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D-Wave Quantum CEO Alan Baratz said Nvidia company Jensen Huang is ‘preciously wrong’ about quantum computing after comments from the chip giant’s boss spooked Wall Street on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Huang was asked about Nvidia’s strategy for quantum computing. He said Nvidia could produce the conventional chips that are needed alongside quantum computing chips, but those computers would need 1 million times the number of quantum processing units, called qubits, that they currently have.
According to analysts Huang, it could take 15 to 30 years to bring “highly useful quantum computers” to market.
Huang’s remarks sent shares of the nascent industry tumbling D wave dip 36% on Wednesday.
“The reason he’s wrong is because we at D-Wave are commercial today,” Baratz told CNBC’s Deirdre Bossa on “The Exchange.” Baratz said that companies including Mastercard and Japan’s NTT Docomo “are using our quantum computers in production today to benefit their business operations.”
“Not in 30 years, not in 20 years and not in 15 years,” said Baratz. “But just today.”
D-Wave’s revenue is still minimal. Sales in v the last quarter down 27% to $1.9 million from $2.6 million a year earlier.
Quantum computing promises to solve problems difficult for today’s processors, such as decoding encryption, random number generation, and large-scale simulation. Technologists have been working on it for decades, and companies including Nvidia Microsoft and IBM are doing it today together with startup and university researchers.
Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks with the Project Digits computer during CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Huang has announced a number of new chips, software and services as he seeks to stay at the forefront of artificial intelligence computing. Photographer: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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D-Wave was among a number of companies enjoying a resurgence in investor interest in December, when Google announced a breakthrough in her own research. Google has announced that it has completed the creation of a 100-qubit chip the second of the six steps in his strategy to create a quantum system with 1 million qubits.
D-Wave shares rose 178% in December after falling 185% the month before. Quantum Company Discards calculationswhich plunged 45% on Wednesday, has increased fivefold in the past month. IonQ down 39% on Wednesday. Shares rose 14% in December after a 143% rally in November.
Baratz acknowledged that one approach to quantum computing, called gating, could take decades. But he said he was using an annealing approach that could be deployed now.
While Huang’s comments may not be completely 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’s stock is 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, a technology that has fueled demand for Nvidia’s GPUs, which use conventional transistors instead of qubits. Nvidia’s market capitalization has increased by 168% over the past year to $3.4 trillion.
Baratz said D-Wave’s systems can solve problems beyond the capabilities of the fastest Nvidia-equipped systems.
“I would be happy to meet with Jensen anytime, anywhere to help him fill in those gaps,” Baratz said.
