D-Wave Quantum: B. Riley Cuts Its Target to $27 While a 91.90% Cancer Result Awaits the November Verdict

D-Wave Quantum is juggling three storylines at once — a trimmed analyst target, a fresh piece of medical research, and a court fight — and the market has been pricing all of them against a technology backdrop that has turned distinctly chilly. The stock fell 5.7% in one session and was down 3.9% on another, moves that media reports tied to a broader technology selloff rather than to anything specific coming out of the quantum computing company itself.

That distinction matters. Worries about AI spending, sharpened by Amazon's results and Intel's guidance, weighed on quantum names across the board on the preceding Friday. When investors grow more cautious about speculative growth stocks, a company can deliver genuinely good news without breaking the wider selling pressure. Technical progress and share-price performance do not run on the same timetable.

A Buy Rating With a Smaller Price Tag

Analyst Craig Ellis of B. Riley Securities cut his price target to $27 from $40, according to media reports, while keeping his "Buy" rating intact. That combination deserves more scrutiny than the unchanged recommendation on its own. Anyone reading only the Buy call misses the cut; anyone treating it as a rejection of D-Wave goes too far in the other direction. The message is more ambiguous — and for that reason more interesting.

The research update landed the same day as the company's own announcement. Researchers at Florida Atlantic University used D-Wave's annealing hardware to study lung cancer prediction, with the quantum support vector machine model reaching 91.90% accuracy on the quantum processor. In simulation, the method hit 94.31%. The figures sound impressive, but their weight depends on caveats D-Wave supplied itself: the study drew on a limited, expanded dataset that included synthetic examples rather than newly collected patient data, and the results are preliminary. Those qualifications belong in the headline, not the fine print.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying D-Wave Quantum?

A concrete application makes the technology more tangible. It answers a different question than the one about the company's commercial development, though. A research result should be neither read as a revenue announcement nor dismissed as meaningless because the share price is falling. The reported accuracy is a study outcome, not proof of performance in patient care — and certainly not evidence of an imminent commercial breakthrough.

The Legal Cloud Adds a Separate Layer of Risk

Alongside the valuation debate sits a legal one. Levi & Korsinsky flagged a pending securities class action against D-Wave, and Pomerantz said on Thursday that a class action had been filed against the company and certain executives. These are allegations, not established facts. Treating them as proven misconduct would be as wrong as ignoring their relevance to how the risk is assessed.

So several uncertainties converge: a demanding valuation in a weak technology market, preliminary research findings, and ongoing litigation. None of these layers substitutes for another, and none offers a simple explanation that pins every price swing on a single cause. Investors were also focused on the gap between growth in order intake and its conversion into revenue, according to media reports from October 26 — a growing backlog can support expectations, but it is not the same as realized sales.

November 10 Is the Real Measuring Stick

D-Wave has said it will report third-quarter 2026 results before the market opens on November 10. That date now stands as the next economic test alongside the technical news. Research can show what a technology might be suited for; business figures show what has actually reached the company. Both matter, but they should not be confused with each other on the exchange.

What D-Wave does not lack is topics. What counts is which of them can carry economic expectations. The unchanged Buy rating paired with a sharply reduced target captures the tension neatly: confidence in the outlook is one thing, and the price paid for that outlook is another.

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