FULL TRANSCRIPT
Slava Rubin (00:00)
Thank you everybody for joining. This is our first conversation during World Cup 2026. So hope everybody is enjoying nothing better than talking about quantum computing during the World Cup. So my name is Slava Rubin. I'm one of the founders here at Vincent. We are your platform for all things alternative investing. You should sign up for our alternative investment report or listen to the Smart Humans podcast. And obviously, we have our pre IPO series where we have none other than Jan-Erik.
From Sacra joining us to talk about the latest and greatest in technologies. Jan-Erik, say hi.
Jan-Erik Asplund (00:32)
be here side thanks.
Slava Rubin (00:33)
All right. So let's jump into it. quantum computing is a huge idea. Been talking about the technology ⁓ for a while, constantly saying it's around the corner. Let's really discuss what's possible.
So who do we have here? Which is ⁓ we have many accredited investors and a lot of folks, about three quarters, that's pretty normal for us, consider themselves quite experienced. And ⁓ quite a few of you, more than half, are looking to invest more into the pre IPO phase in the next 12 months. It's pretty pretty hot market. Obviously, SpaceX just went public recently. We covered that. SpaceX down today, having some volatility after some original pop. So
Let's see where that all goes. If you want to think more about SpaceX, we've done multiple analyses of that, including our pre-IPO one just last week, if you want to listen into that. so now a word from our compliance department. Nothing in this presentation should be construed as an offer to sell securities or a solicitation of an offer by securities. All investments involve risk and the possibility of loss, including the loss of principal. And neither past performance nor forward-looking information is a guarantee of future results. So let's dive in.
We have to start with we're not talking about retail sales. We're not talking about a simple SaaS product. Many of you are even on this call for what is quantum computing? So I'm gonna give it to you Jan-Erik Take it away.
Jan-Erik Asplund (01:55)
Slava. ⁓ well first of all, you know, I I think I'll say this. My my quantum computing degree, I didn't get one. So this is all from a sort of you know investor-centric ⁓ perspective, trying to break this down, make it a little more understandable. if you do want to dive deeper, highly recommend the work of this guy on the right, Scott Aaronson I think this this comic that if you read it in full, it's called The Talk, we'll give you a great intro to the topic. ⁓ but just to give you sort of the basics.
⁓ quantum computers are you know sort of fundamentally different from classical computers that we use every day. and they are essentially designed such that they can solve certain classes of problems ⁓ much faster, or in in that classical computers actually can't solve at all. so you can sort of think of think of them as a you know a tool to accelerate computing the answers to certain kinds of problems. And
You know, what kinds of problems? Well, we sort of have a sense of some examples, like in chemistry, in cryptography, in materials. We'll talk all about that more. but we don't yet actually know all the sort of potential use cases. We don't really know the killer use case yet. so it's very sort of nascent form of ⁓ nascent field of study, even as it's been around for quite a while. and one of the
main kind of misconceptions people have, it's worth clearing up is, you know, ⁓ people think quantum computers sort of solve problems by trying every answer at the same time. you know, that sort of makes them sound like a sort of, you know, holy grail ⁓ universal solving machine kind of thing. ⁓ it is more tightly tailored to that, kind of these special use cases ⁓ that we'll talk about with regards to things like you know batteries, drug discovery, semiconductors.
So lots of interesting use cases, lots of interesting research going on. and yeah, a great ⁓ great to dig in further on some of the on some of the business side parts of it.
Slava Rubin (03:48)
You know, it's interesting. NVIDIA's been popping, and we had Jensen say, ⁓ quantum's not as far as we really think. The s the public stocks went down. And then he said, maybe they are further along, and some others disagreed, and the stocks the public stocks went up, privates went up as well. Then even I think in the last year, we had President Trump actually through the government.
