By Dan Gallagher

Quantum computing may be many years out, but even the founder and CEO of Nvidia now seems to think: "Why wait?"

Quantum computing stocks jumped Wednesday following an announcement from Nvidia that it would add a "Quantum Day" event to its GTC conference in March.

Putting quantum computing on the agenda of Nvidia's "AI Woodstock" will add a lot of visibility; Craig Ellis of B Riley Securities called GTC "one of if not the most important advanced computing developer events in the world" in a note to clients on Wednesday.

The event will include Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang plus execs from several quantum computing companies, including those from Rigetti Computing, IonQ and D-Wave Quantum. Those three stocks jumped between 19%-31% by Wednesday afternoon.

The announcement came just a week after the artificial intelligence powerhouse appeared to throw cold water on the market's enthusiasm for quantum computing. During a meeting with analysts at last week's CES conference, Huang spoke highly of the potential for the burgeoning technology but added that "very useful quantum computers" were likely 20 years away. Several quantum stocks that got revved up after Google announced a key breakthrough in early December had hit their all-time highs just before CES. Rigetti and D-Wave shares lost more than 60% of their value in the days following Huang's comments, while IonQ shares slid 44%.

Nvidia's announcement Tuesday noted that quantum computing "promises huge leaps forward" in areas like drug discovery, materials development and financial forecasting. "But just as exciting as quantum computing's future are the breakthroughs already being made today in quantum hardware, error correction and algorithms," Tuesday night's blog post read.

The bar will be high. Even with last week's selloff, most quantum stocks are still carrying significant gains from just three months ago. Rigetti's current market cap of about $2.6 billion is more than 15 times its level from mid-October. The group also got a strong boost Tuesday, helped by an announcement from Microsoft of a new training program to help businesses get "quantum ready." Nvidia's spotlight better prove extra bright.

This analysis comes from the Journal's Heard on the Street team. Subscribe to their free daily afternoon newsletter here.

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January 15, 2025 14:14 ET (19:14 GMT)

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