How "real" are the combinatorial optimization applications in quantum computing?

I generally have a good understanding of the state of the art of quantum computing applications in chemistry, materials science, and cryptography, but optimization is still a bit of a mystery to me. It seems like there is a ton of ongoing research here, for example, dozens of papers of the form "we applied QAOA to [application X] and it sort of works!", or research into alternative algorithms like decoded quantum interferometry and amplitude estimation. But is it known at this time how likely it is, based on the current state of the art, for combinatorial optimization to be a serious application of future quantum computers, or is it still highly speculative at this point? submitted by /u/Ninin- [link] [comments]