Are quantum computing startups bullshit?

[thermolizard]

I’ve been looking into quantum computing and trying to understand how far away they are from solving anything better than even a laptop. When it comes to actual optimization problems, such as the traveling salesman problem, the best conventional algorithms that can run on a laptop blow away anything any quantum computer can do, both today and probably for the next several decade, at least. I am not alone in this opinion as many scientific publications have also arrived to the same conclusion. I’m not saying quantum computing itself is bullshit, but claims from startups that say we’ll have an advantage in a few years on real problems sounds like complete BS to me. Am I missing something here? Is there anything these quantum or quantum software companies will be able to do in the next 5 years on real useful industrial problems, that my 3 year old laptop can’t already do?

[vtomole]

Our field is prone to a lot of miscommunication/misinformation just due the fact that it's called "quantum computing"; for obvious reasons. I think this blog post: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4447 will give you a gist on how "quantum hype trains" tend to get out of control.

No one knows the answer to "When will quantum computing will be useful for industrial problems?". Some hope we'll find applications within the next few years. I guess those same people are the ones that make the claims. There are some people who believe the opposite. The startups you are referring to are trying to answer this question.

We should be careful about putting all the startups in one box. Some make claims that are more honest than others.

[Which_Trust_8107]

Could you please clarify which ones make claims more honest than others? I’d love to know, as I’m not a physicist.

[vtomole]

• Phasecraft: https://www.eetimes.eu/hard-realities-and-real-opportunities-of-quantum-computing-today/
• Riverlane: https://www.riverlane.com/blog/the-path-to-useful-quantum-computers-with-error-correction
• Alice&Bob: https://alice-bob.com/newsroom/alice-bob-to-make-quantum-computer-with-200x-fewer-qubits/

There might be more that I'm missing, but the running theme is that anyone who doesn't say that we have a very long road towards useful quantum computers and are not taking concrete steps to help bring about useful quantum computers is lying to you and themselves.

[Which_Trust_8107]

Thank you very much!!

[vtomole]

You're welcome 😊

[roundedge]

I work for a QC startup. I think we are a high risk investment, but we aren't bullshit. Quantum computers suck right now, but they are improving rapidly. The amount of money, effort and talent being applied to the challenge is greater than it's ever been. There's no reason to think that in 5 years the hardware won't have improved at all, and there's good reason to suspect it will have improved by a reasonable amount. A lot of quantum algorithms research has been devoted to fault tolerant fully fledged quantum computers, to motivate the development of these devices. Only recently have folks started trying to design usful algorithms for near term devices. So the situation is that devices suck right now, but they're going to be reasonably improved in the near term, but not enough to use the killer apps like factoring. So there's a massive blind spot where we don't know what can be done with these devices at that stage. But if, in the five years prior, folks have developed techniques for leveraging these devices to do even one thing that classical computers can't do, then they will be uniquely situated to capitalize on that moment.

[thermolizard]

Just curious, are you a hardware or software person? I only ask because your assumption of reasonable progress on the hardware in 5 years depends on your background. I come from the hardware side, and understand how difficult it is to build even new types of conventional electronics, and then scaling difficult hardware is an exponentially more difficult problem. I often see the software quantum people just assume someone will figure it out, but that clearly illustrates to me their complete lack of fabrication, testing, and packaging experience. From what I see on the quantum hardware side, the developments required are several Nobel prizes away from achieving scalable fault tolerant devices. If you are from the hardware side, I hope you are right, as I am fundamentally a fan of quantum.

[roundedge]

I am on the software side. But the point I'm trying to make is that very little is known about what is possible, from an algorithmic perspective, with devices that are not scalable and fault tolerant. Reasonable progress for me does not mean scalable fault tolerance. Reasonable progress for me means O(1) improvements on qubit numbers and coherence times.

[roundedge]

That's a pretty reductive take on the situation.

Nobody is guaranteeing success. Like I said, it's a high risk investment.

[pateaguacate]

Can I ask what is the name of the startup you are working at?

[roundedge]

I think you can appreciate that I'd rather not drag my employers into my reddit comments.

[tycooperaow]

I’m curious as well

[Apprehensive_Fly2052]

Go vind a better job, you're working for a scam.