I believe invest into the quantum computing companies. I believe like five of them, like five quantum computing companies. Why now, if we could just go to the next slide, why are we kind of talking about quantum computing ⁓ at this moment as opposed to five years ago, maybe more, or five years from now?
Jan-Erik Asplund (04:32)
Yeah, as you can see from this graph on the bottom, the number of publications about quantum computing, you know, really started taking off in the late 90s. So for quite some time, this has been the object of study and interest. And, you know, it's not like some anticipation ⁓ about what the sort of implications could be in the world. But you know, for most of this time, the sort of actual hardware capable of
you know, fulfilling some of the things sketched out in these papers has been the thing lagging behind. ⁓ this is really an area where it is the the hardware side that is slower to advance. And so ⁓ there hasn't really been any practically, you know, useful or close to practically useful quantum computers until the last few years, which is where you see ⁓ on the top graph this trend, you know, the search trend for quantum computing going going you know exponential here.
And that's because you've had companies like Google. I'm gonna butcher a lot of these names, ⁓ Quantinuum, QuEra others, actually developing kind of prototypes of quantum computers that are getting closer and closer to ⁓ becoming useful. and basically the main catalyst, I would say, for a lot of the investment and interest has been the ⁓ you know cryptography use case, with how much of our
sort of current computing infrastructures built on the this one sort of cryptographic algorithm ⁓ in RSA, the sort of, you know, near term concern and the reason why, for example, the governments are investing in quantum computing is because quantum computing has the potential to break these kinds of encryption ⁓ schemes and, you know, sort of open Pandora's box as far as, you know, ⁓ access to you know,
secret private data ⁓ all around the world, including, you know, twenty five percent of all the Bitcoin that exists in the world and that sort of thing. So yeah, there's been serious progress in the last few years and that's really what's causing this interest.
Slava Rubin (06:29)
I feel when the market goes risk on, people go after these more longer-term bets like quantum computing. So it feels quite trendy at the moment. but even back when COVID bubble 2020, 2021, the public stocks were getting a lot of momentum. I still remember my brother saying IonQ you gotta check out IonQ. You know, fast forward to Ion Q today, that would have been a really good investment. That said, there hasn't been really that much commercial traction in the last five years.
So while there's a lot of hype and a lot of excitement and the word interest over time, you have this graph. When do you predict and you're not the scientist here, but rather for the sake of conversation, when do you predict that quantum computing will actually be used and have commercial relevance for the first time?
Jan-Erik Asplund (07:16)
Yeah, that's a good question. I've sorry I've I mean reading reading what smart people with physics degrees think about this, I I think there's a there's a not insignificant case to be made for 2030 being you know sort of a turning point for where where this goes from, you know, mainly mainly, you know, high gen mock ups, you know, and like images of of
quantum computers and labs to genuine revenue, even if it's somewhat small scale. ⁓ you know, there being some commercialization and usage of it. So ⁓ at twenty thirty, optimistically I think, and pessimistically it's like, you know, twenty fifty.
Slava Rubin (07:55)
Yeah, so I would say twenty thirty sounds quite optimistic to me. I would agree with some who are commenting that we've been hearing about the future of quantum computing for years, if not decades. you know, Jensen said ten years is a little bit too fast. I think it was like a year or two ago. twenty fifty then feels like it's a long way out. But when everybody on this call knows that quantum computing is gonna be commercially successful, it's gonna be probably hard to make a lot of money, right? 'Cause
It's already gonna be priced into the stocks, whether it's public or private. So part of you just needs to think about the framing of this discussion. How do I want to invest into this space? How much liquidity do I need? And how much am I willing to be tied up with my investment to have what type of return, you know, risk reward? So that should be the lens as to how you're getting in here. you mentioned Bitcoin. How how concerned should Bitcoin and this doesn't have to be a Bitcoin talk?
But rather how concerned should Bitcoin be about quantum computing and nevertheless any other security threats if quantum computing happens?
