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When Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang speaks, the market scrutinizes every word — making every appearance a high-stakes opportunity for a surge or stumble for the company, its partners, and the industry writ large. 

Despite a suite of splashy, impressive company announcements, a few lines from Huang stifled tech's exciting new hope.

Stocks tied to quantum computing tumbled Wednesday after Huang's comments that useful quantum computers are years away. That's hardly a novel observation. But it moved markets because of Huang's hefty and ever-growing status on Wall Street and the impatience for innovation it revealed.

When Google (GOOG, GOOGL) unveiled the Willow quantum chip last month, stocks in the ecosystem rallied, even as market analysts acknowledged that commercial applications are a very long way off.

Contrast that with Huang's remarks, and quantum aspirations became dead weight.

“If you kind of said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side. If you said 30, it’s probably on the late side,” Huang said during Nvidia’s analyst day at CES Wednesday. “If you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it.”

Forecasting potential revenue streams in the decades seemed too much to bear for an industry that measures itself in quarters. 

Shares of Rigetti Computing (RGTI), D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), and IonQ (IONQ) all plunged more than 40% following Huang's comments. The quantum names are coming off massive run-ups, boosted by Google's announcement in December, as investors scrambled to get into a potentially society-altering technology as close to the ground floor as possible. 

But Huang appeared to offer a reality check, or a reason to offload stock that reached dizzying heights. Over the past year, Rigetti has gained over 900%, D-Wave Quantum close to 600%, and IonQ nearly 150%.

However distant the future applications of these companies, Google offered the market something concrete, and it helped the search giant pull off a December rally, lifting up related players with it. Meanwhile, the prognostication of a tech exec — although perhaps one of the brightest stars in corporate America — sent shares careening into a ditch. 

An irony of Wall Street pulling back from a supposed paradigm-shifting tech is that the market is already knee-deep in the AI transformation. Backers of quantum computing see advancements in the field as a path to surpass conventional data processing, leading to breakthroughs in medicine, energy, and cybersecurity. But if investors are already becoming impatient with the promises of AI, the fruits of an even more far-fetched technology might seem too distant to savor.

The "AI Godfather" himself said Nvidia will play a part in helping the industry get to the useful, money-making part as fast as possible. The market wants innovation — that's true enough. But preferably next quarter.

Hamza Shaban is a reporter for Yahoo Finance covering markets and the economy. Follow Hamza on X @hshaban.

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