This year has been pretty good for tech stocks, including well-known tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon. However, 2024 has also been a good year for many companies that operate in the artificial intelligence sector , such as Nvidia and Broadcom.
But this year has also been a great year when it comes to stock price rises for another niche sector of the tech industry: quantum computing.
Several relatively small quantum computing companies have seen their share prices soar this year. Here’s what you need to know about the technology and some of the public companies whose shares have benefited from what many see as the future of computing.
What is quantum computing?
Nothing is ever simple when talking about quantum physics—and that includes quantum computing, which takes advantage of the quantum nature of reality. But it’s easier to understand quantum computing when first understanding “normal” computing.
Unless you are a physicist or researcher working with quantum computers, every computer you’ve used in your life is what’s known as a “classical computer,” that is, it operates on the principles of classical physics. Classical computers operate on a binary system of bits. Each bit can either be a one or a zero.
This is true whether we are talking about a nearly 40-year-old computer like the Commodore 64, an iPhone 16 Pro made this year, or some of the world’s fastest supercomputers like IBM’s Watson. No matter how powerful any of these devices may be, they all operate under models of classical physics.
But quantum computers aren’t limited to the binary restrictions of classical physics. Quantum computers operate using qubits instead of bits. Whereas a bit can either be a one or a zero, a qubit can be a one or zero—or anything in between—at the same time. This is because quantum physics allows for a single particle to exist in multiple states at the same time.
And because qubits can operate in multiple states simultaneously, they can carry out processes within minutes or hours that would take classical computers billions of years to carry out.
Quantum computing stocks are soaring
Right now, there is no commercial quantum computer on the market that consumers can buy—and any such personal quantum computers are a decade or more away, if ever. But quantum computers are on the cusp of revolutionizing various industries, including science, defense, space, and security.
There are a number of public companies currently working on quantum computers and adjacent technologies. Those include:
In 2024, the stock prices of the above companies have soared. As of the time of this writing, QBTS is up 870% year to date, RGTI is up 882%, IONQ is up 238%, and QUBT is up 1,562%.
So why have these stocks soared so much this year?
There’s no single answer to that. Some may have to do with the individual companies and the contracts they’ve achieved. For example, today, as of the time of this writing, QUBT is up 26% after it announced that it was awarded a contract by NASA.
However, it also seems that investors have gained more confidence in the future of quantum computing, especially given the strides scientists are making in the burgeoning field. For example, earlier this month, Google’s lead of Google Quantum AI, Hartmut Neven, announced its Willow quantum chip . Neven said Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in less than five minutes—a computation that would take the fastest classical supercomputer 10 septillion years to process.
Are quantum computers the future?
Many scientists believe so. And investors—based on the growth rate of quantum computing stocks in 2024—certainly seem to hope so. But what’s perhaps most interesting about quantum computing is what it may reveal about the nature of reality.
Announcing Willow’s staggering performance speeds, Google’s Neven said the chip’s “mind-boggling” computation “exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe.” But if so, then how could Willow possibly perform at that rate?
“It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes” at once, says Neven. If that’s the case, he says, it supports the notion “that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.”
This post originally appeared at
fastcompany.com
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