Jan-Erik Asplund (08:54)
Yeah, I know that this is something that you know, if you look at Coinbase, for example, if you just search Coinbase quantum quantum computing, you know they're putting it out, putting out papers on this very seriously taking this problem that yeah, like I said, 20 to 25 percent of all Bitcoin, you know, that's that's basically that is tied to a public address is at risk of an attack given of given a future, you know, quantum computer. It's obviously not something that's a threat right now. and so
What I'm seeing is basically crypto companies are taking it seriously and sort of trying to figure out how to solve it for the future when these, you know, quantum computers become sort of more practical to use.
Slava Rubin (09:35)
Great. One like simple way that I think about it before we get into the market overview, and I know you mentioned this, but this is a bit of the basics, right? If you have a maze, a human can only think about how to navigate the maze sequentially pretty slowly. Like typical computers like the ones we're on right now or our phones can start thinking about all the options of how to get through that maze much faster, but still sequentially.
The crazy thing about quantum computing is the beauty of potential to think of the various options at the same time, which is a bit hard for my brain to grok. but that is the whole point of quantum computing as one of the the aha special moments. So think of that as like the simplicity of the beauty of quantum computing. Now the obvious question is how do they do that? I think we need some
Smarter folks, I'm sorry Jan-Erik, but we need some smarter folks on the call to explain how that works. But we're just like the simple people that try to invest into this stuff. So without all sake, tell us the market. What's what's really shaping up in terms of what the market looks like and what the opportunities are in terms of we'll talk about, you know, public versus private opportunities.
Jan-Erik Asplund (10:47)
Yeah, perfect. So I mean it's still very, very, very early. and you just look at sort of the volume raised. you know, it's been sort of below two billion regularly until 2025. Things blew up. You had $12 billion invested into some of the some of the names that we'll talk about today, ⁓ in the privates and also some of the ones that have recently gone public. So it's still, you know, ⁓ it's very early. The revenue base is still very small.
⁓ the one thing that's not small is valuations. as you'll see, investors are sort of paying for the, you know, the optionality on on the future. Again, where yes, if they become very useful in the in the short term or or medium-term future, then they're already ⁓ shareholders. But ⁓ yeah, it's a very early, you know, it it looks a lot like a semiconductors ⁓ genom genomics, you know, kind of like commercial, you know, nuclear fusion, in that there's a
very, very high amount of technical risk, very long timelines. And there's a few potential outcomes that are, you know, that are giant ⁓ and obviously very interesting. But yeah, it's it's it's it's not nothing like a sort of SAS. it's nothing like the current AI market. and it's much more, yeah, like these kinds of more niche deep tech ⁓ markets at the moment with a lot of government involvement. ⁓ so I think
But put on my investor lens, it's like, are you comfortable with those kinds of investments? You know, where I I would say, yeah, it's a very skewed, you know, sort of set of outcomes with with potentially very high reward. But ⁓ yeah, we're we're very early today.
Slava Rubin (12:23)
Yeah, exactly. The way I would think about it is if you're just looking for yield or if you're looking for something safe like some J and J stock, ⁓ you should stay very, very, very clear away from this. If you have a set of your portfolio that you'd like to be a bit more risk on, a bit more alpha, you should explore getting in here, but know that this isn't something that is obviously gonna go up in one month or one year.
⁓ or it very well could, but that's really a momentum trade. On fundamentals, this could take a while, but it could return many, many X on an investment. I mean, this could become ⁓ a 2X, 3X, 5X, 10X. I'd argue there's 100x potential in one of these companies if it really becomes what everyone believes is possible. So if we were going to invest into that, depending on liquidity and risk and how you like to play the markets public versus private.
How about we discuss quickly what are the public options, just so we can frame it? We're 17 minutes into the chat. So everybody wants to know what are the investment opportunities. So let's just frame the public options. You know, typically we're focused on privates, but even in the public markets, if you're interested, there are some companies you could get into.
