FX168 Financial News (North America) - Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave Quantum, stated that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's comments on quantum computing made on Wednesday (January 8) shocked Wall Street, and his views on quantum computing are "completely wrong."

When asked about NVIDIA's quantum computing Global Strategy on Tuesday, Huang stated that NVIDIA could produce traditional chips required alongside quantum computing chips, but the number of quantum processing units (i.e., qubits) needed for these quantum computers will be 1 million times the current number. He further indicated that bringing "very useful quantum computers" to market may take 15 to 30 years.

Huang's remarks led to a significant drop in stock prices for this emerging Industry, with D-Wave's stock plummeting 36% on Wednesday.

In an interview with CNBC's The Exchange host Deirdre Bosa, Baratz stated, "He is wrong because D-Wave has already commercialized this technology." Baratz pointed out that several companies, including MasterCard and Japan's NTT Docomo, are already using D-Wave's quantum computers in real production to drive their Business operations.

"Not in 30 years, not in 20 years, and not in 15 years," Baratz emphasized, "but right now."

Despite this, D-Wave's revenue remains relatively weak. The latest quarterly sales fell to $1.9 million from $2.6 million during the same period last year, a decrease of 27%.

Quantum computing is expected to solve some problems that traditional processors have difficulty handling, such as decryption, generating random numbers, and large-scale simulations. Over the years, Global technology companies, including NVIDIA, Microsoft, and IBM, as well as start-ups and academic Institutions, have been actively researching this technology.

D-Wave is one of the companies that regained investor favor in December, especially after Google announced breakthroughs in quantum research. Google stated that it has completed a chip with 100 qubits, which is the second step in its strategy to build a 1 million qubit quantum system.

After the stock price soared 185% last month, D-Wave's stock price surged again by 178% in December. Meanwhile, other quantum companies like Rigetti Computing experienced a 45% drop in stock price on Wednesday, although their stock had quintupled last month. IonQ's stock price also fell by 39%, despite a 143% increase in November and a 14% rise in December.

Baratz acknowledged that gate-based quantum computing methods may take decades to mature, but pointed out that the quantum annealing methods used by D-Wave can be deployed now.

Baratz stated that while Jensen Huang's comments might not be entirely incorrect for gate-based quantum computers, they are completely wrong for quantum annealing computers.

NVIDIA did not comment on this.

Despite the drop in stock price on Wednesday, D-Wave's stock has risen by about 600% over the past year, bringing the company's Market Cap to 1.6 billion dollars.

Investor interest in AI has also driven the development of quantum computing technology, further stimulating demand for NVIDIA's graphics processing units (GPUs). NVIDIA's GPUs use traditional transistors instead of qubits, and the company's Market Cap has increased by 168% over the past year, reaching 3.4 trillion dollars.

Baratz stated that D-Wave's systems can solve problems that even NVIDIA's fastest systems cannot handle.

"I would be happy to meet with Jensen at any time to help him fill in these gaps," Baratz added.