Quantum computing stocks dropped sharply on Wednesday following comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who stated that useful quantum computers are still many years away.
“If you said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side,” Huang said during Nvidia’s analyst day. “If you said 30, it’s probably on the late side. But if you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it.”
Huang expressed confidence that Nvidia will play a significant role in advancing quantum computing and helping the industry achieve this goal as quickly as possible.
Shares in quantum computing companies plummeted in response, with Rigetti Computing falling 47%, IonQ dropping 44%, and D-Wave Quantum declining by more than 44%. The Defiance Quantum & AI ETF also fell 5%, while Quantum Computing Inc., which announced a $100 million stock offering, sank 47%.
AXS Investments CEO Greg Bassuk remarked that the market's reaction, though significant, was somewhat "overblown," given that the broad consensus has long been that quantum computing's mass adoption is still years away. He noted that there was no new underlying news behind the negative price movement.
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The quantum computing sector had seen a surge in excitement toward the end of 2024, especially after Google unveiled its improved Willow chip, which outperformed its 2019 predecessor in error reduction. Investors had hoped the sector could be the next big tech boom following the rise of AI.
This excitement had propelled shares into the end of the year, with Rigetti and D-Wave rallying 1,449% and 854%, respectively.
Proponents of quantum computing believe the technology will enable tasks that current computers cannot handle, including processing much larger volumes of data. However, many investors caution that it’s still too early to identify clear winners in the sector and to define real-world use cases.