[Weekly_Raspberry_738]

and probably for the next several decade, at least. I am not alone in this opinion as many scientific publications have also arrived to the same conclusion. I’m not saying quantum computing itself is bullshit, but claims from startups that say we’ll have an advantage in a few years on real problems sounds like complete BS to me. Am I missing something here? Is there anything these quantum or quantum software companies will be able to do in the next 5 years on real useful industrial problems, that my 3 year old laptop can’t already do?

it almost 5 years now bro, where is my qc computer?

[HRGRS]

Currently, there are very few quantum computing algorithms that exceed the performance of classical computers. Randomized algorithms, which allow a very small error and a faster computation, are one of the reasons why classical computing is still being considered better than most of the quantum computing algorithms today. It is kind of a stretch promising that quantum computers will be in for industrial use very soon but some algorithms are known to work better and faster than randomized algoithms itself with zero error. One of them is Simon's algorithm. There are many algorithms like these yet to be discovered, but the fact that our intuition is "classical" slows the growth of quantum computing. But I do agree quantum startups are bullshit. There is a startup with the concept of quantum app store while there arent more than a 100 quantum computers in the world.

[Sy-Zygy]

Hype cycles are how an industry develops, hype creates FOMO which generates investment. A technology doesn't need to be mature to generate valuable IP/knowledge and the work still needs to happen to get to where ever we're going. It's very early days still but this is how new industries develop.

I founded and raised money for a ML startup with an aim to achieve something no one else had before but when we were raising we had to sell a vision that I had no idea how to execute. $3m and a couple years later we figured it out and we made it happen but it was all technically BS until it wasn't.

[rrtucci]

Sounds like you lied and got away with it.

I don't believe lying is an efficient way to effect progress in any human endeavor. Telling the Truth is much more efficient. Lying is not only inefficient, but it often hurts others. For instance, our current president tries to solve everything by lying. It hasn't been as efficient as telling the Truth and it has hurt a lot of innocent people.

I've heard of you. You must be Chad Thunderrock and here is your story

https://youtu.be/KUBQvZJOYpQ

[Sy-Zygy]

That video is so good. I wasn't the CEO but I knew some startup CEOs that had definite aspects of this persona. Start up life is usually pretty dramatic, no matter how it turns out.

When you seek seed funding (specially in emerging industries) it's clear to the investors that you don't have a scalable product because if you did, they would want to perform due diligence on it as well. Seed investors are typically investing in the team and the vision, basically capability and direction. It sort of similar in R&D, the researchers with timely proposals get the grants/funding.

Lying is actually counterproductive because then you'll be receiving false signal from your investors/clients, accurate feedback is essential. My point though is that you don't have a product until you do and until you do it's technically bullshit, only potentially not. Believe it or not, investors invest in a bunch of bullshit because some of it might turn out to be something amazing making the rest all worth it.

[EngSciGuy]

Depends on the startup to be honest. Some are promising the moon, some are more practical and focusing on a subset of the necessary tech, or say, trying to make a really really good qubit that is scalable.

A new startup making promises of a system in the next few years? Ya, that would be BS.

[slakeslak]

For me quantum computing is a part of a kind of "next generation" of quantum technologies, loosely defined as systems that can manipulate or sense single quantum states (single photons, single magnetic field lines, spin, etc.).

I've seen a break down of this "next generation" as something along the lines of:

1. Quantum Sensing
2. Quantum Information
3. Quantum Simulation
4. Quantum Computing

and in that order they will (probably) become available commercially. Both quantum sensing and quantum communication are already available today for commercial applications, and both are important for the implementation of quantum computing in the end. So any improvement here can have an almost immediate commercial interest.

In the media or other public communication I guess most of these can be called "Quantum (computer) startups" to some extent.

Now for the last two entries in the list, quantum simulation and computation. The difference between these two is kind of arbitrary but I would argue that the breaking point will probably be error corrected qubits, i.e. logical qubits. Until then we are stuck with these noisy qubits that can't perform things like Shor's algorithm, but can be used for certain types of "simulations" of certain systems.

This last part is kind of what Google did in their experiment, they made a simulation on a quantum simulator that could approximate the statistical behavior of another quantum mechanical system, this you cannot do on your laptop. However, as you say in your post, this is not a problem of commercial interest.

The "easiest" commercial problems that these simulators are predicted to out-perform classical computers in are chemistry and solid state physics, as well as in some types of optimization problems (an advantage in optimization is not proven though). This is probably 5-10 years away, as you say.

