
- Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, believes quantum computing is 20 years away from being “very useful”
- That seems a very pessimistic outlook
- A new IDTechEx report covers the same 20-year period and is much more upbeat
When Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, speaks, people don’t just listen – they take notice and act. So when he noted during a discussion at the recent CES 2025 event in Las Vegas that it would likely be 20 years before “very useful” quantum computers would be available, the share prices of multiple quantum computing specialists plummeted.
“Very useful” is, of course, a flexible term, but it sent a strong message from someone who has just spent decades at the helm of a company (currently the most highly valued in the world) developing technology that is now at the heart of the global AI revolution, something else he talked about (of course!) during CES – see Nvidia CEO ushers in the ‘agentic AI’ era.
And Huang wasn’t totally negative – he did agree during the same discussion that quantum computing’s capabilities will be remarkable, but his timeline looks pessimistic and just because he’s the Nvidia CEO doesn’t mean he’s the sage of tech.
Certainly quantum computing is difficult and immature, but it is already proving its worth in areas as diverse as cybersecurity and cryptography, machine learning, the development of new drugs and new electronics materials, traffic and supply chain logistics optimisation on land, sea and in the air, battery chemistry, financial modelling, weather forecasting and climate change, data analytics, pattern prediction and, of course, AI.
The fact is that, in recent years, the likes of IBM, Google, Microsoft and many other investors have ploughed more than $8bn into quantum computing and they expect to get a decent return on their investments in due course. Furthermore, investment is bound to increase, especially given quantum computing’s intertwined and increasingly symbiotic relationship with AI.
Another 20-year outlook
Coincidentally, a new report from Cambridge, England-based specialist IDTechEx, an independent research house focusing on emerging technologies and their markets, examines the 20-year period casually mentioned by Huang. The report, Quantum Computing Market 2025-2045: Technology, Trends, Players, Forecasts, covers the quantum computing “hardware that promises a revolutionary approach to solving the world’s unmet challenges”.
It also provides an in-depth evaluation of multiple quantum computing technologies, including superconducting, silicon-spin, photonic, trapped-ion, neutral-atom, topological, diamond-defect and annealing, as well as presenting “quantum commercial readiness level” scores to assess how the quantum computing industry is progressing compared to the evolution of the classical computing industry that came before it.
The report’s authors forecast that the quantum computing market will be worth in excess of $10bn by 2045, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30% over the next 20 years.
According to Dr Tess Skyrme, principal technology analyst at IDTechEx, whichever technology approach is taken to develop quantum computers, it is “increasingly apparent across them all that new generations of optics and photonics technologies will be essential,” as they play a vital role within multiple core functions in various quantum computing hardware approaches including readout, cooling and control, modular connectivity and datacentre integration. These factors will require the establishment of new supply chains for players, both old and new, in the photonics ecosystem, noted Skyrme.
Bringing it all together
The ultimate aim is to integrate quantum computing with existing systems including classical computing, datacentres and telecoms networks.
In quantum computing readout systems (that actually show the results of problems solved by quantum machines), photon detector technology is widely used: Within photonic quantum computing, the need for single photon detection is so acute that superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPD) are used. SNSPDs are very fast and have a high efficiency of detection, and efforts are ongoing to integrate them into photonic integrated circuits (PICs). As the IDTechEx report points out, this need presents an opportunity for quantum computing hardware companies to provide even more accurate single photon detectors for photonics quantum computing readout purposes and accelerate the transition towards large-scale, fault-tolerant photonic quantum computing.
Where controlling and cooling qubits is concerned, cryostat systems are commonly used but research continues into the use of laser cooling. That might seem counter-intuitive given that, in public perception at least, lasers are often associated with heat, ignition and burning. However, in quantum computing, lasers can slow atoms down to very low energy states, and the hunt is on to exploit established technology and components at room temperature thus saving power (and associated costs) and improving cooling efficiency.
Enabling modular connections and datacentre integration is a major challenge, as it is very difficult to create and maintain connections between neighbouring qubits on single chips, let alone across (and between) distributed systems. One potential and promising solution here is the development of a quantum networking unit (QNU) that uses photonics to distribute entanglement across multiple processors.
Ultimately, quantum computers will need to integrate with existing networks, datacentre platforms and classical computers. As the IDTechEX report notes, “Photons are already the globe’s medium of choice when it comes to data, and for commercial success quantum computers cannot avoid the need for photonics of some form.”
And finally, although Nvidia’s Huang believes “very useful” quantum computing is still 20 years away, research house McKinsey, for one, reckons that “thanks to accelerating technological breakthroughs, increasing investment flows, [and] startup proliferation,” the first commercial quantum computing systems will be available in the early-to-mid-2030s.
But, but... it is also worth remembering that back in 2022, Haim Israel, the managing director of research at the Bank of America, said that quantum computing will be “bigger than fire and bigger than all the revolutions that humanity has seen.” It yet again goes to show that the hot air hype balloon will bob about according to the direction it is blown by any particular interested party at any particular time.
– Martyn Warwick, Editor in Chief, TelecomTV
Email Newsletters
Sign up to receive TelecomTV's top news and videos, plus exclusive subscriber-only content direct to your inbox.