After-hours trading on Wednesday caused significant losses in market cap for some of the world’s leading quantum stock market darlings. IonQ, Rigetti, and D-Wave are among the companies affected. They experienced a wave of selling. This might be due to comments by Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia. He suggested that “very useful” quantum computers are decades away.
“If you kind of said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side. If you said 30, it’s probably on the late side,” Huang said in a question-and-answer session during Nvidia’s analyst day. “If you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it.”
Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia
Quantum computing stocks, including Quantum Computing Inc., D-Wave Quantum Inc., Rigetti Computing Inc., and IonQ, experienced significant declines, dropping by over 30% in most cases. This follows a period of sharp increases driven by enthusiasm about technological advancements, notably sparked by Alphabet Inc.’s recent quantum computing breakthrough with its Willow Chip.
Quantum Computing Inc. had surged over 1,800% in the past year. Rigetti increased by more than 1,500%. D-Wave rose by nearly 1,000%. IonQ grew by over 300%. However, this upward trend reversed sharply.
These events will no doubt come as a blow to investors. They have been bullish on the sector for the last few years. This optimism began with the rise of the quantum computing sector and publicly listed quantum computer companies. The question for many will be whether the boss of NVIDIA is correct. We don’t see NVIDIA (GPUs) or Quantum Computing as mutually exclusive, and both workflows can complement each other. NVIDIA is building extensively into the quantum area. Some might say that Jensen has his finger on the pulse of this disruptive technology.
