A person shows Google Quantum AI’s “Willow” chip, in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters on December 6, 2024.
Google | Via Reuters
Alphabet shares rose 5% during trading Tuesday, the day after the company hailed its latest quantum computing chip as a “breakthrough.”
The Google parent company on Monday revealed “Willow,” a quantum computing chip that the company said performed significantly better on a quantum computing benchmark than its predecessor did in 2019. Willow, like similar quantum chips, uses uncertain “qubits” to represent numbers instead of transistors, which are used on traditional semiconductors. Google said its technology can reduce expected errors faster than they appear as quantum chips get bigger, which has been a bottleneck in the development of better quantum computers.
Willow is the second milestone in a six-step strategy to develop quantum computers that can perform useful applications, Google said. The chip has about 100 qubits, but Google is planning to eventually build a system with 1 million qubits.
“Willow brings us closer to running practical, commercially-relevant algorithms that can’t be replicated on conventional computers,” Google wrote in a blog post, adding that the experiment is evidence that suggests that reality is comprised of parallel universes.
“We see Willow as an important step in our journey to build a useful quantum computer with practical applications in areas like drug discovery, fusion energy, battery design + more,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on X.
When quantum computing matures, it is expected to be useful for large-scale simulations and code breaking, but that may not be possible for years or decades. Google isn’t the only tech giant working on quantum computing. Nvidia, Microsoft and IBM are also working on the technology, in addition to researchers at startups and universities.
Google’s announcement was praised on social media by several technology business figures, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“We should do a quantum cluster in space with Starship one day,” Pichai replied to Musk.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visits “Making Money With Charles Payne” at Fox Business Network Studios in New York on Dec. 4, 2024.
Mike Coppola | Getty Images
OpenAI said Wednesday it was working to fix an outage after its popular ChatGPT assistant and Sora video generator were left inaccessible.
“We have identified the issue and are working to roll out a fix,” OpenAI said in a post on X.
Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company’s technology was reaching 300 million active users each week. Earlier on Wednesday, Apple released new versions of its software for the iPhone, iPad and Mac that bring integrations with ChatGPT.
ChatGPT has been down for over three hours. An outage in June lasted for over five hours.
OpenAI was valued at $157 billion in a funding round in October that included participation from existing backer Microsoft as well as chipmaker Nvidia. The company’s rapid ascent began with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 and has been the biggest story in the tech industry over the last couple years.
On Monday OpenAI said it was releasing Sora to people in the U.S. and most other countries, but on Tuesday, Altman wrote on X that “we significantly underestimated demand for sora; it is going to take awhile to get everyone access.”
Vahe Kuzoyan, left, and Ara Mahdessian, the founders of ServiceTitan.
ServiceTitan
ServiceTitan, a provider of cloud software to contractors, priced its IPO at $71 a share on Wednesday, above the expected range.
The company is set to debut on the Nasdaq on Thursday under ticker symbol “TTAN.” ServiceTitan previously raised its price range to between $65 and $67.
ServiceTitan sold 8.8 million shares in the offering, which would amount to a raise of almost $625 million. At the IPO price, ServiceTitan is worth about $6.3 billion.
Technology IPOs have been sparse since late 2021, when inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of riskier assets. Cloud software stocks quickly went out of favor after remote work during the pandemic had accelerated their growth.
In March of this year, social network Reddit went public, followed by data management company Rubrik the following month. In September, less than two weeks after the Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark rate for the first time since 2020, chipmaker Cerebras filed for an IPO. However, the company has yet to debut on the market.
ServiceTitan, based in Glendale, California, filed to go public on Nov. 18. The company has said some proceeds would go toward redeeming all outstanding shares of its non-convertible preferred stock. It had issued that stock in 2022 to repay loans to finance the $577 million acquisition of pest control software provider FieldRoutes.
While raising money in 2022, ServiceTitan agreed to “compounding ratchet” terms that encourage the company to quickly go public and prevent unnecessary dilution, according to an analysis from venture firm Meritech Capital.
Bessemer Venture Partners, TPG and Iconiq are among the company’s top shareholders, alongside founders Vahe Kuzoyan and Ara Mahdessian.
Mahdessian’s father had a contracting business, and Kuzoyan’s father dealt in plumbing, according to the Los Angeles Times. The founders said in a pre-recorded IPO roadshow that they saw technology as a way to modernize their family businesses. Their software can help with marketing, sales, scheduling and customer service.
ServiceTitan’s preliminary results for the October quarter show a net loss of about $47 million on $198.5 million in revenue. That suggests approximately 24% year-over-year revenue growth, the highest rate since mid-2023. But the company’s net loss widened from around $40 million in the October quarter last year.
Alphabet and Tesla climbed to fresh records on Wednesday, closing at all-time highs alongside Amazon and Meta as the tech megacaps lifted the Nasdaq past 20,000 for the first time.
Tech’s seven trillion-dollar companies added roughly $416 billion in market cap for the day.
For Alphabet, the two-day 11% rally was driven by the company’s launch of its latest quantum computing chip, which it revealed on Monday and described as a “breakthrough” and “an important step in our journey to build a useful quantum computer with practical applications” in drug discovery, battery design and other areas.
Alphabet closed at $195.40 on Wednesday, topping its prior high of $191.18, which it reached on July 10.
Tesla had been below its previous record for much longer. Shares of the electric vehicle maker jumped almost 6% on Wednesday to $424.77, climbing above their prior closing high of $409.97 on Nov. 4, 2021. The stock has soared 69% since Donald Trump’s election victory last month, on Wall Street’s optimism that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s cozy relationship with the incoming president will pay dividends.
Amazon, Apple and Meta have all been regularly reaching new highs, though Apple slipped 0.5% on Wednesday. Microsoft, meanwhile, is about 4% below its high reached in July, and chipmaker Nvidia is 6% off its record from last month.
The outsized weighting of tech’s megacaps has pushed the Nasdaq to a 33% gain for the year. The index rose 1.8% on Wednesday to close at an all-time high of 20,034.89.
The market has rallied since Trump’s victory on Nov. 4, partly on expectations that the new administration will dial down regulatory pressure on the tech industry and allow for more dealmaking.
On Tuesday, Trump named Andrew Ferguson as the next chair of the Federal Trade Commission, replacing Lina Khan, who is best known for blocking the top tech companies’ acquisition efforts. Ferguson, currently one of the FTC’s five commissioners, “will be the most America First, and pro-innovation FTC Chair in our Country’s History,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Tom Lee, managing partner at Fundstrat Global Advisors, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” that investors see more gains in tech with the expectation that a Federal Reserve rate cut is coming this month. The consumer price index showed a 12-month inflation rate of 2.7% in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Wednesday, further solidifying the market outlook for a cut.
“We know that when interest rates fall, the megacaps actually are very sensitive to that, and I think today was a day where the odds of a December cut increased,” Lee said. “That’s actually bullish for tech.”