Key Takeaways
- Alliance Global Partners cut its Rigetti Computing price target to $22 from $37 after third-quarter results and kept its Buy rating, which still points to 90% upside.
- Rigetti hit its 99.5% fidelity goal on its 108-qubit system, but third-quarter revenue fell to $1.4 million, and its roughly $20 million guidance for 2026 depends mostly on one system in India.
- Alliance’s target would value Rigetti at about 203x forward sales, nearly double its current 112x. Meanwhile, analysts’ 2028 revenue estimate has dropped to $71.3 million from $102.5 million in June.
- $22 looks too optimistic for the next 12 months, and the next test is whether C-DAC accepts its system by year-end.
Rigetti Computing (RGTI) finally hit the quantum milestone it had chased for most of a year, and analysts cut their price targets anyway.
Alliance Global Partners’ Brian Kinstlinger lowered his target to $22 from $37 and kept his Buy rating. That’s still 90% upside for a stock sitting 63% below its high of a year ago.
Good physics, lumpy sales
Rigetti’s goal of 99.5% median two-qubit fidelity on its 108-qubit Cepheus system slipped twice before Rigetti hit it in the third quarter. But third-quarter revenue fell to $1.4 million from $1.9 million a year earlier, less than half what analysts expected.
Management guides to about $20 million of 2026 revenue, “assuming C-DAC customer acceptance and associated revenue recognition in the fourth quarter.” Rigetti booked $10.9 million through September. That leaves about $9 million for the fourth quarter, and the $8.4 million system for India’s C-DAC is most of it.
$22 tops the day’s cuts
Kinstlinger’s note pointed to the improvement in the 108-qubit system, and Rigetti ended the quarter with $497.1 million of cash and investments and no debt. No one who cut after the report went higher than $22, though. Jefferies, which rates the stock Hold, went to $12, and Mizuho’s Vijay Rakesh cut to $17, citing “soft” guidance.
TIKR tracks 13 analysts on Rigetti Computing. How many say “Buy”?
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Does $22 add up?
The 13 analysts covering Rigetti have a consensus target of $26. That’s down from about $34 a year ago and nearly $42 last December.
Analysts expect revenue to more than double to $43.5 million in 2027 and reach $71.3 million in 2028.
That 2028 estimate was $102.5 million at the end of June, and I don’t see anything in this report that would push it back up.
Rigetti traded at 112x forward sales at the last close.
Alliance’s $22 works out to about 203x forward sales. That’s below the stock’s 226x average over the past three years, which includes a spike to 1,415x in October 2025, but nearly double today’s multiple.
I’d wait for the sales
In the first nine months of 2026, Rigetti used $91.7 million between operations and capital spending. Its cash covers that pace for years, but its diluted share count roughly tripled from 2022 to 2025 to fund the roadmap.
Asked about the sales pipeline on the call, CEO Subodh Kulkarni said sales aren’t the right metric to follow “until we reach quantum advantage, and we think that’s roughly 3 years from now.”
I think $22 is too optimistic for the next 12 months. Getting there would take nearly double today’s multiple, on falling revenue estimates, for a payoff that management puts about three years out. Kinstlinger may be right about the chips, but I’d want the sales to show up first.
The next test is whether C-DAC accepts its system by year-end, and Rigetti’s fourth-quarter report early next year will show it.
So what is Rigetti Computing stock actually worth?
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