3 Quantum Stocks to Buy for the Next Technological Revolution - InvestorPlace

Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by AI). Tom Yeung here with your weekly Sunday Digest. In 2012, a University of Toronto grad student named Alex Krizhevsky entered a contest to see whose software could best label photographs of cats… clothing… mushrooms… and a strangely large collection of dog breeds. He didn’t have much of a budget. But what he had was a hunch that everyone else in the field was doing it wrong. The crowd was chasing precision by telling their programs what cats and dogs looked like. Meanwhile, Krizhevsky wanted scale. He believed that more data and more computing power could get better results. And so, he crammed two Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) graphics cards into a home computer and used over a million images to train his AI model. It worked. His program, AlexNet, beat the runner-up by such an embarrassing margin that the entire AI industry adopted his methods and those graphics cards. Ten years later, ChatGPT was born using the same “more is better” training techniques. Quantum computing went through its own “more is better moment” in 2024. In December that year, the Willow chip from Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) finally cracked a scaling problem that had plagued companies trying to apply quantum computing tech for 30 years. Those bigger chips reduced error rates, allowing it to finish a calculation in five minutes that would have taken the world’s best supercomputer 10 septillion years. So, when people ask me what the “next AI-type” technology will be, “quantum computing” is my answer. It has the scaling echoes of AI and recently offered the hyped-up stocks to match. One company, Quantum Computing Inc (QUBT) surged 1,900% in 2024 and 2025 despite generating almost no revenues and having a relatively weak technology. That mania has now subsided, with many quantum stocks down 50% or more since May. So, I’d like to take the opportunity to recommend three early-stage quantum stocks for long-term investors to buy. Meanwhile, InvestorPlace Senior Analyst Luke Lango has also identified several early-stage startups in a separate industry that is seeing its own AlexNet moment.AI-powered robotics is finally reaching a tipping point, he says, and will soon reach commercialization. And in his free 2026 AI Megadeal Event, Luke recommends one upcoming private robotics company that is accepting investments until later this week. Click here to watch that presentation. Meanwhile, let’s go over the three companies leading the quantum computing charge. These are long-term picks that could take years (or even a decade) to play out. After all, it took 10 years between AlexNet and ChatGPT. But these quantum stocks now offer the kind of potential that early AI companies once did. A Primer on Quantum Computing Before we get started, a quick note on quantum computing tech. Almost every computer today is digital. They use only “1s” and “0s” in their calculations and understand nothing in the middle. (That’s why everything is ultimately coded in binary.) Quantum computing is different. It uses the strange properties of quantum mechanics to allow for the shades between the black-and-white world of common computer code. In fact, quantum “bits” can even be both “1” and “0” at once. (Don’t worry, it took a lot of very smart people in the early 1900s to figure this out.) And the science is proven. We use quantum mechanics in items like laser pointers, atomic clocks, and MRIs – machines that would have seemed like witchcraft 200 years ago. And if quantum mechanics can allow computers to think in shades of gray… that would make them far more powerful than ones that can only compute in black and white. The problem, however, is that quantum “bits” are very hard to contain. These are atoms that slip in and out of physical barriers, and scientists have long struggled to get them to behave. Error rates are high simply because quantum bits often disappear into nothingness. Alphabet’s Willow chip finally changed that in 2024. With some clever techniques, researchers were able to increase the size of the chip and decrease error rates at the same time. It was the first time quantum computing reached the “bigger is better” stage, creating a roadmap for building massive and accurate quantum chips. These efforts are now coalescing around four main technologies: The established approach. The precision approach. The scaling approach. The manufacturing approach. The picks below pull from the first three techniques because the fourth is not yet mature enough. And it’s worth considering all three, since we don’t yet know which approach will ultimately work best. (In fact, there could be multiple winners as well.) The 800-Pound Startup IonQ Inc. (IONQ) is by far the largest and most advanced pure-play quantum computing company on the market. The firm is pursuing a quantum technology known as trapped ions (the precision approach) and claims to have the most reliable machines in the industry. In lab tests, its qubits perform correctly 99.99% of the time. The Maryland-based firm has pursued one of the most audacious strategies in the quantum industry: raising huge sums of cash at high valuations and then using the money to buy its best rivals. To illustrate: In July 2025, IonQ raised $1 billion at around $55 a share. Three months later, management raised another $2 billion at $93 per share… at a 20% premium to market prices. IonQ has used this cash (plus more from its 2021 IPO) to buy a vertically integrated quantum computing empire. Here’s some of the companies it’s snapped up in recent quarters: ID Quantique: Maker of “unhackable” encryption hardware, bought in April 2025 for $116 million Oxford Ionics: Chip-scale ion traps, purchased in June 2025 for $1.1 billion Capella Space: Radar-imaging satellites designed to put quantum encryption in orbit, bought for $425 million in July 2025 SkyWater Technology: The largest U.S.-only semiconductor foundry, bought in July 2026 for $1.8 billion That’s allowed IonQ to post stunning figures. Revenue in the most recent quarter jumped 287% to $80 million, and analysts expect that figure to almost triple by 2028. The strategy has also let IonQ promise the most aggressive roadmap in the industry. By 2030, it says it will ship 2 million physical qubits and 80,000 error-correct ones. To give you a sense of scale, IBM Corp.’s (IBM) flagship 2029 machine is targeting just 200 qubits. The trouble here is valuation. Even after falling 50% since early June, IonQ is still one of the more expensive quantum names on the market. The company is worth $16 billion, or 35X forward sales. Yet, early chipmakers have a major advantage. Developers typically build computing standards around the first-available chip, cementing a first-mover lead. I should also note that IonQ’s high share price allows it to continue raising money at elevated valuations, keeping the acquisition machine humming along. As another AI company – Tesla Inc. (TSLA) – has proved, high share prices can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A Different “Cold” War Infleqtion Inc. (INFQ) is the first neutral-atom quantum company (the scaling approach) to go public. Its approach is sometimes called “cold” quantum, because its machines use lasers to chill individual atoms to near-absolute zero temperatures and then hold them in place with beams of light. The advantage here is that you can hold thousands of these atoms in a dense grid, which is why I would call it the “scaling” approach as an investor. Infleqtion also offers a margin of safety because its executives have taken a far more conservative financing approach than IonQ’s. The company burns only $14 million a quarter, and so its near-$600 million of cash should last into the 2030s. Furthermore, the Colorado-based firm is already shipping basic quantum computers to the U.S. government. This includes quantum clocks, atom-based receivers, and navigational tools that use quantum computing instead of GPS. Infleqtion has contracts with several government agencies (including the Pentagon and NASA), and it received a letter of intent from the Commerce Department last March that could bring in $100 million of government funding. So, even though Infleqtion might not have IonQ’s size, it remains a compelling long-term stock to buy for the quantum age.

