Quantum hype will not replace AI hype. Quantum has already had its time of overblown expectations and has cooled off to realistic expectations. It won’t be cool or hyped again until general purpose quantum computing becomes a reality.
The quantum industry now knows (more or less) its own limitations for the next 5-10 years. That knowledge may not extend to investors, especially if they're looking for a new speculative bubble rather than the actual outcome of quantum R&D.
Rigetti, a company with $11B market cap is playing in a smaller league. OpenAI will have that much in revenue this year, and has a market cap almost 50x higher. The hype is not the same.
Yeah, that's fair. I agree RGTI (and QUBT, +100% last 6mo) both have much smaller mcaps, but they also kind of seem like (maybe?) more reflective of quantum hype than companies which have a quantum department but aren't defined by their quantum capabilities right now.
>It won’t be cool or hyped again until general purpose quantum computing becomes a reality.
Which, to be clear, could be never. Aside from factoring numbers, solving certain optimization problems, and simulating quantum systems, there are very few known applications where quantum computers even theoretically outperform classical computers.
Of course, it's possible that as quantum computers become more powerful/robust, it will inspire discovery of new classes of problems/algorithms that they excel at. But I'm not holding my breath.
I’m not saying that AI is definitely here to stay this time, but it won’t be quantum replacing it.
AI has cooled in the past, even generating the term “AI winter,” but it’s hot now. Quantum could be big again, but this current wave of specialized computers is played out. There won’t be hype at the level that AI currently gets until there is general purpose quantum computing.
