Quantum News Nexus

D-Wave Quantum made several announcements at its Qubits 2026 event this week in Boca Raton, Florida, including the closing of $30 million worth of new business and the somewhat unexpected news that it is relocating its headquarters to Palo Alto, California, to Boca Raton.

The majority of that new business comes in the form of a $20 million agreement with Florida Atlantic University (FAU). D-Wave CEO Dr. Alan Baratz said during the Qubits event that FAU will install D-Wave’s Advantage2 annealing quantum computer later this year at its Boca Raton campus. The parties also signed a separate agreement supporting the creation of a D-Wave Quantum Applications Academy at FAU and support for research, training and workforce development initiatives.

“In parallel, the state of Florida and the city of Boca Raton are providing job growth and training incentives to expand the talent pool needed to support growing US in-production quantum systems and increased government business,” a D-Wave news release stated.

The other $10 million in new business is expected to come from a two-year enterprise Quantum Computing as a Service (QCaaS) agreement D-Wave signed with a company it did not name, but described as “a leading Fortune 100 company.” 

Regarding the HQ move, this news comes as many big-name tech companies have been moving out of California to states such as Florida and Texas with lower overall real estate, talent, and operational costs, and much lower corporate tax rates (not to mention no personal state income taxes, though I’m sure no one in D-Wave’s executive suite even noticed that.) D-Wave also is creating a new R&D facility in Florida.

The HQ move will happen later this year, and Florida will be home to the company’s quantum annealing technology programs, while most of the work on its planned gate-model superconducting quantum computing programs will happen in New Haven, Connecticut, where Quantum Circuits, which D-Wave recently acquired, is based.

In addition to the announcements above, D-Wave also said it is working with longtime defense sector partner Davidson Technologies and Anduril Industries, a defense technology company focused on advanced autonomous systems, to develop quantum-classical hybrid applications for complex U.S. air and missile defense planning challenges. Speakers from Davidson and Anduril took the stage at Qubits 2026 earlier today to talk more about that.

Those are just a few items of note coming out of D-Wave’s event. I will look to update later today or this week.

D-Wave’s stock price jumped about 59 cents on the back of all this news, hitting $24.34 at mid-day. (NYSE: QBTS)

Quantum News Nexus is a site from freelance writer and editor Dan O’Shea that covers quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum networking, quantum-safe security, and more. You can find him on X @QuantumNewsGuy and doshea14@gmail.com.