Fans of quantum computing stocks are no doubt familiar with quantum computing unit (QCU) maker Rigetti Computing (NASDAQ: RGTI). The quantum chipmaker has won several fans and seen its share price soar over the past year. But Rigetti’s stock is now trading more than 60% off its 2025 high, and it’s even given back all of the gains it’s made so far in 2026.
So is now a good time to buy this up-and-coming quantum computing stock?
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The quantum computing industry is still in its infancy. But that hasn’t stopped companies from jumping into it. Start-ups like Rigetti are competing with tech giants like Alphabet‘s Google and IBM to develop the tech that could become a commercially viable product.
Essentially, all these companies are trying to optimize their quantum computers on three separate metrics: speed, accuracy, and scale. Speed refers to the amount of time it takes a quantum system to manipulate a quantum particle at a “quantum gate,” and then to move it to the next gate and prepare it for its next computation.
Accuracy is commonly measured by “two-qubit gate fidelity,” and refers to the percentage of computations that are error-free within the system. Scale is the number of physical qubits in a quantum system. The difficulty for all quantum companies is that as scale and speed increase, accuracy tends to decrease.
It seems likely that the companies able to maximize their systems’ performance through a combination of speed, accuracy, and scale are most likely to be among quantum computing’s big winners. How does Rigetti compare to its rivals in this regard?
The speed of Rigetti’s systems is quite impressive. It claims that its 108-qubit system — roughly the largest-scale system available today — has achieved gate speeds of 50-70 nanoseconds. That’s incredibly fast.
But the median accuracy of that 108-qubit system is only 99% as measured by two-qubit gate fidelity. That may sound like a great rate, but in the world of quantum computing, differences of even 0.01% are significant.
The company’s smaller systems are more accurate, though. Its 36-qubit system has achieved two-qubit gate fidelity of 99.6%, and its 9-qubit system has reached 99.7%. The problem here is that rival IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) boasts that it has achieved 99.99% fidelity in a 100-qubit system. To be fair, though, IonQ’s systems, although much more accurate than Rigetti’s, are much slower.
