D-Wave stock rises 20% after expanded AT&T partnership

Shares of D-Wave Quantum surged on Monday, July 27, 2026, following the announcement of an expanded commercial agreement with telecommunications giant AT&T. The stock closed up 20.4% at $19.51, after trading as high as $19.54 earlier in the day. The deal, which broadens AT&T's use of D-Wave's annealing quantum computing technology, fueled a rally across the quantum computing sector.

Under the expanded partnership, AT&T will apply D-Wave's systems to address complex optimization challenges across its network operations, including outage response, network planning, technician dispatch, and traffic management. The agreement builds on earlier pilot projects where the technology demonstrated significant efficiency gains. In one application, AT&T reported reducing a network optimization task from one hour to under 15 seconds, a processing time reduction of over 99.5%. The company has projected its use of such advanced tools, including D-Wave's technology, could save customers approximately 12 million hours of network downtime.

While the announcement provided a significant boost to investor sentiment, the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. This left analysts noting that...