D-Wave Quantum (NASDAQ: QBTS) posted Q2 revenue of $3.1 million, flat year over year and missing the $4.0 million consensus estimate by about 23%. This headline miss, however, belongs to a quarter defined by a bookings explosion and a backlog now covering more than 13 quarters of current revenue.
Bookings for the first half hit $35.5 million, a 1,120% jump from $2.9 million a year ago, fueled by a $20 million system sale. Remaining performance obligations (RPOs) climbed to $40.7 million, a 668% year-over-year increase. D-Wave anticipates converting 57% of that backlog to revenue within the next 12 months, and 72% within two years. This is not a fluke. The average booking size in Q2 alone grew 87% year over year, signaling larger, more strategic deals, not just a higher volume of smaller ones.
The flat revenue amid this pipeline growth is a matter of timing, not demand. System sales are recognized upon shipment and calibration, and the $20 million deal from the first half will land on the P&L in later quarters. A more telling operational signal is the shift in commercial mix. Commercial customers made up 62.4% of Q2 revenue, up from 45.1% a year ago, while Forbes Global 2000 customers rose to 47.7% from 20.4%. D-Wave is moving upmarket, courting enterprises with real procurement cycles.
That transition has a cost. GAAP operating expenses doubled to $55 million, a 93% year-over-year increase, driven by a $9.7 million rise in personnel costs, $4.5 million in stock-based compensation, and $4.4 million in depreciation and amortization. Adjusted operating expenses rose 76% to $39.1 million. The company is investing heavily in R&D and go-to-market for its dual-platform annealing and gate-model roadmap. The adjusted EBITDA loss widened to $37.1 million from $20.0 million, a sign of investment spend, not operational decline.
The GAAP net loss narrowed sharply to $0.13 per share from $0.55 a year ago. That improvement is purely cosmetic. The prior-year quarter included $142 million in non-cash warrant liability remeasurement charges, which vanished after all publicly traded warrants were redeemed in November 2025. Strip that out, and the underlying cash burn is accelerating. Cash used in operations was $73.5 million in the first half versus $34.6 million a year ago. The cash and marketable securities balance dropped to $546 million from $819 million, with the Quantum Circuits acquisition responsible for over 90% of the decline.
The gate-model roadmap announced with the results is ambitious: a 17-physical-qubit system in 2026, scaling to a 10-logical-qubit fault-tolerant system by 2030 and a 100-logical-qubit system by 2032. A peer-reviewed Nature publication validating D-Wave's dual-rail architecture and an IDC MarketScape Leader designation lend technical credibility. But the commercial timeline for gate-model revenue is distant. The annealing business is the near-term engine, and the $20 million system sale, plus the AT&T and Nasdaq Verafin engagements, suggest that engine is gaining traction.
The flat Q2 results and the miss will dominate headlines. The forward indicators, however, are clear. Bookings and RPOs are at levels that, if sustained, will push revenue recognition higher in the second half and into 2027. The real question is whether operating spend flattens as revenue catches up, or if D-Wave keeps investing ahead of the curve. With $546 million in liquidity and no guidance provided, management is signaling the investment cycle is not over. The market must decide if the backlog is a leading indicator of revenue acceleration, or a lumpy pipeline that will take longer to convert than the 12-month RPO guidance suggests.