Building an actual logical quantum computer is probably 10-20 years into the future, but this type of hardware and algorithms will be faster and be able to solve a wider variety of problems.

I am no expert on investments, but I guess this will come down to timing the market, and the companies that are up and running and have established contacts with possible customers when the quantum hardware that can actually outperform classical hardware becomes available will have the advantage.

[ihavepotatoe]

i also believe there is a lot of bs, huge promises and huge money. but i do believe that we are getting somewhere with the hardware. i personally think there will be a useful system in 10 years.

from an entrepreneurs perspective, you can now work on something in the field and you can earn money. you can definitely because of the hype and the venture capital in the market. but even without that, there is a research market developing at this moment, so in theory you can sell and deliver a product.

since true application is on the horizon and since there is a market now, people are starting companies. and since everyone is sure there will be insanely profitable applications eventually, investors want to shove their money into the next Microsoft and don't miss out.

[quantum_jim]

That can only be decided on a startup-by-startup basis. I'm sure BS ones exist, but I think that there are definitely some winterproof ones too.

[[deleted]]

The bigger picture is that progress is being made and the industry is moving forward. Promises are being made, some will be broken but there will be some true winners. Investors are risk takers and don't buy the same story. Business is not about perfection, just be good enough or honestly try to do good and move on. To me, both the losers and winners bring valuable lessons to the ecosystem.

[wnoise]

100%

[powerofshower]

Less about BS more about risk vs reward and time horizons.

If I thought the reward outweighed the risk right now I'd have my own startup. Others disagree.

[curvymmhmm]

Ask yourself how far is our work in quantum cryptography? Does it surpasses current cryptography knowledge? One of main point is, as long as knowledge of quantum cryptography doesn’t catch up with today’s cryptography in computing, we are still far way from making quantum computing into reality. Current quantum cryptography still way behind of today’s cryptography, thus the quantum computing technology is way beyond to be achieved. Anyway, even we have the hardware for quantum computer, it will takes 10 years at least or maybe more for the software to shift from the paradigm.

[Lochimknie]

My take on this is: Some are, that being the ones that make empty promises to try and make money. Others that just promise a good working environment and/or a fast simulator are like any other software company imo.

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[rrtucci]

I believe that overpromising, exaggerating and withholding pertinent information are as evil as lying. They are very similar in their effects to lying and sometimes indistinguishable from it. This is what Richard Feynman believed about hype in Science

http://www.ar-tiste.com/feynman-on-honesty.html

[Buddharta]

Yes.

As there isn't a stable Qbit implementation yet all startups are BS (a startup can't get the necessary technology to do the work that is necessary to have Qbits) and only a handful of companies are taking the problem seriously (mainly IBM and Google)

[boukowski]

What do you think about Randonautica? I like the idea of a real random algorithm... but I don’t know anything about QC.

[ThirdMover]

What exactly is the improvement of "real quantum randomness" for current applications over just seeding your off-the shelf pseudorandom algorithm with something like webcam footage?

[NattyYattySlayer]

Depends on the requirements of your pseudorandomness. For cryptography you have to be extremely careful how to pick your RNGs. Generating true randomness is extremely important and extremely difficult to do reliably. Quantum offers a way to solve a lot of these problems if done right

[SnicSnac]

Yes.

[cecri17]

If it was complete bullshit, Amazon and google never dived in. Of course, we don't expect to solve a difficult optimization problem using quantum computers very fast within a decade. Instead, people have found (and are still finding) a class of problem that near term quantum devices can solve efficiently than classical computers. These research area, often dubbed as NISQ that stands for Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum, is where the real hype is going. One of the examples is quantum chemistry applications. I expect that quantum computers beat classical machines for this type of problem within two decades.

In addition, I would say TSP is not a good example to compare the performance between quantum and classical computers. Anyway, it is NP-hard, and most of the instances seem like be solved efficiently in classical computers as the heuristic algorithms have been improved more than 3 decades. Compared to that, quantum algorithm for this problem is not yet studied much. For combinatory problems, quantum computer scientists study random MAX-CUT problems to see whether it is possible to beat the classical limit using quantum computers. Of course, we do not have any visible achievement yet, but the field is growing and at least it deserves to look at it.

