University of Kwazulu-Natal

Our Thoughts On Jensen Huang S Truly Useful In 15 30 Years Quantum

Bonisiwe Shabane
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our thoughts on jensen huang s truly useful in 15 30 years quantum

One of the philosophies that we practice at the Quantum Computing Report by GQI is to serve as a low pass filter to calm down high frequency reactions oscillating between irrational exuberance and extreme... There has been a lot of that recently with Google’s announcement of their progress with the Willow chip versus the recent statement by Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, regarding his view on the future trajectory... Our assessment is that in both cases the stock market has been overreacting. So to start off, we think it is useful to examine how NVIDIA itself grew. The company was founded in 1993 and some people will occasionally call it, the overnight success that took 30 years in the making. It is helpful to review the revenue trajectory of NVIDIA since it went public in 1999 as shown below.

It is quite possible that Jensen Huang’s experience here has colored his thinking about quantum. Although the absolute numbers will be different, there is a good chance that the shape of a quantum market curve will be similar for quantum computing in the coming decades. Specifically, what Jensen Huang said was that he believes quantum computing is still 15 to 30 years away from being truly useful. “Truly Useful” is a very nebulous term and can mean a lot of different things to different people. We believe that he made the statement in the context of the size of the quantum computing market in comparison to the overall computing market. But, that is not to say that quantum computing revenue will be negligible.

In fact, it may be quite significant, but still not a dominating factor when one looks at it in comparison to the overall computing market. Another way to look at this is by thinking about the adoption rate for quantum computing. And to get a sense of what that might be, let’s look at the adoption rates for other technology products over the last century. AI can help discover new materials, but we’ll need quantum computers to really move the needle. On January 8, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang jolted the stock market by saying that practical quantum computing is still 15 to 30 years away, at the same time suggesting those computers will need Nvidia... However, history shows that brilliant people are not immune to making mistakes.

Huang’s predictions miss the mark, both on the timeline for useful quantum computing and on the role his company’s technology will play in that future. I’ve been closely following developments in quantum computing as an investor, and it’s clear to me that it is rapidly converging on utility. Last year, Google’s Willow device demonstrated that there is a promising pathway to scaling up to bigger and bigger computers. It showed that errors can be reduced exponentially as the number of quantum bits, or qubits, increases. It also ran a benchmark test in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years. While too small to be commercially useful with known algorithms, Willow shows that quantum supremacy (executing a task that is effectively impossible for any classical computer to handle in a reasonable amount of time)...

For example, PsiQuantum, a startup my company is invested in, is set to break ground on two quantum computers that will enter commercial service before the end of this decade. The plan is for each one to be 10 thousand times the size of Willow, big enough to tackle important questions about materials, drugs, and the quantum aspects of nature. These computers will not use GPUs to implement error correction. Rather, they will have custom hardware, operating at speeds that would be impossible with Nvidia hardware. Whether quantum computers will be useful in the near future is a debated topic—and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has just weighed in. "If you kind of said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that'd probably be on the early side.

If you said 30, is probably on the late side. But if you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it," Huang said during a Q&A with analysts. If he's right, this means we won't see effective quantum computers until 2045. This month, Huang also hinted at more AI plans, unveiled the anticipated RTX 50 Series GPUs, and announced a small desktop computer known as Project DIGITS with its Blackwell GPU inside and an expected... Nvidia's stock has soared over 160% in the past year, largely due to continued AI hype. In the past day, quantum firms D-Wave and IonQ both saw their respective stock prices fall more than 35%.

The field of quantum computing hasn't gotten nearly as much hype as generative AI and the tech giants promoting it in the past few years. Right now, part of the reason quantum computers aren't currently that helpful is because of their error rates. Nord Quantique CEO Julien Lemyre previously told PCMag that quantum error correction is the future of the field, and his firm is working on a solution. The errors that qubits, the basic unit of information in a quantum machine, currently make result in quantum computers being largely unhelpful. It's an essential hurdle to overcome—but we don't currently know if or when quantum errors will be eliminated. “Very useful quantum computers are still a few decades away,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during a keynote presentation at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week.

