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D-wave quantum CEO Alan Baratz said Nvidia Jensen Huang is “completely wrong” about quantum computing after comments from the chip giant’s boss spooked Wall Street on Wednesday.
Huang was asked on Tuesday about Nvidia’s strategy for quantum computing. He said Nvidia could make conventional chips needed along with quantum computing chips, but those computers would need 1 million times the number of quantum processing units, called qubits, they currently have.
Bringing “very useful quantum computers” to market could take 15 to 30 years, Huang told analysts.
Huang’s comments sent shares of the nascent industry tumbling, with Sinking D wave 36% on Wednesday.
“The reason he’s wrong is because today at D-Wave we are commercial,” Baratz told CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa on “The Exchange.” Baratz said companies like MasterCard and NTT Docomo of Japan “are using our quantum computers today in production to benefit their business operations.”
“Not in 30 years, not in 20 years, not in 15 years,” Baratz said. “But right now, today.”
D-Wave’s revenue remains minimal. Sales in the last quarter fell 27% to $1.9 million from $2.6 million a year earlier.
Quantum computing promises to solve difficult problems for today’s processors, such as decoding encryption, generating random numbers, and large-scale simulations. Technologists have been working on it for decades and companies like Nvidia, microsoft and IBM We are pursuing it today, together with researchers from startups and universities.
Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia Corp., speaks while holding a Project Digits computer during the CES 2025 event in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Huang announced a series of new chips , software and services, with the aim of staying at the forefront of computing with artificial intelligence. Photographer: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | fake images
D-Wave was one of the companies that enjoyed a resurgence of investor interest in December, when Google announced a breakthrough in his own research. Google said it had completed a 100-qubit chip, the second of six steps in its strategy of building a quantum system with 1 million qubits.
D-Wave shares soared 178% in December after rising 185% the previous month. quantum company Discard Computingwhich plummeted 45% on Wednesday, quintupled in value last month. IonQ fell 39% on Wednesday. The stock rose 14% in December after a 143% rally in November.
Baratz acknowledged that an approach to quantum computing, called gate-based, may be decades away. But he said he uses an annealing approach, which can be implemented now.
While Huang’s “comments may not be totally off-base for gate model quantum computers, well, they are 100% off-base for annealed quantum computers,” Baratz said.
Nvidia declined to comment.
Even after Wednesday’s drop, D-Wave shares are up about 600% over the past year, giving the company a market capitalization of $1.6 billion.
Quantum computing has also been boosted by investor interest in artificial intelligence, the technology that has led to growing demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing units, which use conventional transistors instead of qubits. Nvidia’s market capitalization has increased 168% in the past year to $3.4 trillion.
Baratz said D-Wave systems can solve problems that are beyond the capabilities of faster Nvidia-equipped systems.
“I will be happy to meet with Jensen anytime, anywhere to help fill these gaps,” Baratz said.
