Quantum computing companies hope to one day have all the answers, but investors might be making a big mistake buying them in their current state. In December, after Google notched a major milestone toward building a powerful quantum computer, shares of some publicly traded quantum computing firms rose more than 1,000%. But after industry leaders like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the tech is still decades away from being practical, the surprising rally might be on thin ice.
- After the comments, shares of Quantum Computing, D-Wave, and Ionq fell 63%, 62%, and 45%, respectively, before a small rebound in recent days.
- Rigetti Computing CEO Subodh Kulkarni, which had risen 2,000% before falling over 60% on the exec’s comments as well, stressed the need to “tamp down expectations.”
The response: D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz shot back at Huang and Zuckerberg, insisting that the company’s work is having impacts today — though it isn’t showing in their revenue, which was a paltry $1.87M in the latest quarter. That’s completely divorced from the firms’ market caps, which all exceed $1B. No doubt, the technology — and the firms’ respective IP —- could one day be promising, but speculation is creating valuations divorced from the tech’s near-term potential. That’s allowing D-Wave’s largest investor — a Canadian pension fund manager — to dump all of its shares, increasing the specter of gambling retail investors getting crushed when the buck stops.
