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Did the 2023 Marvel movie "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" lose or make money? It depends on when you look for the answer. Initially, it was reported to be a huge failure, but a 2024 Forbes analysis found it actually eked out a teeny tiny profit. It seems just right for a movie that pins its plot on quantum mechanics to itself have had a Schrödinger's cat moment, especially as the "Ant-Man" series is how many of us were exposed to the ideas of quantum physics. (That said, it's science fiction, not fact — here's a succinct explainer from MIT on quantum computing technology.) In this special edition of Snacks, we're diving deeper than Paul Rudd into what has become one of the hottest and most fascinating new sectors in tech: quantum computing. Before we dive into the future, we did still notice the markets of yesterday: A double whammy of negative AI headlines and tougher tariff talk sunk stocks. The S&P 500 fell 1.1%, the Russell 2000 gave back 1%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 slumped 1.8%. Tech was the worst S&P 500 sector ETF, down 2.2%, while consumer discretionary fell more than 1%. |
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Sherwood News Market Editor Luke Kawa sat down with the CEO of D-Wave Quantum, Dr. Alan Baratz, to get answers to some of the questions that make our heads hurt when we start digging into this industry, as well as his uncensored thoughts about Nvidia's Quantum Day. |
- First, he unpacked what D-Wave's "quantum supremacy" breakthrough means.
On March 12, D-Wave said the company's quantum computing had successfully answered two important questions: "What can you do that a classical computer can't?" and, "If so, how could that accomplishment make or save me money right now?" A very complicated paper was published on this, but Kawa asked Baratz to break it down for us and elaborate on how it's different from Alphabet's Willow breakthrough. The TL;DR: "Nobody can do anything useful" with Willow, but with D-Wave… - Second, Baratz spilled the tea on why he was "quite disappointed" with Nvidia.
In January, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a bit of an oopsie, saying quantum computers were 15 to 30 years away from being "useful." To make amends, Huang hosted a Quantum Day as part of GTC, where he actually made further embarrassing remarks about his knowledge of the quantum industry. Baratz, who was on a panel at the event, did not hold back when talking to Sherwood about the "self-serving" show as well as being left off Nvidia's quantum consortium. - Finally, Kawa asked why the seeming soulmates of AI and quantum hadn't already gotten hitched, and he gave an unexpected answer about the surprising pit stop on the road to AI quantum computing integration.
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This company is taking on Big Pharma to fix one of their big failures
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Big Pharma has failed to develop a disease-modifying therapy for osteoarthritis (DMOAD). It's an oversight that's burdened patients with temporary treatments that don't target the root cause of the disease – leaving 365M+ people suffering with knee OA pain globally. Cytonics believes that this is unacceptable, and has developed a novel approach to overcome pharma's deficiencies in the standard of care. Cytonics' solution is based on one of nature's amazing creations: a blood protein called Alpha-2-Macroglobulin (A2M). By tweaking the genetic code of this naturally occurring protein, Cytonics has developed a genetically engineered A2M variant named CYT-108, which could become the first disease-modifying therapy for osteoarthritis. And they're doing it without any assistance from Big Pharma or Wall Street. Cytonics has taken exactly $0.00 from Silicon Valley behemoths, and their current round is open to investors. Join Cytonics in changing the trajectory of OA and biotech.1 |
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The day the computer cracks everything |
One of the biggest fears around the emergence of quantum computing is that the tech will be able to crack every code known to man and machine. It's called "Q-Day" by those in the industry: the day a quantum computer can solve encryption that keeps all our secrets safe, from passwords to financial records to crypto wallets to military plans and launch codes. Experts surveyed last year gave a one-in-three chance we hit Q-Day by 2035, but in a Wired piece published on Monday, experts gave a 15% chance it's already happened. And development is speeding up: |
- In December, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced that Google's Willow quantum chip solved a problem in "<5 mins" that would take today's best supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete.
- A few days later, Rigetti Computing, in partnership with Nvidia and others, successfully used AI to calibrate a quantum computer (that is, set it up so it works and does whatever it's being asked to do properly) — a significant potential time-saver that could aid the proliferation of this technology.
- Then in February, Microsoft said it had built a "topological qubit," a new type of hardware made from electrons on a tiny wire, which created a very real drama in the space as experts doubted the company's results.
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What can be done to get ready for Q-Day? |
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For those of us old enough to remember the panic leading up to Y2K, it's a lesson that society can prepare for technological sea change. Yes, this is a bigger and harder task than the updates required as the year turned from 1999 to 2000, but it's not impossible. NIST released its post-quantum encryption standards last summer and one of Biden's final executive orders tasked government agencies to enact those algorithms ASAP. |
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What comment triggered a sell-off in quantum stocks earlier this year? (Answer below.) |
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- Final Q4 gross domestic product
- Earnings expected from Walgreens and Lululemon
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Advertiser's disclosures:
1 This is a paid advertisement for Cytonics Regulation A+ Offering. Please read the offering circular and related risks on the SEC website. Investing in private company securities is not suitable for all investors because it is highly speculative and involves a high degree of risk. It should only be considered a long-term investment. You must be prepared to withstand a total loss of your investment. Private company securities are also highly illiquid, and there is no guarantee that a market will develop for such securities.
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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate... See more |
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