The Moonshot Bet IQM Quantum Computers Oyj (IQMX) is the final of this week’s three picks. It is the riskiest of the trio, but it also offers the greatest upside due to its smaller size. (IonQ is 10 times larger by market cap.) IQM is Europe’s leading quantum computing company. It was spun out of a Finnish university in 2018 and has since become a leading supplier for quantum research laboratories. It has sold 26 quantum computers across the world and builds these machines in-house. The company is pursuing a third type of quantum technology, called superconduction (the established approach), that Alphabet and IBM are also chasing. With superconductivity, there are no atoms involved. Instead, IQM etches tiny circuits onto a silicon chip and cools these to near-zero Kelvin temperatures. These chips then start behaving like artificial atoms. Superconducting chips are extremely fast because silicon gates can open and shut in nanoseconds. That means IQM’s chips are up to a thousand times faster than those made by IonQ and Infleqtion. It’s also worth noting that Alphabet’s 2024 quantum chip that started the whole “AlexNet moment” bonanza was achieved using this approach. The drawback of superconduction, however, is that the chips are forgetful. They lose their memory in under a millisecond. IQM is also risky because it doesn’t have the liquidity that IonQ and Infleqtion enjoy. The company has just $337 million in cash, which means it will have to raise more money by mid-2028, if not earlier. Nevertheless, IQM is an excellent bet on this more established quantum approach. Plus, the company’s smaller $1.8 billion valuation makes it a prime takeover target. After all, IonQ paid $1.1 billion last year for Oxfor Ionics, another quantum startup with no revenue.

The Next Tech Revolution There’s one unfortunate thing that ties this week’s picks together: None of them yet have fully working products. Quantum computers are still stuck in the lab, and we’ll have to wait until at least 2030 for a useful machine. My guess is probably closer to 2034. That means these three stocks could take almost a decade to fully play out. That’s a very long time to wait. Robotics has the reverse problem. Boston Dynamics had a humanoid doing backflips in 2017. Industrial robots have been welding and assembling cars since the early 1960s. So why aren’t humanoid robots everywhere yet? The limiting factor of robotics has never been arms or legs. It’s been the brains that control what robots can do. Artificial intelligence is finally catching up. Robot makers are using the same approach that powered AlexNet and ChatGPT to make humanoid robots a reality. In fact, we already saw some highly capable ones at this year’s World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. And so, I highly encourage you to watch Luke’s 2026 AI Megadeal Event, where he will go into the details of one early-stage startup that’s already nearing that technological finish line. Quantum computing will involve a 10-year time horizon. Luke’s robotics pick – and the other companies he’ll tell you more about during that event – is for the here and now. You can find that free broadcast here. Until next week, Thomas Yeung, CFA Market Analyst, InvestorPlace Thomas Yeung is a market analyst and portfolio manager of the Omnia Portfolio, the highest-tier subscription at InvestorPlace. He is the former editor of Tom Yeung’s Profit & Protection, a free e-letter about investing to profit in good times and protecting gains during the bad.