From The Wall Street Journal, September 10:
The funding gives the quantum computing startup a valuation of $7 billion
PsiQuantum, which is targeting an aggressive 2027 timeline to deliver a full-scale commercial-grade quantum computer, said Wednesday that it collected $1 billion in its latest fundraise.
The funding round, led by existing investors BlackRock, Temasek and Baillie Gifford, and including new investors such as Nvidia’s venture-capital arm, brings the startup’s valuation to $7 billion.
PsiQuantum also announced a collaboration with Nvidia around integrating quantum hardware with AI chips, among other areas.
The Series E financing comes amid a surge of recent activity in the space. Quantinuum’s latest fundraise earlier this month gave it a valuation of $10 billion, IQM raised $320 million at a $1 billion valuation, and Infleqtion said it would go public via a special-purpose acquisition company at a $1.8 billion valuation.
“I think this is the investment world sort of putting a flag in the ground and declaring that it’s game-on for quantum computing,” said PsiQuantum co-founder and Chief Executive Jeremy O’Brien.
The technology, which promises to power certain computations that are virtually impossible for today’s computers, could transform everything, including the way companies make medicine, invest money, deliver internet and encrypt information.
While many competitors are starting small and gradually building larger and larger systems, PsiQuantum differentiates itself with a bold approach. It plans to build a 1-million-qubit fault-tolerant machine right off the bat. A fault tolerant quantum computer is one that can correct the small, unavoidable errors that arise in computation and consistently deliver reliable results.
A quantum computer in Brisbane, Australia, is expected to be online by the end of 2027 and one in Chicago in 2028, the company said. Some of the newly raised money will also go toward building large-scale test systems and ramping up production of materials.
Luke Ward, an investment manager on the private companies team at investor Baillie Gifford, said PsiQuantum’s manufacturing maturity and its ability to lean on an existing supply chain are part of the attraction. PsiQuantum manufactures its quantum chipset at GlobalFoundries in upstate New York. Baillie Gifford has invested more than $100 million in PsiQuantum so far....
....MUCH MORE
As noted on Nvidia's Quantum Day (March 20, 2025), the publicly traded names do not attract:
....Nvidia CEO Says He Was Surprised That Publicly Held Quantum Firms ExistNvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said he didn’t realize there were publicly traded quantum-computing companies when he made earlier comments that caused industry stocks to crash.
Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said he didn’t realize there were publicly traded quantum-computing companies when he made earlier comments that caused industry stocks to crash.
“My first reaction was, I didn’t know they were public. How can a quantum company be public?” Huang said at an event Thursday focused on the still-nascent technology....
March 7 - "As NVIDIA’s Quantum Day Nears, Analysts Suggest Event is More Than a Gesture" (NVDA)
You know what looks cheap? Nvidia looks cheap.
That's not to say it can't get cheaper but to quote some of the old-time traders: "Well bought is half sold."
$111.29 last, up $0.72 (+0.65%) in late pre-market trading.
And the outro:
Although we see no rush to own the current batch of publicly traded names, we do pay attention to what the chatter is. Some of our previous links and more recent comments were wrapped in January 8's "Quantum Stocks Drop as Nvidia CEO Sees Use Years Away":
Ditto and double ditto for the quantum computing stocks. There will be at least one and possibly three bear markets before they are even close to earning money.
However, for the diehard next-big-thing wannabes we did link to Barron's "...How to Pretend You Understand Quantum Computing." on Dec 14.
Here's Nvidia:
NVIDIA GTC 2025: Quantum Day to Illuminate the Future of Quantum Computing
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Industry Visionaries to Unveil What’s Next in AI at GTC 2025
Quantum Day Conference Sessions
This is Goofy: "Quantum-computing stocks are soaring as investors place bets on ‘the next big thing’ in tech"
Our general rules for shorting: In a bull market only short frauds, and even then be aware that what you think you are seeing may take quite a while to become evident to the wider market. Or may prove to have been an hallucination on the part of the prospective short seller.
In a bear market you can expand your shortable universe by also using shorts based on valuation.
Here are three names to keep in mind as valuation shorts should the overall market begin to crack sometime in the next year or two. From MarketWatch, December 11....*****We happened to catch the Google story via the NYT on Monday evening: "Quantum Computing Inches Closer to Reality After Another Google Breakthrough" (GOOG).The next trading day it was up ~5%. Today it set a new all-time-high.
If interested we have quite a few posts on D-Wave and to a lesser extent Rigetti. Use the 'search blog' box upper left.
One final word on risk. If an overvalued company you are short actually has some worthwhile technology there is a real risk that they might be acquired for that technology, which can wreck your whole day.
Or more importantly your annual bonus.
PsiQuantum is different. March 24 - "Quantum computing startup PsiQuantum raising at least $750 million, sources say"
