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 Tuesday about Nvidia's quantum computing strategy. He said Nvidia could make the necessary conventional chips as well as quantum computing chips, but those computers would need a million times the number of quantum processing units, called qubits, it currently has.
It could take 15 to 30 years to bring “extremely useful quantum computers” to market, Huang told analysts.
Huang's comments sent shares in the emerging industry tumbling Wave D is sinking 36% on Wednesday.
“The reason he's wrong is because we at D-Wave are commercial today,” Baratz told CNBC's Deirdre Bosa on The Exchange. Baratz said companies including MasterCard And the Japanese company NTT Docomo “uses our quantum computers today in production for its commercial operations.”
“Not 30 years from now, not 20 years from now, not 15 years from now,” Baratz said. “But now today.”
D-Wave's revenues are still small. Sales in last quarter It fell 27% to $1.9 million from $2.6 million the previous year.
Quantum computing promises to solve problems that are difficult for current processors, such as decryption, random number generation and large-scale simulations. Technologists have been working on this for decades, and companies including Nvidia, Microsoft and IBM They follow it today, along with researchers at 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, January 6, 2025. Huang announced a slew of new hardware, chips, software and services , with the aim of remaining 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 that enjoyed renewed interest from investors in December, when Google She announced a breakthrough in her own research. Google said it has completed a 100-qubit chip, which is… The second of six steps In its strategy to build a million-qubit quantum system.
D-Wave shares rose 178% in December after rising 185% the previous month. Quantum Company It ignores computingwhich fell 45% on Wednesday, has more than quintupled in value last month. Ion Q It fell 39% on Wednesday. The stock rose 14% in December after rising 143% in November.
Baratz acknowledged that one approach to quantum computing, called gating, may be decades away. But he said he is using an annealing method, which can be deployed now.
“While Huang’s comments may not be completely out of the norm for gate-style quantum computers, they are 100% off the norm for hard-core quantum computers,” Baratz said.
Nvidia declined to comment.
Even after Wednesday's drop, D-Wave shares have risen nearly 600% in the past year, giving the company a market value of $1.6 billion.
Quantum computing has also been boosted by investor interest in artificial intelligence, a technology that has led to high demand for Nvidia's graphics processing units, which use traditional transistors instead of qubits. Nvidia's market cap rose 168% last year to $3.4 trillion.
D-Wave systems can solve problems that are beyond the capabilities of the fastest Nvidia-equipped systems, Baratz said.
“I would be happy to meet with Jensen anytime, anywhere to help fill these gaps for him,” Baratz said.
He watches: D-Wave CEO responds to Huang's comments
