Nine stocks soared higher on Wednesday, with quantum computing players dominating the rally amid positive industry developments that bolstered buying appetite.
In this article, we identify some of the best performers on the day and explore the reasons behind their gains.
To come up with the list, we focused on the companies with a $2 billion market capitalization and 5 million shares in trading volume.
The New York Stock Exchange building. Photo by Дмитрий Трепольский on Pexels
9. Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd (NASDAQ:CRDO)
Credo Technology rallied for a 4th consecutive day on Wednesday, up 5.9 percent to close at $168.35 apiece, as investors took heart from Mizuho’s price target upgrade and bullish rating for its stock.
In a market note, the investment firm raised its price target for Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd (NASDAQ:CRDO) to $220 from $200 previously, while maintaining an “outperform” rating, following its acquisition of DustPhonics, which is expected to bolster revenues by 75 percent or around $200 million in fiscal year 2027.
DustPhonics is engaged in the development of Silicon Photonics Photonic Integrated Circuit (SiPho PIC) technology for optical transceivers. It boasts a portfolio of on-demand SiPho PIC products, including 400G, 800, and 1.6T.
Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd (NASDAQ:CRDO) said that DustPhonics’ addition is expected to boost its optical revenues to more than $500 million for the fiscal year 2027, position it as a key player in a vertically integrated connectivity stack for scale-out and scale-up networks, and address both electrical and optical interconnects across the full AI infrastructure buildout.
The sector alone opens doors for a $6 billion market potential.
“This combination positions us at an inflection point in optical. As adoption accelerates across hyperscale AI infrastructure, we expect our optical business to scale into a meaningful and rapidly growing contributor by fiscal 2027,” Chairman, President, and CEO William Brennan said.
Apart from Mizuho, Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd (NASDAQ:CRDO) also earned a “buy” recommendation from Jefferies, with a price target of $175.
Jefferies said the coverage was based on the belief that its current stock price has yet to fully reflect growth prospects from the AI industry, with the listed firm’s active electrical cables expected to continue benefiting from data center buildouts.
8. Figma Inc. (NYSE:FIG)
Figma rallied by 10.39 percent on Wednesday to close at $20.33 apiece, with the rally primarily driven by an overall market optimism and renewed confidence for AI-related stocks that overshadowed news of key management changes.
In a regulatory filing, Figma Inc. (NYSE:FIG) announced that Mike Krieger, who joined the company last year, has stepped down from the board effective immediately.
The company did not divulge any reason for the resignation, but it dispelled any disagreement with the management or its policies.
Earlier this week, Figma Inc. (NYSE:FIG) received a “neutral” rating from investment firm BTIG, reflecting its mixed outlook for its future performance, particularly over concerns about valuation and path to profitability despite the listed firm’s revenue growth expectations.
BTIG said that it remained neutral about the listed firm’s potential to be one of the earliest application software companies to monetize AI, despite the latter already beginning to generate revenues from credit consumption and credit limits from its AI-powered tool, Make, and in spite of a 70-percent increase in weekly average users quarter-on-quarter.
“That said, it remains difficult to decipher the degree to which monetization can happen in the [near term] and how much the initial usage will carry through once customers are charged,” it noted.
7. Upstart Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:UPST)
Upstart Holdings rallied for a 3rd straight day on Wednesday, climbing 12.97 percent to close at $33.36 apiece, as investors began loading positions ahead of the results of its first-quarter earnings performance.
In a notice on its website, Upstart Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:UPST) said that it would release its financial and operating highlights before market open on May 6, 2026, to be complemented by a conference call to discuss the results.
Last February, Upstart Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:UPST) said that it would discontinue issuing quarterly business outlooks and focus on annual guidance instead. For this year alone, total revenues are targeted to grow by 40 percent to $1.4 billion from $1 billion in 2025.
Revenues from fees are expected to be $1.3 billion, or an implied growth of 36.8 percent from the $950 million last year.
In other developments, Upstart Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:UPST) is currently facing a lawsuit over the collapse of its conversion rate to 20.6 percent in the third quarter last year from 23.9 percent the quarter prior, which directly reduced loan origination volume and allegedly caused the company to miss its own quarterly revenue guidance by $3 million.
Shareholder law firms are luring investors who purchased shares of the company between May 14 and November 4 of last year to apply as lead plaintiff for the lawsuit by the June 8, 2026 deadline.
6. Rigetti Computing Inc. (NASDAQ:RGTI)
Rigetti Computing grew for a 4th consecutive day on Wednesday, jumping 13.28 percent to finish at $19.11 apiece, as investors resumed buying positions following Nvidia Corp.’s launch of a new AI-powered workflow designed to correct quantum systems’ biggest problems.
Nvidia earlier this week unveiled what it called the “Ising” Calibration and Decoding—two model domains targeting the fundamental challenges in quantum computing.
Ising Calibration is a vision-language model for automating QPU calibration tasks, which is capable of understanding quantum computing scientific experiment output and how it compares to expected trends, while Ising Decoding consists of two 3D CNN models for demanding decoding needed during quantum error correction.
Investors took the unveiling positively, sparking appetite for key players, including Rigetti Computing Inc. (NASDAQ:RGTI), as the development not only addressed major challenges being faced by the sector, but also validated the industry’s relevance, countering earlier views that its practical use was still decades away.
In other news, Rigetti Computing Inc. (NASDAQ:RGTI) announced the general availability of its new 108-qubit quantum computing system, Cepheus-1-108Q, on Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services (QCS) Platform and Amazon Braket.
Cepheus-1-108Q is Rigetti’s highest qubit-count system to date and the industry’s largest modular quantum computing system, based on Rigetti’s proprietary chiplet-based architecture. The system comprises twelve interconnected 9-qubit chiplets, tripling the number of qubits and chiplets from Rigetti’s previous 36-qubit system, Cepheus-1-36Q.
The system is currently performing at a 99.1% median two-qubit gate fidelity with a gate speed of ~60 ns and a 99.9% median single-gate fidelity.
Rigetti Computing Inc. (NASDAQ:RGTI) said that it is releasing Cepheus-1-108Q now in response to growing customer interest and will continue to improve the system performance throughout 2026 as the company advances on its roadmap.
While we acknowledge the potential of RGTI to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than RGTI and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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