Google claims quantum computing milestone — but the tech can’t solve real-world problems yet
A woman bikes by a giant Google logo at Google’s Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on Aug 13, 2024 where the “Made by Google” media event was held today.
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images
Google has unveiled a new chip that it says marks a major breakthrough in the field of quantum computing, an area seen as the next frontier for many tech companies.
However, while Google’s achievements have been noted for advancing the field, experts say that quantum computing still has no real-world uses — yet.
“We need a ChatGPT moment for quantum,” Francesco Ricciuti, associate at venture capital firm Runa Capital, told CNBC Tuesday, referencing OpenAI’s chatbot that has been credited with driving the boom in artificial intelligence. “This is probably not that.”
What has Google claimed?
Proponents of quantum computing claim it will be able to solve problems that current computers can’t.
In classical computing, information is stored in bits. Each bit is either a one or zero. Quantum computing uses quantum bits or qubits which can be zero, one or something in between.
The theory is that quantum computers will be able to process much larger volumes of data, leading to potential breakthroughs in areas like medicine, science and finance.
Google on Monday announced Willow, its latest quantum chip.
“Typically the more qubits you use, the more errors will occur, and the system becomes classical,” Hartmut Neven, founder of Google Quantum AI, wrote in a blog post.
Willow can reduce errors “exponentially” as the number of qubits is scaled up, the U.S. tech giant said, which “cracks a key challenge in quantum error correction that the field has pursued for almost 30 years.”
Google measured Willow’s performance using the so-called random circuit sampling (RCS) benchmark, which presents a computational task that’s difficult for classical computers to solve.
Willow performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years — or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years — Google said.
“This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe,” Neven said.
Has Google truly made a quantum breakthrough?
Google’s Willow chip has demonstrated a “new milestone in how quantum computers can deal with errors that happen during their operation,” according to Winfried Hensinger, professor of quantum technologies at the University of Sussex.
“Their technique becomes more effective in reducing errors the more extra qubits are being used to correct for these errors. This is a very important milestone for quantum computers.”
But despite optimism that quantum computing could one day change the world — or at least computers’ role in it — experts in the field have suggested that Google’s quantum computing breakthrough is still lacking in real-world uses.
Runa Capital’s Ricciuti said that Google’s claims of success are “based on tasks and benchmarks that are not really useful for practical cases.”
“They are trying to define a really high problem for normal computers that they can solve with quantum computers. It is amazing they can do that, but it doesn’t really mean it is useful,” Ricciuti added.
Hensinger said Willow “is still well too small to do useful calculations” and that quantum computers will require “millions of qubits” to solve really important industry problems. Willow has 105 qubits.
Meanwhile, Google’s chip is based on superconducting qubits, a technology that requires intense cooling, which could be a limiting factor in scaling up.
“It may be fundamentally hard to build quantum computers with such large number of qubits using superconducting qubits as cooling so many qubits to the required temperature – close to absolute zero – would be hard or impossible,” Hensinger said.
Still both Hensinger and Ricciuti agree the developments by Google add to the excitement around quantum computing and continued development in the space.
“This result increases confidence further that humanity will be able to build practical quantum computers enabling some of the high impactful applications quantum computers are known for,” Hensinger said.
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.”
Technology
ServiceTitan prices IPO at $71, above expected range, after slow stretch for tech offerings
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.
WATCH: Many tech companies have effectively completed IPOs as private businesses, says Mitchell Green
Technology
Alphabet and Tesla reach fresh records, joining Amazon and Meta and pushing Nasdaq past 20,000
Tech stocks on display at the Nasdaq.
Peter Kramer | CNBC
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.”
WATCH: What Fundstrat’s Tom Lee expects from the markets in 2025
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