What Happened?
On , D-Wave Quantum announced its financial results for the Q1 2025 quarter ending March 31, 2025. See its press release for the full details.
The Numbers
By almost any measurement, D-Wave had an excellent quarter.
Given our discussion about Net Income (Loss) and derivative warrant liabilities in our Q4 and FY 2024 Rigetti Computing earnings report, we will ignore D-Wave’s net loss for this quarter compared to Q4 2024. Operating expenses are creeping up, but it’s hard to complain about those given the 500+% quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year improvement in revenue.
As a senior vice president at IBM once told me, “Congratulations on this quarter, you had better do it again next quarter.”
D-Wave Quantum GAAP Quarterly Financial Results
| Q1 2025 | Q4 2024 | Q/Q | Q1 2024 | Y/Y | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue ($M) | 15.001 | 2.309 | ↑ 549.7 % | 2.465 | ↑ 508.6 % |
| Operating Expenses ($M) | 25.168 | 21.705 | ↑ 16.0 % | 19.175 | ↑ 31.3 % |
| Research & Development ($M) | 10.288 | 9.752 | ↑ 5.5 % | 8.525 | ↑ 20.7 % |
| Net Income (Loss) ($M) | (5.421) | (86.077) | ↓ 93.7 % | (17.312) | ↓ 68.7 % |
| Diluted Earnings (Loss) Per Share ($) | (0.02) | (0.37) | ↓ 94.6 % | (0.11) | ↓ 81.8 % |
The Charts
Figures 1 through 3 show the important metrics. Returning to the net loss number, note that it is better than at any time in the last two years. Is the company on the brink of getting above that thick gray line at $0 in Figure 1?
The company continues to increase its R&D spending, which I always like to see in companies at the early stages of new technologies. D-Wave itself is not new, having been founded in 1999.
Like IonQ, D-Wave has been selling stock to increase its cash on hand. This gives them a nice cushion to continue doing business for several more years, even if revenue does not maintain current levels or improve.
Additional Thoughts
We are now tracking 82 quantum computing companies. One way to distinguish them is by their paradigms, the hardware and software control and programming models used to implement algorithms and build applications. 
Most people who have studied quantum coding are familiar with the digital paradigm. This uses the gate and circuit model explored in most books, including Dancing with Qubits, Second Edition. The analog paradigm is more physics-based in its programming approach. By far, the digital paradigm is the most common and the annealing paradigm the least. D-Wave and NEC (to a much smaller extent) work with the annealing paradigm.
Of all the wonderful things D-Wave said about itself in its earnings report, and note that this is standard practice, this is the one that I thought was the most important beyond the strong financials:
Introduced new hybrid quantum solver capabilities and additional use cases designed to drive usage of the Company’s quantum optimization offering. Enhancements to the nonlinear hybrid quantum solver include the ability to support continuous variables with linear interactions, thus enabling new use cases such as budget allocation and resource distribution. The Company’s expanded collection of optimization use cases also now includes offer allocation, portfolio optimization and maintenance repair operations optimization.
We would advise the company to do the following:
- Stop obsessing over being quantum in all your messaging. Your annealing model is in the tiny minority of paradigms that other vendors are working on. You need to prove you offer value and not that they are wrong.
- Put your use cases, especially optimization, front and center much more often, and don’t constantly say ” quantum.” Substitute “D-Wave” instead. As we discussed in a newsletter in April, you are competing against all the classical approaches for optimization. Great, maybe you are better. Keep proving it.
- It seems that a week rarely passes without someone claiming to have demonstrated some form of quantum advantage or supremacy. It’s boring, and it isn’t very meaningful to most people. It can also be controversial, as many companies have found out, including yourselves. Let your “practical use case superiority, whether it is quantum or not,” shine through, and not try to claim something for the history books. You want business success and not other supremacy distractions.
Nobody is buying your offerings because they contain the word “quantum,” or at least I hope so. They buy them because your products can do something the users care about better than any other approach.
Conclusion
Great quarter, keep doing it, and push use case supremacy over quantumness.
Company Profile
Company
Contact Email: sales@dwavesys.com
Contact Phone: +16046301428
Year Founded
1999
Date Went Public
August 8, 2022
Headquarters
3033 Beta Avenue, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5G 4M9, Canada
Company Description
Generated by Perplexity on May 7, 2025
D-Wave is a quantum computing company specializing in quantum annealing technology, which uses quantum fluctuations to find optimal solutions to complex problems. Its systems are designed as specialized quantum annealers rather than universal gate-model quantum computers. The company provides quantum computing hardware, cloud services, software tools, and professional support for building quantum applications. D-Wave has developed multiple generations of quantum processors, including the Advantage system, accessible via its Leap quantum cloud service. It is recognized for delivering practical quantum computing solutions that are commercially available today.
Senior Leadership
- Alan Baratz, Chief Executive Officer
- John Markovich, Chief Financial Officer
- Lorenzo Martinelli, Chief Revenue Officer
- Trevor Lanting, Chief Development Officer
- Sophie Ames, Chief Human Resources Officer
- Diane Thi Dong Quan Nguyen, General Counsel
- Allison Schwartz, Vice President of Global Government Relations and Public Affairs
Selected Recent News and Announcements
- April 23, 2025 – D-Wave and Davidson Technologies Near Installation Completion of Alabama’s First On-Site Annealing Quantum Computer
- March 31, 2025 – Japan Tobacco and D-Wave Announce Quantum Proof-of-Concept Outperforms Classical Results for LLM Training in Drug Discovery
- March 31, 2025 – In Production: Ford Otosan Deploys Vehicle Manufacturing Application Built with D-Wave Technology
- March 31, 2025 – D-Wave Highlights Quantum Optimization Customer Growth and Introduces Expanded Offering to Accelerate Adoption and Deployment
- March 20, 2025 – D-Wave Introduces Quantum Blockchain Architecture, Featuring Enhanced Security and Efficiency over Classical Computing
- March 12, 2025 – Beyond Classical: D-Wave First to Demonstrate Quantum Supremacy on Useful, Real-World Problem
- February 18, 2025 – D-Wave and Staque Announce New Hybrid-Quantum Application for Optimization of Autonomous Agriculture Vehicle Movements
- February 13, 2025 – Forschungszentrum Jülich Purchases D-Wave™ Quantum Computer, Becoming First High-Performance Computing Center in the World to Own D-Wave’s Advantage™ System
- February 5, 2025 – D-Wave Announces Qubits 2025 Quantum Computing User Conference
- February 3, 2025 – D-Wave Launches “Quantum Realized” Brand Campaign to Illustrate Benefits of Today’s Quantum Computing
- January 23, 2025 – D-Wave Announces Successful Completion of $150 Million At-the-Market Equity Offering
Related Content and Analysis
- March 14, 2025 – Sutor Group Earnings Brief: D-Wave Quantum Announces Financial Results for Q4 2024 and FY 2024
- November 21, 2024 – The Futurum Group – Quantum in Context: D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti 3Q2024 Financial Results
- August 13, 2024 – The Futurum Group – D-Wave Reports Second Quarter 2024 Results
- May 15, 2024 – The Futurum Group – Quantum in Context: D-Wave Q1 2024 Earnings
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