomputer to do.

Given that sensors are used in medical imaging, electrical networks, motors, and more, this wasn’t the case of solving a ridiculously complicated math equation that has little applicability to any real-world value, but something with potential commercial implications.

D-Wave’s revenue profile has been quite lumpy because system sales bring in so much more than its professional services or QCaaS business lines based on the current volume of customers and their computing needs. Its Q1 revenues spiked thanks to the sale of a system to a German supercomputing center. Because there are only so many supercomputing centers, hyperscalers offer a potential new avenue to really move the needle on overall sales. D-Wave CEO Dr. Alan Baratz is eager for his firm’s quantum systems to be used to add speed and efficiency to an AI boom that has hundreds of billions in capex behind it.

“We’re doing some very interesting work in how you can use the quantum computer together with classical to do AI model training and inference faster and with less electricity consumption,” he said in an interview with Sherwood News earlier this month. “Those are system sales opportunities.”

GO DEEPER: D-Wave CEO says recent tech breakthrough is bolstering its sales momentum.

As to how this compares to D-Wave’s prior system:

“It’s always about increasing all three: qubits and connectivity, coherence time, and energy scale,” Baratz told us in late March. “In going from Advantage to Advantage2, we went from degree 15 on connectivity to degree 20, we went to double the coherence time, and we went to 40% greater energy scale, so we improved on all three of those.”

Matt Phillips37m

Intel sinks on news it will hang on to networking unit

Intel dropped in early trading Thursday after it disclosed plans to retain ownership of its networking unit following a strategic review of operations.

The unit, known as NEX, makes products like infrastructure processors, which do needed “housekeeping” tasks like running security checks, thereby freeing core Intel CPUs to do the higher-value operations. It also produces switches and controllers that manage and direct the flow of data to CPUs.

Intel Shelves Plans to Sell Networking Division After Review

Luke Kawa48m

Quantum computing stocks soar on return of bullish options bets

The calendar says December, but the price action is starting to look a lot more like September to me:

Quantum computing companies IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum are all up at least 7% as of 11:04 a.m. ET, buoyed by a wave of bullish options activity.

Nearly 50,000 calls in IonQ have already changed hands, well above the 20-day average for a full session, with activity concentrated in strikes from $50 to $55 in contracts that expire between Friday and mid-January. Its put/call ratio is near 0.2, versus an average of over 1 for the past 20 sessions.
More than 65,000 calls have traded in Rigetti, a hair shy of its full 20-day average. Like IonQ, options activity has a bullish tilt, with a put/call ratio of about 0.7 versus a 20-day average of roughly 1.2.
D-Wave, which received positive commentary from Evercore ISI on Wednesday, isn’t seeing call activity as elevated as its peers, but the options action is also very skewed toward the bull side, with a put/call ratio of less than 0.3 versus a 20-session average of 0.7.

Pure-play quantum computing stocks nearly doubled from late August to late September amid heavy options market activity thanks to reports on government support for the sector, M&A activity, tech breakthroughs, and a flurry of price target hikes by Wall Street.

Luke Kawa

Retail traders are killing it this year because of both what they’re buying and when they bought it

Buy the dip. Buy AI. Buy gold.

J. Edward Moreno2h

Hims announces acquisition of Canadian telehealth firm Livewell

Hims & Hers rose in early trading after it announced its acquisition of Livewell, a Canadian telehealth company, marking its official entrance to that market.

The company announced in July that it would expand into Canada by 2026, taking advantage of the patent expiry for semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster GLP-1s, Ozempic and Wegovy. Hims said Thursday that it would do that through an all-cash acquisition of Livewell.

Novo’s patent on semaglutide is set to expire in Canada in January. It would be the first time generics for the blockbuster GLP-1 drugs are available anywhere, and generic drugmaker Sandoz International has already announced plans to make copies of the drug. In the US, Hims sells copycat versions of Novo’s drugs, which has led to conflict between the companies.

On Wednesday, Hims announced that it would purchase YourBio, a device that uses “bladeless microneedles thinner than an eyelash” to collect blood samples, in another all-cash deal. According to its latest quarterly filing, the company had $345.8 million in cash and cash equivalents.

Luke Kawa4h

Symbiotic tanks as company and SoftBank, its largest shareholder, announce offering of 10 million shares

Symbiotic was among the robotics companies that popped on Wednesday, gaining nearly 10% on the news that the Trump administration was on the precipice of a major push to support the industry.

So naturally, management thinks it’s a good time to sell shares — and its largest shareholder, SoftBank, agrees.

After the close on Wednesday, management announced an offering of 10 million shares, with 6.5 million of that as a primary offering from the company to raise money for general corporate purposes, and 3.5 million from a secondary sale by SoftBank, which owns over one-third of its shares.

The stock cratered on the announcement, giving back all of its one-day gains and then some.

Symbiotic went public in 2022 through a SPAC merger with a SoftBank-backed affiliate.

In October, SoftBank sold its entire $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia to meet an upcoming payment to OpenAI to finance its equity position in the company. Since SoftBank is slated to pay the ChatGPT maker more than $20 billion this month, it would appear that this is another step toward raising the needed cash for that position.

We’ll see if this divestment makes SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son cry.