D-Wave Quantum heads into the final week of September with short sellers adding positions, borrow availability shrinking, and a weekly price gain that has done little to resolve the underlying tension between momentum buyers and a growing bear camp.
Short interest is the dominant story here. Bears hold 21% of the free float — roughly 72.7 million shares — a level that has climbed 13% over the past month and edged up another 1% this week alone. The direction is consistent: shorts have been adding, not retreating, through the entirety of August and into September. The ORTEX short score has drifted higher throughout the period, reaching 71.96 on September 22, its highest point in the 10-day window. Factor ranks confirm the picture — the short score ranks in the bottom 5th percentile of the universe, and the days-to-cover rank sits in the 10th percentile, both signalling that this is a stock where the bear book is heavily loaded relative to peers.
The borrow market tells a nuanced story, though. Availability has tightened meaningfully this week — down 17% from last week to 18.9% — but it briefly touched 5% on September 7, the tightest reading of the past year, before relaxing. At current levels, roughly one share remains available for every five already borrowed, which is tight but not yet critical. Cost to borrow has eased slightly on the week at under 1%, which is low given the short interest load. That combination — high SI, cheap borrow, availability still above its recent floor — suggests there is no imminent squeeze pressure in the lending market, but the directional trend is worth watching. On options, the put/call ratio has ticked up to 0.755, running above its 20-day average of 0.72 by about 1.4 standard deviations. That is elevated but far from extreme — options positioning looks cautious rather than aggressively hedged, consistent with a stock that rose 7% on the week but remains down 14% over the past month.
The bull case rests on D-Wave's positioning as the only commercial quantum computing company with deployed annealing systems. EPS momentum ranks in the 82nd percentile and EPS surprise in the 81st — the company has beaten estimates consistently even while revenue remains lumpy. The valuation picture is harder to read. The stock trades at a price-to-book of just under 7x, and EV/EBITDA is deeply negative at roughly -41x, reflecting a business that is still burning cash. The bear case, well-represented at 21% short, is straightforward: pilot projects have not yet converted into durable recurring revenue, and at $17.56 the stock has already retraced sharply from higher levels earlier in the year. Among correlated peers this week, IREN and HOLO each posted gains of 15–17%, noticeably outpacing QBTS's 7% move, which may reflect rotation into higher-beta speculative tech rather than D-Wave-specific conviction.
Institutional ownership adds one more data point worth noting. BlackRock raised its stake to 8.9% of shares as of August 31, adding roughly 3 million shares in the period. Norges Bank effectively initiated a fresh position — adding 4.47 million shares — as of June 30. Both moves are passive-index-driven, not activist, and the 13D/G register confirms no activist presence. Inside the company, recent transactions have been dominated by tax-withholding forfeitures (transaction code F) from executives including the CEO and CFO in July, and smaller similar forfeitures in September — routine compensation mechanics rather than discretionary selling. The one genuinely open-market transaction in the window was a director's 10b5-1 plan sale of 1,100 shares at $18 on September 8, a small and pre-arranged move.
The next earnings event is November 5. With SI at 21% of float, borrow availability tightening on a weekly basis, and the stock printing a lower high relative to the year's peak, the Q3 print becomes the key test of whether pilot-project revenue is converting — and whether the bear camp that has patiently built this position through the summer has the data to justify holding it.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open QBTS on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
