D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NASDAQ: QBTS) climbed roughly 5% in pre-market trading Wednesday as quantum-computing stocks rallied broadly, lifting the implied value of the Commerce Department’s 7.1 million-share position disclosed as of Sept. 9.
QBTS was trading at $18.39 as of 5:30 a.m. ET on Sept. 23, according to Public.com, up $0.83, or 4.73%, from Tuesday’s regular-session close of $17.56.
In tokenized markets, D-Wave Quantum Tokenized Stock (Ondo), or QBTSon, was trading at about $18.34, up 4.3% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
Using $18.39 as the reference price, the 7,095,721 D-Wave shares disclosed as Commerce-owned as of Sept. 9 would have an implied market value of about $130.49 million if still held in full. That would be roughly $30.49 million above their approximately $100 million issuance value, with QBTS trading 30.49% above the $14.093-per-share issuance price.
The calculation does not represent a realized government profit.
Quantum Stocks Rally as IonQ Leads The Sector
D-Wave’s pre-market strength came during a wider move across quantum-computing shares.
In pre-market trading, IonQ Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) climbed more than 12%, while D-Wave and Rigetti Computing each advanced more than 5%. IonQ’s move followed its announcement of an end-to-end real-time quantum error-correction decoder that the company said can operate on a single standard commercial CPU.
IonQ said its researchers tested the decoder on benchmark circuits simulating as many as 408 logical qubits and more than 31.5 million quantum operations, with processing overhead as low as 0.02% under standard operating-noise conditions.
Commerce’s Disclosed Position Revalues as QBTS Rises
The share issuance was part of D-Wave’s definitive agreement with the Commerce Department under the CHIPS and Science Act.
D-Wave entered into the underlying award agreement on Sept. 4. Commerce agreed to provide up to $100 million for advanced microelectronics research and development involving quantum technology, including work on components, systems, and prototypes intended to scale D-Wave’s annealing and gate-model superconducting quantum-computing platforms.
Four days later, D-Wave entered into a Securities Issuance Agreement and issued the shares to Commerce. The company said the issuance price was derived from the lowest closing price across three specified dates tied to the award process, with a 15% discount applied.
The Sept. 10 prospectus listed Commerce as beneficially owning the shares as of Sept. 9, representing about 1.9% of the 379,626,628 common shares then outstanding, including exchangeable shares.
D-Wave also disclosed that the shares, although held by a U.S. government entity, generally do not carry voting rights except on certain fundamental corporate matters.
Resale Filing Allows Potential Sales; Sept. 23 Holdings Are Not Disclosed
The Sept. 10 filing registers up to the Commerce Department’s full 7,095,721-share position for potential resale.
D-Wave states that the selling stockholder may sell “any, all or none” of the registered shares and that the company does not know if, when, or in what amounts Commerce may sell them. D-Wave would receive no proceeds from any such resale.
There are also contractual limits on transfers. Without D-Wave’s consent, the number of shares Commerce can transfer is tied to the proportion of the $100 million award that D-Wave has actually withdrawn, net of funds returned.
Specifically, the award is milestone-based. D-Wave said an initial tranche of $53.55 million would become available shortly after the award date, followed by additional tranches of $9.075 million, $16.695 million, $20.39 million and $287,380 tied to project milestones involving equipment installation, quantum-processor fabrication, process integration, and system calibration and benchmarking.
D-Wave said in its Sept. 9 8-K/A that issuing shares to Commerce diluted existing stockholders. Its Sept. 10 prospectus also warned that future sales, or the perception of future sales, including sales by the selling stockholder, could depress its common-stock price and impair its ability to raise capital through additional equity offerings.
D-Wave Also Announces CGI Partnership
Separately, D-Wave had company-specific news Wednesday. CGI said at 6:30 a.m. ET that it entered a strategic partnership with D-Wave aimed at enterprise quantum applications in logistics, transportation and retail.
CGI plans to integrate access to D-Wave’s Advantage2 system and hybrid solvers into its technology-services portfolio.
The announcement came after QBTS had already been up 4.73% at the 5:30 a.m. ET price snapshot, meaning the release did not account for that earlier pre-market gain. Available information did not establish whether the partnership affected subsequent pre-market trading.
D-Wave has also said it plans to appear at Quantum World Congress, which runs Sept. 23-25, where the company expects to present customer applications and updates on its gate-model architecture.
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