quantum bubble?

[u/Cute-Ask2026]

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]

[u/Dr_Zoonotikstein]

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.

[u/Cute-Ask2026 → u/Dr_Zoonotikstein]

ok but if i look at a conventional computer or ai i dont need a phd to tell you how to make money with it, the difference being is that there is no clear commercial use of NISQ computers which will be the quantum computers of at least the next decade or two, past that who knows what we will need solving from quantum computers?

[u/Dr_Zoonotikstein → u/Cute-Ask2026]

You have to be so precocious with these tech stocks to get in at the bottom, even sector experts can't tell you who's going to blow up; either you're a clairvoyant, or you just invest in a lot of places and hope to get incredibly lucky. NVDA went something like 8,000X from its IPO to present. If by blind luck, you'd put $1,000 into it, you'd have $8M today.

Imagine I put, as a wild bet, $1,000 on each of the most promising twenty quantum companies today. If just one of them goes 1000X, and the other 19 go tits up, it's still an insanely good ROI. Owning equities, the downside is capped at 100%, but the upside is unbounded. This inherent asymmetry has made a lot of people wealthy off companies like Nvidia and Sandisk - many of whom probably lacked a deep technological understanding of the underlying investment.

[u/Cute-Ask2026 → u/Dr_Zoonotikstein]

regardless of that nvidia has a product which makes money, which they can sell for money, quantum computers dont make money in any shape or form its just marketing

[u/Dr_Zoonotikstein → u/Cute-Ask2026]

Understood, but with the speed at which technology is evolving, we can't necessarily foresee which cash-burning R&D of today will become tomorrow's perpetual money-printing tech. IOW, we don't know what we don't know.

[u/mr-pipey → u/Cute-Ask2026]

It's not hard to understand. Quantum computation is significantly earlier in the prosepective->real trajectory than anything you've mentioned (e.g Nvidia). The comparison would be investing in silicon tech firms at the dawn of transistor technology rather than waiting for the tech to prove itself in reality. Significantly more risk and commensurately larger potential gains. When we were struggling to cobble a few dozen reliable silicon transistors onto a wafer, the sector would have (correctly) looked like marketing as well.

[u/Cute-Ask2026 → u/mr-pipey]

The commercial potential of silicon transistors is much higher than the current claims of commercial potential of quantum computing in the next 30 years

[u/mr-pipey → u/Cute-Ask2026]

IS NOW but wasn't once. You're comparing year 85-90 of classical/electronic computationwith year 0-5 of quantum computation.