IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) has become one of the biggest names in quantum computing, and for good reason. In fact, having grown to a market cap exceeding $14.3 billion, it has aggressively expanded its technology portfolio, made acquisitions, and advanced its commercial plans.
Meanwhile, D-Wave Quantum (NASDAQ: QBTS), with a market cap of around $3.7 billion, reported 21% third-quarter revenue growth on Nov. 10, and there’s a case to be made that five years from now it could be the more valuable company of the two.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a “Double Down” signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same “Total Conviction” signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
Here’s why D-Wave’s approach already looks different from much of the industry.
D-Wave is solving real-world problems today
While much of the quantum computing industry focuses on developing versatile machines with groundbreaking potential across a range of applications, D-Wave already has technology that solves real-world problems today.
D-Wave’s quantum annealing technology differs from that of most of its peers because it is designed to tackle two highly specific types of computing workloads: optimization and sampling problems. In one sense, that narrows its opportunity. However, such problems arise frequently in areas such as logistics, manufacturing, and scheduling, and companies need solutions. That gives D-Wave something valuable in this emerging industry: opportunities to build commercial relationships before the broader quantum computing market fully matures.
For example, Japan’s largest mobile carrier, NTT DOCOMO, has deployed a second production application using D-Wave’s hybrid quantum technology in its network operations, while D-Wave has also expanded its presence in Europe by delivering an Advantage2 system to Italy.
D-Wave’s acquisition of Quantum Circuits could also prove to be one of its biggest milestones so far. Specifically, that purchase gave it a path to developing a gate-model quantum computer, a more commonly pursued technology, to run alongside its annealing systems. This would allow it to address a much broader range of computational problems.
That said, D-Wave doesn’t have to abandon its quantum annealing approach to grow. Instead of making an either-or choice about the future of quantum computing, it’s now pursuing both approaches simultaneously.
In fact, D-Wave has already laid out an ambitious gate-model roadmap extending to 2032, focused on its dual-rail superconducting technology and a long-term goal of building systems that can reliably run extremely complex computations. And that brings us to the more interesting part of the bull case: D-Wave could tap a much larger commercial market in the future.