Jan-Erik Asplund (13:33)
Yeah, exactly. A few of these have just popped up on the public markets. you know, in the last a couple of months actually. But ⁓ yeah, Ion Q, like you mentioned, is sort of the big, you know, the biggest player among pure play, pure play quantum companies. So you know, did a little over a hundred million revenue last year. ⁓ per valuation, I think is like twenty one billion. So
that's probably like a that's like a 161 X multiple on revenue. inflections at around 8392 ⁓ with a three billion valuation. you also probably heard of D-Wave, slightly older player in the space, and they did about 25 million revenue, 9 billion valuation. So a 365x multiple. Quantinuum ⁓ which we mentioned recently went public, ⁓ has a 580.
X multiple and then Rigetti 700x multiple just thereabouts. so these, yeah, as as we mentioned, the multiples are very high, valuations are very high, and a lot of these companies are very early on revenue. Like Rigetti has ⁓ 7 million in revenue. So yeah, you're looking at a lot of very early stage companies that have done fairly well on the market, as you can see from this sort of the most popular quantum ETF defiance.
I think also holds IBM, Intel, maybe some alphabet. So that definitely helps. as those companies are also pretty heavy on you know, big in the quantum computing conversation. but yeah, that sort of gives you a sense of the public market players.
Slava Rubin (15:02)
Yeah, so I think this ETF chart shows it all, right? Some kind of slow and steady interest and then the spike in twenty twenty six. So if you were in this since let's call it COVID, you could have already triple, quadrupled your money just on the ETF side with the continued momentum. I do think if you wanted to be doing stock picking, you could be looking at IonQ and these other players. but be careful because the bottom could fall out of them very easily. So don't overexpose yourself.
But if you're not interested in dealing, let's call it with private markets and the the kind of finding the right counterparties, finding the right cap table, the expenses, the fees, you do have an opportunity in the public markets. But we do love to highlight here the ⁓ private market opportunities. So let's walk through those options.
⁓ before we go through the private options here, how many of you think you're gonna be investing into quantum computing in the next twelve months? Let's just do a quick survey to see who's actually interested based on what they're hearing so far in the next 12 months. Let's give you all 10 seconds.
Okay, survey says.
Interesting. Still a decent contingent. you know, I have interest here. Okay. Over half. talk to me Jan-Erik, So which companies are we gonna go through here on the privates? If we could just name
Jan-Erik Asplund (16:23)
So the four we'll do are PsiQuantum which is if you've heard of any of these companies, that's probably the one you've heard of. QuEra Pasqal with a Q, and then Atom Computing are the four pre-IPO.
Slava Rubin (16:32)
Great. And we'll also just mention Google 'cause they're a major player. So let's let's start through those five starting with
Jan-Erik Asplund (16:37)
Yeah, so Google's launch of the Willow chip a few years ago was kind of the for watershed moment for the space in the modern era, in that it sort of was the first, you know, ⁓ it was a major breakthrough. ⁓ you know, able to compute in five minutes what the fastest, you know, classical computers, you know, supercomputers today. I had this number, 10 that that would take
traditional computers 10 septillion years to complete. So not every calculation, but you know certain kinds of calculations that it can do that much faster. This was this news came out in 2024 and that was sort of where a lot of the hype around quantum computing ⁓ in 2025 came. the one thing, you know, sort of note is that ⁓ it was a big technological breakthrough, ⁓ but it didn't yet show an actually
commercially useful machines. So you know you'll you'll see that Google's not saying that they're actually solving, you know, chemistry problems or doing drug discovery with this quantum computing chip. And that's because it's not yet commercially useful, but they are, you know, ahead of most startups and and public companies that are pure play quantum compute companies on the basis of sort of published science. So
you know, ⁓ the the technical bar was set pretty high there and they've they've been a they've been a key kind of s scientific player in the space for a while.
Slava Rubin (18:01)
Nice. And how much of this is built into the stock do you think already?