His comment sent shockwaves through the quantum computing industry, with shares of leading companies like Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum and IonQ plummeting between 30 and 50 percent. These companies’ CEOs were quick to defend their industry in a bid to win back investor confidence. By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime. “Jensen Huang has a misunderstanding of quantum. He is ‘dead wrong’ about D-Wave,” Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave Quantum, which develops quantum computing systems, told Observer.

“There is more than one approach to building a quantum computer. Our (D-Wave) systems are performing scientific computations on important problems that are not solvable by even massively parallel GPU systems.” D-Wave uses quantum annealing, an approach that excels in solving specific computational optimization problems. This method is particularly useful for materials simulation, scheduling and logistics applications. “Commercial quantum computing is already here,” Baratz added. For example, Canada-based Pattison Food Group reduced an 80-hour scheduling task to 15 hours using D-Wave’s technology. Another client, NTT DOCOMO, Japan’s largest telecom provider, slashed the time to optimize network resources from 27 hours to just 40 seconds.

Quantum computing CEOs are also talking up their companies’ revenue and profit prospects. D-Wave estimated its 2024 sales jumped 120 percent from the previous year. IonQ, which makes quantum computers, predicts it will turn a profit on more than $1 billion in sales by 2030, CEO Peter Chapman wrote in a blog post on Jan. 10. Quantum computing relies on qubits—units of data that can exist in multiple states at once—and holds the potential to quickly solve calculations that would take even supercomputers a thousand years. Exciting recent developments include Google’s Willow chip, which solved a random circuit sampling (RCS) benchmark problem in just five minutes.

RCS, one of the most challenging benchmarks for quantum computers, would take today’s fastest supercomputer 10 septillion years (1 followed by 24 zeros) to solve, Google claims. Nvidia (NVDA) chief executive Jensen Huang doesn’t think useful quantum computers will be here anytime soon — and stocks are not reacting well to it. Quantum computing stocks such as IonQ (IONQ) and Rigetti Computing (RGTI) fell by more than 40% Wednesday morning after Huang’s comments during Nvidia’s financial analyst day at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). IonQ’s shares were down by about 45%, while Rigetti’s shares fell by more than 48% mid-morning. Quantum Computing (QUBT), which announced a stock offering earlier this week to raise $100 million, saw its shares fall by about 49%. D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), meanwhile, saw shares fall by around 47%.

“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.” The Nvidia chief said he thinks the AI chipmaker will play “a significant part” in the development of quantum computers, and push it toward getting “there as fast as possible.” Huang’s statements triggered an $8 billion meltdown in the four biggest quantum computing shares in the US Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said that any practical use of quantum computing technology is at least another two decades away.

Huang made his comments in a Q&A with Wall Street analysts this week at CES 2025, a major annual tech conference in Las Vegas, when asked about the future of the technology. “Quantum computing can’t solve every problem,” the Nvidia chief said, adding that the tech was “good at small data, big compute” problems such as “truly generating a random number” and cryptography. “It’s not good at large data problems,” he said. Why are useful quantum computers 15-to-30 years away? I just wonder if this prediction might be a bit optimistic. My personal view being with different aspects:

When Nvidia CEO stated so, he likely meant that it will take decades before quantum computers achieve a level of performance, error correction (self-resilience), reliability, and scalability to solve practical, real-world problems that classical... To the best of my knowledge, here’s how one may understand the statement: A. “Useful Quantum Computers”, current Status: CAG audit found that India’s flagship skilling programme prioritised certificates over jobs, exposing deep flaws. Karnataka was among the first to roll out a data centre policy, but the implementation on the ground is sluggish

With an advanced traffic management system, Bengaluru has reduced travel time by up to 20% in some corridors. The contrast playing out across southern India highlights how decisively infrastructure readiness, policy execution, and speed shape tech investment outcomes. From AI workloads to enterprise cloud adoption, data centres could become foundational drivers of India’s GDP growth.

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