After Nvidia’s chief Jensen Huang made Wall Street squirm, D-Wave Quantum CEO Alan Baratz called Nvidia’s Jensen Huang “dead wrong” about quantum computing. Huang had already told me that quantum computers would need one million times as many qubits as they have today and would be ‘very useful’ in 15 to 30 years. His remarks sent the sector plummeting: D-Wave shares plunged 36% on Wednesday.
But Baratz retorted that D-Wave already has a commercial footprint: MasterCard, NTT Docomo in Japan all run their production on its quantum computers. “Not 15, 30 years from now, but right now,” Baratz said.
Though the company’s revenues are still minimal – down 27% this quarter to $1.9 million – D-Wave is still at the forefront of quantum computing. Gate quantum computing could be decades away, Baratz said, but D-Wave’s annealing strategy is already up and running.
Baratz thought that Huang’s remarks were wrong about annealing quantum computers, but maybe also for gate-model quantum systems. Nvidia did not reply to that.
Even with the dip on Wednesday, D-Wave shares are up around 600% in the last year and now trade at a market cap of $1.6 billion. The increase in investor interest in AI (which helps to fuel Nvidia’s chips) has helped to drive the quantum computing industry as well. Baratz pressed Huang, saying he would love to meet and talk tech-specifics.