Jan-Erik Asplund (18:03)
That's a great question. I I honestly I don't I don't know how seriously it's taken by you know, I I don't know, the the buy side looking at Google. ⁓ to be honest. because they have so many sort of large outscaled bets. So yeah, it's really hard to say. I I would guess maybe not too much because it's really it's so nascent in terms of any kind of commercialization. but
I could be wrong.
Slava Rubin (18:29)
All right. Let's go into the actual ones that we could try to access in the private markets. is PsiQuantum first.
Jan-Erik Asplund (18:35)
Yeah, PsiQuantum probably the biggest player here, valued at ten point five billion. they just raised one point five billion in May. you know, backed by BlackRock, Bailey Gifford, Microsoft, NVIDIA. and they are kind of like an all or nothing bet in the space. If you're familiar with ⁓ safe superintelligence in AI, it's kind of like that where you have OpenAI anthropic who are you know putting out new models every few months.
and sort of gathering revenue that way. ⁓ PsiQuantum is taking a different approach, similar to SSI and the world of LLMs, which is we are going to build a, you know, a full scale, what they call fault tolerant quantum computer that's capable of solving all these kinds of intractable pro intractable problems in chemistry, you know, in biology, you know, every other space. and, you
We're gonna release it once we're done. so it's basically a one-shot attempt ⁓ to build this. And you know, I they've had a lot of the sort of momentum in terms of the you know news cycles and hype and you know talent acquisition. they're the biggest private player in the space. And so yeah, that that's kind of their approach is is less about putting out iterative prototypes and proving you know their sort of ⁓ you know progress ⁓ on a technical front.
And more about ⁓ yeah, basically they're saying that the only thing that really matters is to build, you know, the the ⁓ the end game quantum computer. So we're just gonna go straight to that. and that's kind of their appropriate.
Slava Rubin (20:05)
And I think it's the signaling has been that they're potentially next on the roadmap for IPO as well. Is that fair?
Jan-Erik Asplund (20:10)
I've seen that. Yeah.
Slava Rubin (20:11)
⁓ I guess they have kind of like this binary risk, right? Because they're going all in on building this like massive, massive, massive plant. and either it's going to work, right? And it's going to be incredible, or it feels a little bit like biotech, where it might be where the FDA like doesn't approve the drug and then we got a big problem. Is that fair?
Jan-Erik Asplund (20:34)
Yeah. It's yeah, kind of, 'cause in the sense of that like ⁓ when you think about twenty thirty, when does this become commercialization? Commercial is commercialized. It's it's like there's so many different ways it could be commercialized. You know, maybe it finds applications in chemistry, maybe cryptography, maybe scientific simulations. And by going more piecemeal and iterative, you are potentially launching little products that work for this domain or that domain. ⁓ and they're not doing that. So like if if if they, you know.
fail basically to develop a general purpose, you know, fault tolerant quantum computer, then the the they won't be able to sustain kind of you know the the valuation, the expectations ⁓ that have been created. So it's yeah, much more of a all or nothing kind of bet.
Slava Rubin (21:19)
These guys do have some very interesting investors on the cap table, like you mentioned. BlackRock is nobody to sneeze at and Bally Gifford has good history of investing as well. This is the sort of company that if you did want to take private market risk for asymmetric growth, ⁓ it is interesting for sure. Just know that there's there's risk. Next one.
