Quantum computing isn't as hot as AI right now, but some tech leaders believe it will head in that direction. In a late 2025 interview, Alphabet (GOOG +1.62%) (GOOGL +1.55%) CEO Sundar Pichai said that quantum computing was in the same developmental phase that AI was in five years earlier. And in January, Nvidia (NVDA +1.34%) CEO Jensen Huang said he expected quantum to be commercialized in 15 to 30 years, then walked back those remarks at a March event, saying he thinks it will happen much sooner.
Plenty of tech giants are pouring capital into the development of quantum computing, but investors who want pure plays may want to consider these two stocks that Wall Street is already loading up on.
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IonQ
Wall Street analysts covering IonQ (IONQ -0.50%) have an average 12-month price target of $71 on the stock, which would be a big step up from its current price of roughly $44 per share. Like many pure-play quantum computing companies, IonQ is still losing a lot of money, but the 287% year-over-year boost in sales it delivered last quarter shows promise.
NYSE: IONQ
Key Data Points
The second quarter was the company's strongest quarter in history, with revenue of $80.1 million, and it expects to close out the year with $280 million to $290 million in revenue. IonQ builds its quantum computing systems around trapped-ion qubits; each qubit is a single charged atom. The advantages of that technology over some of the other ways to create qubits are that they are less prone to errors and can hold their state longer, allowing for higher-quality and more complex calculations.
IonQ also has the first and only quantum computing hardware to be integrated with all cloud platforms. The focus on cloud computing, hardware, and software has turned IonQ into a full-stack quantum platform. This advantage will make it difficult for competitors to steal IonQ's market share. Its platform is also compatible with all quantum programming languages and quantum software developer kits, making it a preferred choice among developers.
The company has an excellent foundation built on more than 1,200 patents granted and pending worldwide, along with five generations of quantum computers in the market. IonQ expanded on its lead with the first end-to-end real-time quantum error decoder in September. That was a major breakthrough for the industry.
All qubits are highly sensitive to outside interference, and tiny levels of environmental "noise" can cause them to shift states, resulting in computational errors.
Essentially, the IonQ team figured out how to detect those errors in real time, which is a major milestone. Previously, the classical computers hunting for those errors used heavy volumes of processing power and still took a problematic amount of time to handle the task. With IonQ's solution, a standard central processing unit (CPU) can pinpoint those errors rapidly, operating in the background, and without requiring the quantum computer to pause.
The fact that this setup only requires one CPU will make fault-tolerant quantum computing easier to scale commercially. When the quantum computing race gets as hot as the AI race, most tech giants will rush for the best option instead of the second-best. IonQ is looking like the leader.
Infleqtion
Infleqtion (INFQ -1.57%) also has a high 12-month price target, with the average analyst covering it projecting $22 per share. With a $3 billion market cap, it's much smaller than IonQ, which currently is worth approximately $17 billion. Infleqtion specializes in technology built around neutral-atom qubits; each one is a single non-charged atom. It designs hardware and software for customers with deep pockets, including governments and enterprises.
NYSE: INFQ
Key Data Points
Its relationships with governments are particularly important, especially at this stage in the company's development. Infleqtion explained in its Analyst Day presentation that its technology has won the trust of many governments that plan to invest over $40 billion in quantum. The company hinted that it had captured "substantive funding" from the U.S. and its allies.
Infleqtion isn't just gaining market share with government clients, however. It also has a deep relationship with Nvidia that positions it to be a leader in hybrid quantum-classical supercomputing. Through this partnership, Infleqtion's technology is being used to couple quantum processors with AI chips. This will aid in the scaling of quantum computing, which could result in meaningful revenue growth for Infleqtion once its solution gains traction.
Infleqtion followed up on IonQ's breakthrough by announcing a major milestone of its own last month. The company achieved 30 entangled logical qubits, which just means all of those qubits worked on computations together.
"We're moving quickly toward our target of 100 logical qubits in 2028, and we're already developing applications with customers," Infleqtion CEO Matt Kinsella told investors. "The goal is to give them a quantum computer that can take on problems they can't solve today."
Infleqtion only made $13.5 million in revenue in the second quarter, but that did represent a 157% year-over-year improvement. But its progress is giving some investors the willingness to wait patiently through its cash-burning stage for the technological breakthroughs that can turn Infleqtion into a long-term outperformer.
