IonQ, Rigetti, and other quantum computing stocks plunged after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the technology could take decades
Quantum computing stocks such as IonQ (IONQ) and Rigetti Computing (RGTI) fell by more than 40% Wednesday morning after Huang’s comments during Nvidia’s financial analyst day at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
IonQ’s shares were down by about 45%, while Rigetti’s shares fell by more than 48% mid-morning. Quantum Computing (QUBT), which announced a stock offering earlier this week to raise $100 million, saw its shares fall by about 49%. D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), meanwhile, saw shares fall by around 47%.
“If you said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side,” Huang said. “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.”
The Nvidia chief said he thinks the AI chipmaker will play “a significant part” in the development of quantum computers, and push it toward getting “there as fast as possible.”
In December, Google $GOOGL (GOOGL) stock climbed more than 4% after it unveiled its latest quantum chip, Willow. Google Quantum AI announced that its state-of-the-art quantum chip demonstrated “two major achievements” in quantum computing, including “exponentially” reducing the rate of errors when adding more qubits — a challenge that has existed for almost 30 years.
“Errors are one of the greatest challenges in quantum computing,” said Hartmut Neven, founder and lead of Google Quantum AI, because they “have a tendency to rapidly exchange information with their environment, making it difficult to protect the information needed to complete a computation.”
Huang announced a suite of artificial intelligence tools for AI agents and updates to the chipmaker’s robotics efforts at the annual CES Las Vegas trade show on Monday night.
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