Jan-Erik Asplund (21:37)
So QuEra is kind of like the opposite, where if you know see PsiQuantum as being this you know kind of all or nothing one shot, you know, they are more about putting out this kind of staged, you know, stage proof in in stages. So putting out systems that are deployed and putting out peer-reviewed publications, which you know, PsiQuantum is extremely ⁓ extremely secretive. QuEra on the other hand, is
You know, working with ⁓ working with Amazon, they've delivered on prem systems to national labs in Japan and the UK. they also, you know, have raised from NVIDIA, also from Google and Softbank, so similar sort of investors, ⁓ grade of investors. There's the other advantage of putting out a lot of peer reviewed science is that they sort of gained a reputation with quantum computing researchers who put them sort of up in the same tier as Google.
as far as you know actual progress on the scientific side. so you know it's not to say that PsiQuantum doesn't have, you know, incredible stuff going on internally and they have incredible people on the team, but QuEra has built more of a I I guess doing more of a of a public ⁓ you know building in public and putting out these you know small small scale systems that are actually being used in various labs, not commercialized per se, but
Yeah, a different approach PsiQuantum.
Slava Rubin (22:59)
And at the moment at a much lower price, is that fair?
Jan-Erik Asplund (23:01)
yes, exactly. one billion dollar valuation on on like PsiQuantum at ten. and they recently raised yeah, pretty big series B, but yeah, still the still the pretty low valuation.
Slava Rubin (23:11)
Interesting. So this feels even more of let's call a risk on as a flyer, but still in the kind of top pedigree of options in the private markets. how about the next one?
Jan-Erik Asplund (23:21)
Yeah, Pasqal is ⁓ European and a little bit more industrial on the story. So, you know, they're trying to ⁓ sell systems into high performance computing centers, these like large national labs and research institutions and some industrial customers. So that's one of the big things. you know, they have a partnership with Aramco, where, you know, optimizing the delivery and movement of energy.
is one of these potential quantum sort of problems or one of these problems for which quantum computing is a really good fit to speed it up in a big way. so they are yeah working with a Aramco I think there's still question marks around how much better is quantum than ⁓ classical supercomputing for for some of these kinds of problems. ⁓ but at the same time, you know they've raised money from a lot of the biggest European financial institutions.
from SouthBank, they are in the process of going public through a SPAC, which they announced back in March. and so yeah, it's it's much closer to QuEra in terms of, you know, let's make some actual industrial deployments and sort of proved this out with real partners, you know, running pilots. what we haven't yet seen, you know, from any of these is those those pilots turning into, you know, contracts and repeatable revenue. But
Yeah, they're they're kind of like a European counterpart to to to a QuEra.
Slava Rubin (24:45)
And did you say they're gonna be s the SPAC would be in the US markets like the stock New York Stock Exchange or or Nasdaq?
Jan-Erik Asplund (24:50)
Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah, on the NASDAQ.
Slava Rubin (24:53)
Okay, got it. Interesting coming from a new European player. and then we have one more, right, that we want to cover.
Jan-Erik Asplund (24:58)
Yeah. So Atom Computing. Atom Computing is currently valued roughly around seven hundred and fifty million. ⁓ so you know, probably the cheapest player now that Pasqal is going public and they raised a hundred million dollars Series C in June, ⁓ you know, ⁓ raised from actually the apartment American Department of Commerce and a few other venture firms. The biggest sort of different thing about Atom, the most interesting thing is probably you know this.
big partnership that they have with ⁓ Microsoft. So Microsoft doesn't have you know its own kind of ⁓ Google AI quantum lab. And so they contracted with Atom to build them a ⁓ to build them a quantum computer. And that's kind of their claim to fame at this moment, I would say, I think, is that ⁓ you know the they have this credibility ⁓ that they're working with Microsoft to put together a quantum computer for them. They have public research as well.
that they put out there, not quite as much as ⁓ QuEra or or companies like Quantinuum. but I think it's a really interesting story just from the partner validation point of view.
Slava Rubin (26:04)
Very nice. And for that valuation, seven hundred fifty million, having fifty logical qubits system would be pretty impressive because some of the others that we're talking about have higher qubit capabilities, but for much higher prices.
Jan-Erik Asplund (26:18)
Yep. Yep, exactly.
Slava Rubin (26:20)
how do we really compare and contrast between these? How do you think about the various types?
