Short seller Andrew Left isn't shy about publicizing his bearish bets against the hottest stocks. Known as one of the more prominent GameStop shorts during the meme-stock mania of 2021, he recently revealed a short bet against Palantir, one of the top AI names this year.
Now, he's unpacking his bearish thesis on targets in the quantum space. Left this week told Business Insider about why he's short Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum, stocks that are up 78% and 214% respectively in 2025.
Left helped popularize short-selling in the early 2000s, publicly sharing detailed reports unpacking his bearish views on troubled companies such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals, which he compared to an Enron-style fraud.
His bearish views on the quantum trade are mainly aimed at Rigetti, which he thinks is vulnerable to the high R&D costs associated with quantum development. Left's Citron Research was already bashing Rigetti as early as December of last year, when the stock was under $10 a share. It has since exploded higher, and Left is no more convinced that the stock is a buy.
"What have we learned about technology over the past four years?" he mused. "We've learned that it's expensive, that lead times mean everything, and that talent means everything."
Left said he once recommended Rigetti stock as a speculative play when it was trading at around $0.90 per share a few years ago, but after meeting with management, he said he's concerned about its quantum technology, specifically about its R&D spending and the stiff competition from tech titans that are investing in the space, primarily Google parent, Alphabet.
Google has recently announced new developments that have been hailed as breakthroughs in the space, which could spell trouble for Rigetti and its similarly sized peers.
"The commercialization of it was like the most uncertain thing you ever heard of," Left recalled of his meeting with Rigetti management. He also flagged that Rigetti insiders have been offloading shares in recent months.
Rigetti did not respond to a request for comment.
While Left made it clear he thinks most quantum stocks are overvalued, there is at least one that he is bullish on in the space: Churchill Capital Corp, the blank-check partner of quantum producer Infleqtion.
Left wrote in a post on X that he sees Infleqtion's business model of producing quantum technology that can be integrated into an ecosystem driven by tech giant Nvidia as a winning formula, while Rigetti's focus on building hardware that will compete with industry leaders is likely a mistake.
"Infleqtion has customers, revenue, and NVIDIA validation. Rigetti has dilution and press releases. The market hasn't priced the gap between execution and aspiration — yet," he wrote in a post in October.
The short-seller also dismissed the idea that the US government would be interested in an equity stake in any quantum company, adding that he doesn't see that as a likely scenario or a bullish indicator. Quantum stocks recently surged
"Donald Trump's not taking US money and bailing out CEOs that sell stock," he stated. "That's not the government's way of doing things, especially not DJT."
