D-Wave and AT&T: Nothing New to See, Where Is the Revenue Growth?
D-Wave re-surfaced an existing AT&T pilot, attached no contract value and no timeline, and released it the same day it switched stock exchanges, ten days before an earnings report that will show whether the underlying business is actually growing.
D-Wave Quantum (Nasdaq: QBTS) announced on July 27 that AT&T has signed an agreement to expand its use of D-Wave's annealing quantum computing technology across network operations. The release describes AT&T's initial focus as layering the technology into tools that already power its agentic AI systems.
The announcement builds on work AT&T has already done, using D-Wave's annealing technology to speed up a network optimization task. From there, the release turns exploratory. AT&T "plans to explore" a range of additional network operations use cases and is separately "evaluating" D-Wave's forthcoming, still-unreleased gate-model systems. No contract value, no deployment timeline, and no dollar figure appears anywhere in the release.
Coherence Report has previously identified AT&T as the probable unnamed $10 million account D-Wave referenced back in January, which means this "expansion" announcement is a 2nd press release harvested from the same deal, a way to claim credit twice for a relationship that has yet to produce meaningful revenue. That reading is reinforced by the timing. The announcement landed the same calendar day D-Wave completed its voluntary listing transfer from the NYSE to Nasdaq, with CEO Alan Baratz ringing the opening bell, and it arrives 10 days before D-Wave's Q2 2026 results on August 6, the first quarter without last year's one-time $12.6 million system sale distorting the year-over-year comparison.
WHY IT MATTERS
What makes this news notable is not what it contains but when it arrived and what it omits. A company reporting $2.9 million in quarterly revenue saw a meaningful single-day stock move, up as much as 11% intraday, on a release that discloses no contracted dollars, sets no timeline, and openly describes itself as expanded early work. The move came on a day D-Wave changed exchanges and rang an opening bell, and it lifted quantum peers Rigetti and Infleqtion at the same time, which suggests the market is reacting to sector sentiment rather than pricing incremental AT&T revenue. The sequencing is the story: an announcement with zero disclosed dollars, dropped 10 days before the first earnings report in a year that strips out a one-time sale, does nothing to close the gap between D-Wave's revenue and its valuation.
We shall see what happens if D-Wave does not report increased QCaaS usage or organic revenue, in two weeks.
| Metric | D-Wave (QBTS), Q1 2026 | Context |
| Revenue | $2.9M | Down 81% YoY from $15.0M |
| Bookings | $33.4M | Up ~1,994% YoY, up 149% sequentially |
| Backlog (remaining performance obligations) | $42.4M | Up 563% YoY from $6.4M |
| Backlog conversion | 54% within 12 months; 71% within 2 years | Forward commitments, not recognized revenue |
| GAAP gross profit | $1.8M | Down 87%; margin 63.6%, down from 92.5% |
| GAAP operating expenses | $56.5M | Up 125% from $25.2M |
| Net loss | $18.4M | Aided by a one-time $28.5M tax benefit from the QCI acquisition |
| Cash & investments | $588.4M | Up 93% YoY |
| FY2025 total revenue | $24.6M | Full-year context for a $2.9M quarter |
| Market cap | ~$6.3–7.6B | Fluctuating; roughly 250–300x trailing annual revenue |
The single most important number attached to today's announcement is zero. That is the disclosed dollar value of the AT&T agreement, and it sits against a company whose most recent quarter produced $2.9 million in revenue, down 81% year over year, and a $56.5 million operating expense line. Bookings and backlog are real and growing fast, and that genuinely matters, but they are forward-looking commitments rather than recognized revenue. D-Wave's own CFO has previously characterized a large portion of that backlog as research funding rather than commercial demand, a distinction worth confirming against the August 6 disclosures. A press release with no disclosed dollars does nothing to move any of these figures. It moves sentiment.
Q2 2026 organic revenue on August 6. With last year's one-time $12.6 million sale stripped from both sides of the comparison, the question is whether quantum-computing-as-a-service and systems revenue shows real, repeatable growth, or whether the AT&T news functioned as cover for a still-soft number. This is the falsifiable test, and it has a date.
The AT&T re-announcement pattern. Watch whether D-Wave re-surfaces this same AT&T relationship again over the next two quarters under different framing, the way it has repeatedly done with NTT DOCOMO. One announcement is a data point. A re-announcement of the same pilot with fresh language would confirm the playbook.
Backlog composition disclosure. If D-Wave breaks out how much of its $42.4 million backlog is commercial demand versus research funding, that number tells you far more about the business than any customer logo. Watch whether management volunteers it or leaves it vague.
Whether any AT&T work converts to a disclosed dollar figure. The real test of this relationship is a contract value or a production deployment with terms, as opposed to another exploratory phase. Check within the next two quarters whether anything here graduates from "plans to explore" to a number.
D-Wave re-surfaced an existing AT&T pilot, attached zero dollars and zero dates to it, and released it the same day it rang the Nasdaq opening bell, 10 days before an earnings report that will reveal whether its business is actually growing or still living on one-time system sales. The customer is real, but this appears to be a second press release squeezed from a single January booking, customer-logo marketing dressed as a commercial announcement, and it follows the same template as a wave of "evaluating quantum" press releases across the sector this year: a recognizable name, no disclosed commercial substance, timed for narrative effect. For a stock trading at a triple-digit multiple of revenue, the number that matters arrives August 6, and it won't have AT&T's name on it.
Disclosure [Standard position disclosure]. Based on publicly available SEC filings, company press releases, and market data as of July 27, 2026. Coherence Report's identification of AT&T as D-Wave's previously unnamed $10 million account reflects our own analysis. Nothing here constitutes investment advice.
D-Wave Touts a Recycled Relationship to Show a $1.57 Million Yale Grant- https://coherence.report/editorial/?qid=6
Explaining Why D-Wave’s Quantum AI Play Is a Dead End - https://coherence.report/explaining-why-d-waves-quantum-ai-play-is-a-dead-end/
D-Wave Continues to Decline in Q1 2026 - https://youtu.be/xCJPFRf0kpg?si=yp8K9dORzCvZAXsD
D-Wave's Annealer is USELESS – https://youtu.be/qsbyt8GRyg4?si=p4i-DB7AyWhEVZXR
D-Wave/AT&T announcement (original release): https://www.dwavequantum.com/company/newsroom/press-release/at-t-signs-agreement-to-expand-use-of-d-wave-s-quantum-computing-technology/
Nasdaq listing transfer announcement (July 14, 2026): https://www.dwavequantum.com/company/newsroom/press-release/d-wave-announces-transfer-of-stock-exchange-listing-to-nasdaq/
Q2 2026 earnings date announcement (July 23, 2026): https://www.dwavequantum.com/company/newsroom/press-release/d-wave-to-report-second-quarter-2026-financial-results-on-august-6-2026/
Q1 2026 results, full release (May 12, 2026 — source for $2.9M revenue, 81% YoY decline, $18.4M net loss, $588.4M cash): https://www.dwavequantum.com/company/newsroom/press-release/d-wave-reports-first-quarter-2026-results/
Q4/FY2025 results (source for $24.6M FY2025 revenue, Qubits 2026 conference details, AT&T's appearance as a named speaker): https://ir.dwavequantum.com/news/news-details/2026/D-Wave-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Year-End-2025-Results/default.aspx