Jan-Erik Asplund (26:24)
Yeah, it's a great question because a lot of these companies are technically opaque or very hard to understand as a you know your average investor without a physics degree. So I think the best way that I found to kind of think about it is in terms of what style of business kind of appeals to me, you know, sort of as an investor. you know, for example, there's PsiQuantum, which has kind of the most maybe the brand name among pre IPO quantum companies.
And they are, you know, on this very ambitious sort of moonshot vision, where you're never gonna see what they're working on or hear about what they're working on until they build this potentially very, you know, very valuable machine. So that's kind of like if that's your you know interest as an investor, that's where I would look. I think if you're more interested in, you know, maybe seeing the technical ⁓ work that's coming out, ⁓ you know.
the various deployments, the the sort of traction they're getting, if you can, you know, read their peer-reviewed research and and understand it well, then I think companies like QuEra, Atom, also Pasqal are going to be more interesting to you, you know, because you might have a little edge there with your with your knowledge. in general, these pre-IPO companies are are distinguished from companies like D-Wave, ⁓ Rigetti, ⁓ Google.
⁓ in in a in a technical distinction, which is that they have these neutral atom systems, which you know, to sort of ⁓ elite all the complexity, the main thing is that you don't have to have, you know, very powerful refrigeration. and so you eliminate a lot of the sort of cost and friction of scaling these systems up because you can operate at room temperature. And then I think if you also are interested in go to market, then I think there's some differences between them.
terms of who they're selling into that might be interesting to you. ⁓ you know, research labs, supercomputing centers, industrial energy. I I think if any of those you also are, you know, particularly knowledgeable about, then that could that could sort of sway you to one player or another. For me overall, they're all, you know, far from commercialization, ⁓ you know, of a significant kind. And so it's it's hard to sort of evaluate them.
purely on feasibility, you know, who's gonna get there first, I I think is hard is hard to say, but I I so I would look for sort of whose approach maybe I you know can sort of most feel comfortable investing in or most want to invest in as an approach.
Slava Rubin (28:48)
Super helpful from the audience. Some one-off questions about other companies. Feel free to say don't know them. any feedback on EigenQ E-I-G-E-N-Q.
Jan-Erik Asplund (28:57)
⁓ they have come up in the research, but I don't think I have any specific thoughts now.
Slava Rubin (29:03)
No worries. And then somebody mentioned that IBM is using similar technology as Google's Willow. ⁓ is that true or is it is that just maybe an incorrect comment?
Jan-Erik Asplund (29:12)
⁓ I'm not sure. I I know that they are doing they're up there with sort of Google in terms of progress, but I'm not sure that the chip architecture is the same. Yeah. Sorry.
Slava Rubin (29:24)
No worries. I mean, this is a great example of how complicated ⁓ this stuff is. So if it was as simple as saying company A is awesome because they have ten times the revenue and forty percent higher margin, this wouldn't be such a complicated conversation to have.
let's talk about let's talk about the projections and then let's get into, you know, our picks or how we would invest into it.
Jan-Erik Asplund (29:45)
so I think you know, this kind of goes back to what Jensen was saying, right? Jensen was saying that that quantum is is going to take too long or it's it's too early to be useful for anything. And it's like that's that's technically correct, ⁓ but it's maybe slightly too slightly too generalized, right? Because there's so many different use cases where it could become useful sooner, right? It could become useful in chemistry, maybe in scientific simulations, maybe in
cryptography, maybe in some other, you know, defense or some other kind of field. And so I think when I think about 2030, I think, you know, maybe a bear case at this point, thinking about the progress that's been made and then maybe what acceleration we could get as, you know, AI improves, I think the bear case is that, you know, stuff continues to happen in quantum computing, but it becomes a very, but it becomes used in a very narrow
set of those use cases. and so maybe it becomes used, you know, in chemistry, but not to any great commercial end. and so we basically see it is kind of niche, almost like ⁓ almost like a Cerebras or Grok before LLMs. You know, those companies that just went public were were selling into national labs ⁓ and doing a couple tens of millions of revenue a year.
