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Quantum computing stocks are plunging again after another major tech leader cast doubts on the technology’s usefulness in the near future.
During an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg echoed Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang’s prediction that quantum computing’s potential is a “decade plus out.”
“I’m not really an expert on quantum computing — my understanding is that’s still quite a ways off from being a very useful paradigm,” Zuckerberg said in the podcast episode released Friday.
D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) and Rigetti Computing (RGTI) saw shares fall by more than 25% during mid-day trading on Monday, with D-Wave down by around 30% and Rigetti down by more than 27%. Quantum Computing, meanwhile, saw its shares fall by around 23%, and IonQ (IONQ) shares were down by more than 12%.
The quantum computing stocks also tanked the previous week after Nvidia’s Huang said useful quantum computers are decades away during the chipmaker’s financial analyst day at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
“If you said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side,” Huang said. “If you said 30, it’s probably on the late side. But if you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it.”
Huang said he thinks the artificial intelligence chipmaker will play “a significant part” in the development of quantum computers, and push it toward getting “there as fast as possible.”
D-Wave chief executive Alan Baratz said in a statement shared with Quartz that Huang “has a misunderstanding of quantum.”
“While he might be right about other quantum companies, he is dead wrong about D-Wave,” Baratz said. “There is more than one approach to building a quantum computer. D-Wave took a different approach, which has allowed us to become commercial today and likely many years ahead of other quantum computing companies.”
In December, Alphabet stock climbed more than 4% after it unveiled its latest quantum chip, Willow. Google Quantum AI (GOOGL) announced that its state-of-the-art quantum chip demonstrated “two major achievements” in quantum computing, including “exponentially” reducing the rate of errors when adding more qubits — a challenge that has existed for almost 30 years.