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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 $3,000 minimum price tag. 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.
Chris Erven, CEO and co-founder of KETS Quantum Security, believes quantum computers will eventually pose a significant threat to cybersecurity. "China is making some of the largest investments in quantum computing, pumping in billions of dollars into research and development in the hope of being the first to create a large-scale, cryptographically relevant machine," Erven tells PCMag in a statement. "Although they may be a few years away from being fully operational, we know a quantum computer will be capable of breaking all traditional cyber defenses we currently use. So they, and others, are actively harvesting now, to decrypt later."
Chinese researchers have already used quantum computers to, at least in part, begin to crack military-grade encryption.
In response to this broader "quantum threat," Apple has already developed and released a new security protocol, Post-Quantum 3 or PQ3, for its end-to-end encrypted iMessage app in an effort to protect iOS users if or when that day comes.
Also in the US, Google has continued to develop its own quantum chips that reduce the number of errors. It recently unveiled "Willow," which Google claims can be infinitely faster than today's fastest supercomputers.