D-Wave: Multiple Use Cases Emerge Following Quantum Supremacy

Key Points

• D-Wave Quantum has unveiled promising new technology, but the company's share price has not fully reflected the hype around these developments.
• One reason for investor hesitation is that the timeline for quantum adoption is unclear, and the company remains not consistently profitable in the meantime.
• However, numerous new use cases for D-Waves quantum tools, from drug development to vehicle production, could drive further interest.

Investors may see a disconnect between the headlines that D-Wave Quantum Inc. NYSE: QBTS has generated and its share price performance in recent weeks. The quantum computing firm came out with two seemingly significant technological updates so far in 2025—first, a report that it had achieved quantum supremacy for the first time, and second, a breakthrough in quantum blockchain technology.

However, while QBTS shares spiked in mid-March on news of the first of these advances, they have faltered since then. As of April 1, QBTS is actually down nearly 24% year-to-date (YTD).

For many investors, D-Wave may present too many unknowns at a valuation that is too high. Its price-to-sales ratio is a whopping 250.7, and the company has yet to achieve consistent and growing revenue. Hesitant investors may be concerned that, despite the very promising potential of D-Wave's technology, it remains untested as a driver of growth.

At the same time, an investor with a higher tolerance for risk and a belief that quantum computing is likely to be transformational—as well as the time to wait for this technology to continue to advance—might be persuaded to consider D-Wave as a number of potential use cases for its breakthrough quantum developments begin to emerge.

CEO Dr. Alan Baratz introduced multiple use cases at the company's Qubits 2025 conference. To be sure, many of these applications have not yet generated consistent revenue for D-Wave, although with widespread adoption across industries, they have the potential to do so in the future.

AI and Drug Discovery

On Mar. 31, D-Wave and Japan Tobacco Inc.'s (JT) pharmaceuticals division announced a proof-of-concept project utilizing quantum computing technology to enhance large language models (LLMs) to aid in new drug discovery. Pharmaceuticals firms are increasingly employing AI to generate novel molecular structures as part of the drug development process.

As in other areas, supporters of quantum technology believe that these tools have the potential to vastly outperform classical computing while also being energy efficient. Indeed, it seems that the partnership with JT is further evidence of this. D-Wave reported that its project "resulted in more valid generated molecules when compared to classical methods alone."

Vehicle Production

Another new partnership has ramifications for the automotive industry. On March 31, D-Wave announced that Ford Motor's NYSE: F joint venture with Turkish industrial giant Koç Holding, Ford Otosan, had utilized a hybrid-quantum application in production to streamline the manufacturing of its Ford Transit line of vehicles.

In this case, D-Wave's annealing quantum technology has reduced the scheduling time of a run of 1,000 vehicles by a factor of six. Aside from improving vehicle production schedules, the use of D-Wave's technology is likely to reduce supplier uncertainty and delays.

Quantum Nonlinear Solver Use Cases

Quantum optimization has long been seen as a technology with the potential to solve complex optimization scenarios, and recent updates to D-Wave's hybrid quantum nonlinear solver will enable it to do this more efficiently and in a wider range of settings. These include supply chain optimization, workforce scheduling, maintenance repair operations planning, and more. 

It could lead to developments for the financials sector as quantum solvers power machine learning tools to optimize portfolio management, for instance, and to benefits for retailers by allocating promotional strategies in a maximally beneficial way. There are numerous other optimization scenarios in multiple sectors to which quantum technology may be well-suited.

Crypto Mining

D-Wave's updates on its quantum blockchain technology may mean developments both within and outside of the cryptocurrency space, as blockchain has become increasingly widespread across industries.

But D-Wave's quantum technology can also enhance efficiency in mining cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

A major hurdle for the cryptocurrency space is the significant energy spent to mine new tokens. This reduces the profitability of mining because of elevated electricity costs, and it also poses environmental and other related problems.

As quantum technology aims to improve computing performance while also reducing energy usage, it can be used for so-called "quantum proof of work" mechanisms that are orders of magnitude more efficient than classical computing mechanisms currently used in crypto mining.