before AI took off. And so I think that's to me, to me, that's kind of the bear case, you know, by 2030 is that we're sort of still where we are now. and my base case is probably, you know, similar, ⁓ but with a little bit more commercialization happening. And I think we'll see two things. One is companies like Google, IBM, maybe Microsoft, you know, hitting more technical milestones and startups.
you know, like ⁓ QuEra, you know, putting out more sort of serious pilots, enterprise deployments, and ⁓ you know, probably companies like IonQ continuum continuing to grow revenue in the public markets into 2030. and then you know the the bull case is is the bull case probably involves AI unlocking some of this stuff ⁓ you know GPT seven, GPT eight,
And making it such that, you know, we start getting new drugs, new battery materials, new ⁓ catalysts, new industrial materials that turn into, you know, genuinely new kinds of innovations in, you know, electric cars or spacecraft, stuff like that. I think that's that's probably the the perma bull case that's always gonna be the bull case for quantum computing. I think until it happens. and the major question is, you know, will it happen and what's the timing going to look like? I think.
⁓ twenty thirty is probably the wrong frame of mind if you're gonna seriously invest. It's probably significantly longer than that to see big commercialization happening, is is my feeling.
Slava Rubin (32:32)
Yeah, I would agree with that. The right way to think about investing into this type of technology, I think, is really more on a 2036, meaning ten years out. How do we feel about our investment? so some final comments. So how would you invest a thousand dollars, Jan-Erik, into this space?
Or ten thousand or one thousand or a million. We can use however many zeros we'd like, but how would you invest a thousand dollars?
Jan-Erik Asplund (32:56)
Well s my my scale would be, you know, a hundred million. So I'll think in terms of a hundred millions. ⁓ I don't know if I if I would invest pure play just because I do not feel like I can really evaluate them, but I personally like you know, I'm a fan of the Apptronik style humanoid robotics company, you know, where there's a little more kind of meat on the bone for for the public to see and a little bit more of a of a iterative science.
⁓ versus your kind of figure approach. ⁓ temperamentally for me, that works for me. So I like QuEra. and I think that would probably be, you know, the one I would choose to invest in just 'cause they seem, you know, to be sort of technically ahead, ⁓ although that might not always be the you know deciding factor. And then I think you know, put more money into ⁓ into ⁓ alphabet, I feel like that I feel like that would
sit nicely for me as a decision. and that's maybe that's maybe all I got.
Slava Rubin (33:53)
That's great. So I think quantum computing is very interesting. I don't think it's becoming ⁓ as real as some people think in the next year or two or three. but I do think there's the potential to make money on an investment, especially for ten years out. With that said, I do think you should have a little bit of exposure, not too much. In terms of total net worth, I would suggest maybe like two percent, maybe max three percent.
If you're thinking about into your alternative asset bucket, maybe up to five percent, but not really ⁓ much more than that given the riskiness. How to invest inside those slices. if you want to keep it safe and easy and just get exposure, probably go with the ETF. I think that gives you nice rounded exposure without without having to do any stock picking. Obviously, you're not gonna get some of the private exposure either.
I do think if you have some inside information, if you feel like you're very knowledgeable and you want to start doing stock picking, I think there's plenty of choices out there. ⁓ some of my favorites are IonQ or Rigetti, and then PsiQuantum and QuEra we already mentioned in the private markets. But again, I'm in no way, shape, or form deserving to be giving opinions on what's the best quantum computing technology. I'm rather just looking at charts, looking at investors and trying to understand.
like you all are. so that all said, I do think ten years out, quantum computing would be more value as enterprise value than it is today. So with that all said, that's our quantum computing breakdown. thank you very much and we'll see you on our next conversation. Enjoy the World Cup.
