Motley Fool says limit or avoid buying Rigetti stock, citing financial condition

Until the financial condition of Rigetti Computing "improves significantly," investors should limit themselves to speculative buys or avoid the stock completely, Motley Fool contributor Will Healy argues in a new article.

In 2025, the company’s revenue fell 35% to $7 million amid a pause in the reauthorization of a government contract and delays in the launch of its Cepheus-1-108Q quantum system, Healy says. Rigetti had planned to begin sales by the end of 2025 but said in January that the timeline would be pushed back to allow more time to improve system accuracy. As a result, sales only began in April.

The company’s high operating costs led to a 7.6% increase in the net loss in 2025 to $216.2 million, the Motley Fool analyst continues.

Investor optimism could be supported by Wall Street’s favorable revenue outlook: analysts expect revenue to grow 219% in 2026 and 103% in 2027, Healy says. However, this is unlikely to lead to profitability or even positive free cash flow, the Motley Fool article says.

Healy also draws attention to the stock’s performance in 2025: in October, shares were 2.8 times the level they traded at in January last year. One of the drivers at the time was a report by the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. government was in talks to take stakes in several quantum companies in exchange for federal funding. By the end of December, Rigetti shares had given back almost all of those gains, including due to delays in the launch of the new quantum system. In April this year, when the company announced its release, the stock jumped again.

The analyst concludes that share performance is largely driven by investor sentiment, which makes the stock speculative. He therefore advises investors to avoid Rigetti shares for now or buy them only for speculative purposes.

Rigetti develops quantum computers. The company uses a chiplet-based approach, combining multiple chiplets instead of building a single large monolithic chip with greater processing power, Healy writes.

In April, the company announced the launch of the Cepheus-1-108Q system, which it describes as the largest in the industry and the most powerful in its lineup by qubit count – the smallest unit of information in a quantum computer. After improvements, two-qubit gate fidelity – a key measure of computational quality – stands at 99.1%, and the company expects to increase it to 99.5% by the end of the year, Rigetti says.

Since the start of the year, Rigetti shares have fallen 25% to $16.60 per share. Wall Street takes a generally positive view of the stock's prospects, however: it has 10 “buy” ratings, three “hold,” and one “sell.” The average target price of $31 per share implies nearly 87% upside versus the Friday close.