Is Quantum Computing An Existential Threat To NVIDIA?

This is the claim made by an analyst covering IonQ in the wake of Jensen's comments at CES 2025 last week..

Over the recent holiday season, we published our first ever post on the topic of quantum computing:

At the end of that note, we posed the following question:

Now, we see NVIDIA joining the party by teaming up with IonQ. Quantum computing meets accelerated computing. How long before Jensen mentions QC on an earnings call? My guess, not long. Let’s see…

As it turns out we didn’t have to wait long at all. Jensen shared his views during an analyst Q&A session at CES 2025 on the day after his keynote. The question that prompted his sharing on the topic was phrased in rather broad terms:

Jensen you guys have made some announcements on quantum computing. Can you share with us your view on how this technology develops over time? Is your strategy a longer term pick, with a time frame of five, ten, fifteen years? What is the difference between what quantum computing will be doing versus accelerating computing platforms that you have?

Jensen’s response, like all his responses during the Q&A session, was quite lengthy but the following extract from it is what caught people’s attention:

So we're extending CUDA to quantum to quantum and they use us for simulating the algorithms, simulating the architecture, creating the architecture itself and developing algorithms that we can use someday. When does that someday come? We're probably somewhere between in terms of the number of qubits you know order of five orders of magnitude or six orders magnitude away and and so if you kind of said 15 years for very useful quantum computers that would probably be on the early side. If you said you know 30, that’s probably on the late side. But if you picked 20 I think a whole bunch of us would believe it..

This set the cat among the proverbial pigeons as far as quantum computing stocks were concerned with the leading four plunging by up to 50% more or less instantly.

Before you start to feel too bad for these QC stocks, keep in mind that they are still hugely up over the course of the past six months thanks to a miraculous Santa Claus rally that swooped in an rescued them from near obscurity in the dying weeks of 2024.

There were some quite interesting reactions from certain quarters including this article hitting back by saying that quantum computing poses an “existential threat” to NVIDIA…

"Once quantum computing becomes powerful enough, it will likely replace some of the uses of GPU data centers with a much smaller footprint and much faster computation," Luria said. "That means quantum computing is an existential threat to Nvidia, which it would then want to wish away."

There were also strident responses from both D-Wave and IonQ, both of whom issued press releases on the matter while the CEO of the former took to CNBC’s The Exchange to lay out his case for why Jensen Huang was incorrect.

What else did Jensen Huang say about QC during the Q&A session last week? How exactly did D-Wave and IonQ companies react to his comments? Are QC companies really an existential threat to NVIDIA and, if so, do they represent a buying opportunity in the wake of last week’s sell off? Let’s dig in….