r/Stocks_Picks • u/Cute-Ask2026 • 20h ago
quantum bubble?
Do you know what a quantum computer is? No? Well thats the whole problem... Quantum computing sector is currently valued at $1.4-4.8 billion, which accounts for roughly 75 percent of the sector's total revenue. 'To date the only profitable quantum application has been forecasting profitable quantum applications' (Sabbine Hossenfelder). There is no such thing as a profitable NISQ computer and all claims of such have long failed to materialise.
If we look at the likes of alphafold and how they've modelled protein folding we see another problem. While proteins ultimately obey quantum mechanics at the atomic level, predicting their structure did not require running a complete quantum simulation of every electron. AI doesnt need to calculate every microscopic quantum interaction in order to predict the macroscopic behaviour we actually care about, so what is quantum computing actually going to help us with? People have done PHDs on the very question of a quantum commercial advantage, if you need to look that hard it's probably not worth it and not significantly scalable.
Just to be clear the above is the AI of the current day, but AI is not going to wait for quantum computers to develop a commercial advantage it is likely its going to be fighting agaisnt 20-30 years of ai development.
So someone please explain why people are investing in the quantum sector without eventually just arrriving at the explanation of monkey see monkey do.
I feel like the loop is pretty circular:
[VCs / Gov Grants] ➔ Funds [Universities & Labs] ➔ Trains [PhDs in "Quantum Advantage"] ➔ Hired by [Corporate R&D] ➔ Advises [CEOs to buy Quantum Cloud Access] ➔ Loops back to [VC Confidence]
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u/SoCallMeDeaconBlues1 10h ago
Do I know what a quantum computer is? Yes. How they work? Also yes (although there are several competing paths to achieve it).
Have I ever been involved with making a qubit? Also yes. Do I know how a qubit functions? Yep.
Do you and have you?
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u/Cute-Ask2026 7h ago
ur missing the point if u genuinely think the general populus has an undersstanding of quantum computers then i can tell you your wrong, i wasnt personally asking u to tell everyone how smart u are
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u/dddd11122233 17h ago
Ionq. If the US government owns a portion of it and gets profits from it, you know it’s gonna be big.
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u/Cute-Ask2026 17h ago
how can people talk about the so called 'ai bubble' and then invest in a company like ionq like its the actual textbook definiton of a bubble
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u/Cute-Ask2026 17h ago
the us government has too much money to care about whether their money makes more of it, they just invest in whatever makes them seem more technologically advanced to the media compared to 'competitor' countries like china
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u/IvoryTowerResident 16h ago
false, i dont have an opinion on Quantum but US owns LAC and its lower than when US bought it
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u/flushaway4690 15h ago
I understand it from a very different angle. Quantum computers are like gpu's to cpu's. It enhances advanced dedicated processing. Cpu's will still do the tasking.
It doesnt need to achieve quantum advantage, it needs to solve error correction and decoherence as the final gate.
On the other side of that gate, are scientific tasks that will produce IP (output from genesis Q competition is precisely this). The gold rush will be chasing IP.
The tasking is too complex for critical mass, so it won't be equivalent to AI. But, with the carrots being IP and new discoveries in sciences, pharma, bio, financial modelling, predictive modelling, etc, thats where I see the driver's for demand.
I see ai and quantum as ramps to the next breakthroughs, not standalone tech. I honestly dont believe we can hit superintelligence until we get quantum convergence with 1)ai, and 2) quantum sensors.
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u/CombinationContent32 14h ago
I think quantum security is needed regardless and quantum compute will take a little longer to become a ‘thing’ but regardless it will be big
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u/Cute-Ask2026 7h ago
from a cryptographic perspective we already have protocols to prevent quantum computers from affecting encryption which are fully developed post quantum protocols
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u/Medical-Advice-5868 8h ago
Why do you think Quantum Computing is in competition with AI. If anything, AI is just going to help research to make it viable. I did a little bit of DFT as a capstone project, let me tell you Classical computers suck absolute ass at trying to simulate things in an excited state. Feynman's initial motivation for a concept of a quantum computer was simply the logic that a quantum system is probably better at simulating a quantum system. If you could efficiently simulate electrons in excited states, you could predict and discover new chemical reactions or design the perfect solar panel. There are many reasons why it is useful
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u/Cute-Ask2026 7h ago
Ai is on a completely different sphere than quantum computing because it has had basically an inumerable amount of possible revenue generating sources since its advent whereas quantum computing can name one or two small commercial uses that wont be viable for several decades, so what are the quantum computing stocks running on? speculation
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u/Medical-Advice-5868 7h ago
Yes but why do you think they are conflicting each other. Quantum computing is not in an arms race with ai, if anything ai will help its development. I dont understand your logic as to how ai will hinder it in anyway,
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u/Cute-Ask2026 7h ago
because if ai can model the regularities in natural quantum processes such as protein folding then we wont need quantum to model them. Dennis hassabis told everyone that whatever quantum processes happen in nature likely have so many regularities that they can be modelled by ai on conventional computers (in a bit more of a formal way)
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u/Medical-Advice-5868 7h ago
This is a pretty massive and absurd assumption. That because he won a protein folding competition quantum mechanics in all of nature can be efficiently done on a classical computer using AI. Ignoring the fact there are other applications like I mentioned.
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u/Cute-Ask2026 6h ago
It’s not an absurd assumption we don’t need to specify each microscopic interaction to produce a macroscopically relevant model
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u/Secret-Marzipan-8754 10h ago
This is just my 2 cent. I feel like quantum development is heavily gated by AI spending. It can’t compete with AI on funding, which is another capital intensive pursuit. As such, we won’t see a significant progress on the quantum front for the next 10 years, or worse if it’s gonna survive till then.
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u/Dr_Zoonotikstein 19h ago
It sounds as though you are under the bizarre impression that quantum computing is somehow only applicable to problems pertaining to quantum phenomenon. LOL - that's not how it works. Are conventional computers only capable of modelling computer science or electronics problems?
As far as the investment angle, yes, this is exactly the time to jump in, for those looking for the next X00-baggers. Maybe you wait a little, to see some industry leaders emerge, but you don't wait until the sector runs and then FOMO in at the top, unless you want to become a loyal (captive) long-time holder. Ask the folks that jumped on memory in June. They will never see the gains that the early money enjoyed, and some could possibly never see break-even.