Quantum computing stocks face scrutiny as insiders sell $840M–$931M in shares

TECHNOLOGY

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Quantum computing stocks face scrutiny as insiders sell $840M–$931M in shares

SEC filings show executives at IonQ, Rigetti, and D-Wave have been cashing out while retail investors bet on a sector trading at valuations that make growth stocks look cheap

by
Editorial Team

Sep. 22, 2026

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Photo: Markus Winkler / Pexels

The quantum computing hype cycle has a math problem. Insiders at the sector’s biggest publicly traded names have collectively sold somewhere between $840M and $931M worth of shares over a multi-year period running into mid-2026, and they’ve bought back almost nothing. That asymmetry is the kind of signal that tends to travel slowly through financial media but lands hard when investors eventually notice it.

The four companies at the center of the story: IonQ (IONQ), Rigetti Computing (RGTI), D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), and Quantum Computing Inc. (QUBT). Together they represent the publicly traded face of an industry that has attracted enormous speculative interest, government funding, and some genuinely impressive scientific progress.

The numbers doing the heavy lifting

D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz sold roughly $18M in company shares in June 2026 alone. IonQ directors have executed a string of individual sales ranging from $100K to $200K each in the same period. Quantum Computing Inc. adds tens of millions more to the aggregate tally, though it remains the smallest name in this cohort by market presence.

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Some of these transactions are structural rather than discretionary. Many insider sales at tech companies involve tax withholding on vested restricted stock units, where executives sell a portion of newly vested shares automatically to cover the resulting tax bill rather than making an active judgment call about the stock price. That context matters, and it prevents any single filing from being a smoking gun.

What’s harder to explain away is the near-total absence of insider buying. When executives are sellers but never buyers at any price, it raises a reasonable question about whether they view current valuations as an opportunity.

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The valuation math here is genuinely challenging. IonQ trades at a price-to-sales ratio of approximately 69 times. Some of its smaller peers are trading between 400 and 500 times sales. For context, even at the peak of the 2021 software bubble, the most richly valued SaaS companies were trading at 40 to 60 times forward revenue.

Growth is real, but so is the gap

IonQ reported a 287% year-over-year revenue increase in Q2 2026 and subsequently raised its full-year guidance. Analyst firms including Benchmark have maintained constructive coverage and Buy ratings despite the insider selling trend and recent stock pullbacks.

The tension is that revenue growth and profitability are different animals. None of these companies is profitable, and the path from impressive percentage growth on a small base to the kind of recurring, margin-positive revenue that justifies current market caps is neither short nor guaranteed.

What investors and traders should watch

Rigetti and D-Wave face similar structural scrutiny, with their own price-to-sales ratios sitting at the extreme end of the range. Analysts may stay constructive, but analyst ratings have a complicated relationship with insider behavior at speculative growth names. The two signals often diverge precisely because analysts are optimizing for long-term upside potential while insiders are optimizing for present liquidity.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.