Quantum computing stocks take a nosedive as Nvidia CEO predicts long road ahead

(Reuters) – Quantum computing shares sank on Wednesday, halting an annual rally, after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the technology's implementation could be two decades away.

The long wait described by Huang for “highly useful quantum computers” throws cold water on a field that was already expected to spend millions more on the technology, which could do niche calculations until now.

“If you say 15 years … that would be on the first side. If you say 30, it might be at the end. But if you choose 20, I think our crowd would believe it,” he told an investor conference on Tuesday.

Shares of Rigetti Computing and Quantum Computing fell more than 17% each in pre-bell trading, while IonQ and D-Wave Quantum fell 9.4% and 14%, respectively.

The companies had planned to lose about $3 billion in market value, if the losses persist.

Shares of all companies have risen at least threefold in the past year, driven by the high performance of Alphabet-owned Google and the growing computing needs brought by productive AI applications.

In December Google unveiled a new generation chip that it said solved in five minutes a computing problem that would take an ancient computer longer than the history of the universe, causing a rally in its shares.

In April 2024, Microsoft and Quantinuum said they had achieved an important step in making quantum computers a commercial reality, but did not comment on how many years it would take to beat a conventional supercomputer using the technology.

(Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)