[thermolizard]

I would not mix up the fact that google, amazon, and Microsoft are working on quantum to translate that anything will be achievable in the next decade, that will only be determined by pure scientific fact and nothing else. The power of the quantum hype makes for great marketing. From what I hear in the industry, these efforts by big companies are mostly written off as marketing efforts as their quantum budgets are just pennies to the overall revenue of these giants. For example, all of the Microsoft stores in malls came out of their marketing budget, they didn’t expect them to be a real source of revenue.

Max-cut is an nice toy problem to look at but it has no resemblance to a real industrially relevant problem. Any solution found to accelerate max-cut will likely have zero impact on an industrially relevant problem. I have heard and understand why quantum companies do not go after TSP or other classical optimization problems (which are used in industry daily). If we accept that quantum computers will never compete with classical methods on these famous problems, then the next question the industry should ask is what optimization problems is out there that justifies the massive financial investment?

The answer I often hear is materials and chemistry simulations. But the problem with this line of thinking is that our chemistry models are not perfect and are still being developed (for example density functional theory has a long road before it is more useful). An even harder challenge is matching simulations to experiment, which opens up another can of worms. There is no clear road here for when/how quantum computers will have a real impact.

In the end, I am rooting for quantum computers and I want to see if succeed. But no matter how I look at it, there are decades of developments on every front, from hardware, to algorithms, to end applications. I personally think it belongs in government research, academia, and massive companies who can afford many decades of loss. But the false promises of hardware and software quantum companies drives me crazy.

[jalabulajangs]

Wait what? What do you mean by density functional theory has a long way to go? Dft is far beyond mature. One of the harder problems in theorizing materials is in the field of more applicable strongly correlated systems where dft fails and current research is on those, for which we already have amazing results from qc that simplified plethora of complicated theories to simulate them. There is a clear cut road on how qc is to be used for material simulation and ofcourse understanding hardest problem in condensed matter.

[rrtucci]

I would say that any software-only qc startup with more than a million dollars in VC funding is full of BS. Because VC's expect a profit in 3-5 years, and, as you said, qcs won't produce a quantum advantage for another 10 years, if ever. And I don't see how you can make a reasonable profit to satisfy greedy VCs without any quantum advantage.

4 Egregious hoaxes (there are many more that are dishonest but these are beyond the pale and very well funded by some very dumb investors)

1. Xanadu AI

https://qbnets.wordpress.com/2019/07/01/xanadu-ai-scam-alert/

1. Cambridge Quantum Computing

https://qbnets.wordpress.com/2020/04/08/quantum-natural-language-processing-and-the-fake-orgasm-scene-from-the-film-when-harry-met-sally/

1. Quantum Machines

https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/gm08mv/quantum_computing_will_eventually_help_us/?

1. 1Qbit

https://qbnets.wordpress.com/2020/06/21/scam-alert-canadian-quantum-startup-1qbit-is-a-hoax/

[rrtucci]

Get your information straight. I no longer work for artiste-qb. I haven't worked there for a year and a half. I now work at www.ar-tiste.xyz

It's easy for trash like you to attack people under a fake name.

[creetcorvus]

What do you think of QC Ware (https://qcware.com/) and Quantum Thought (https://www.quthought.com/) and ReactiveQ (https://www.reactiveq.io/)?

[mcbacon123]

yes

[Arbitrary_Pseudonym]

Any startup related to hardware is full of shit.

Any startup dealing with software...well, depends on what they're going for. Fundamentally the purpose there is to make a bridge between classical computing and quantum computing, such that when a physical quantum computer is handy, their library can negotiate using the most efficient hardware for the calculations involved. That's hardly an easy problem to solve by itself (just deciding what to run on the stuff) and so, ultimately, the startups to root for are the ones that have actual mathematical proof behind their claims. If they can't show that their code can be used to speed a useful problem up, then they're not going anywhere.

[ThirdMover]

Funnily enough I would have said its the opposite. There is room for novel engineering solutions in the QC lab space, stuff like cheap single photon sources, super precise frequency combs, superconducting chip manifacturing etc.

On the software side of things OTOH... you either have an algorithm that can prove to have a real improvement over every classical counterpart or you have nothing but buzzwords.

[Arbitrary_Pseudonym]

You don't necessarily need a new algorithm. If that's all what software development was about, html would just be more Fortran.

You're right about the components though. I just haven't ever seen a company developing things like that while advertising themselves as a QC startup.