Quantum Could Be Tech's Next Big Thing. But for Investors, It's All About Timing
Quantum computing is drawing renewed attention owing to a recent advance from Google and talk of the U.S. government taking stakes in companies working on the technology. But the industry has a way to go before the rewards for investors outweigh some glaring risks.Most U.S.-listed quantum stocks have risen sharply in recent months, including IonQ, which has nearly doubled in the past six months, and D-Wave Quantum, which has more than quadrupled.That enthusiasm reflects budding interest in an industry that, like artificial intelligence, may become a crux of geopolitical competition that the U.S. seeks to dominate. But it also reflects quantum computing's significant underlying promise.Quantum computers make calculations differently than conventional computers. Instead of representing data with bits that can be either one or zero, quantum computers harness the quantum-mechanical properties of so-called qubits that can be a combination of the two at the same time."Scalability is the prim