Quantum computing ETFs are booming this year. Here's why. - Yahoo Finance

Quantum computing ETFs are booming this year. Here's why.

Yahoo Finance Video Wed, September 23, 2026 at 12:00 PM EDT IONQ +5.52% IBM +1.45% BTC-USD -2.84% IonQ's (IONQ) new quantum error-correction decoder test is boosting the larger quantum computing industry (QTUM). The 8:30 Hosts Julie Hyman, Pras Subramanian, and Jake Conley outline the details in the video above. Video Transcript 00:00 Speaker A Time now for this week's ETF report brought to you by PIMCO. And we have some interesting news today, sort of related to an ETF. There's an individual stock, IonQ, Quantum. Um, the quantum trade has been hot, hot, hot this year. It's hot and cold and hot and cold. Like it's pretty volatile. But overall, QTUM, which I believe is the largest ETF that tracks the quantum trade, is up 41% year to date. It's about a $5.7 billion ETF. And and IonQ is one of the bigger players within quantum. The shares are up 12% this morning. Um, it announced something that we are all struggling to understand.00:46 Speaker A Uh basically it said it it developed and tested successfully the industry's, what it says is the industry's first end-to-end real-time quantum error correction decoder that runs on a single standard off-the-shelf central processing unit. What does all of that mean? Well, basically, um quantum as it exists now, is not sort of totally ready for commercialization yet. One of the issues is, as although it's very fast and it computes a lot at once, it makes mistakes. And so one of the quests within the quantum computing um arena is to try to decrease those mistakes. And so this is what this is towards doing and is seen as a big step forward within Quantum as my brain understands it.01:31 Speaker B Can I tell you my thought with quantum that always emerges?01:33 Speaker A Sure.01:33 Speaker B It feels, and you and I have talked about this, it feels to me like fusion energy. Fusion energy, commercialized fusion energy has always been, the joke is, 20 years away from being 20 years away. How long have we seen companies promising that they are right on the breakthrough of quantum?01:51 Speaker A Well, but now they're giving more specific like you hear 2030, 2032 talked about as potential timeline for that.01:58 Speaker B Sure. But it's the same problem with fusion. Fusion exists in labs. The technology exists and has been proven. Commercializing it is so exorbitantly expensive that that's going to be a very hard business model until you find a company that can do it for really cheap.02:14 Speaker A Well, there's a bunch of companies working on it.02:15 Speaker C It reminds me of solid state batteries for EVs. It's been this this technology that's 20 years away from being 20 years away. Uh and one of the big names is called QuantumScape.02:27 Speaker B There you go.02:27 Speaker C in the world of in the world of uh solid state batteries. I mean, I think solid state batteries is more a reality than like let's say fusion, but it's this thing that just it's its commercialization has taken so long and cost so much money before it gets in our hands, I don't know how long it will take.02:45 Speaker A Yeah, I don't know either. I mean, Samuel Jablonski, whose firm is the one that has that quantum um ETF, she was on Market Hang yesterday and talked about that this could be the next sort of 100 bagger industry. And I think a lot of people are betting on that. I mean, as as I've said multiple times on the show, like we're in this market environment now where people want lottery tickets. Quantum is seen as one of these areas that could potentially be a lottery ticket. But, uh, you know, you when it comes to lottery, you lose a lot more than you win in terms of frequency. And that's, you know, true, like there are lots of lottery tickets in the market. There are biotech firms who are have experimental, you know, treatments that could work or not, right? There is quantum, there are nuclear, not just fusion, but the companies working on, yeah, small modular reactors. So, there are a lot of these instances in the market right now, but it seems as like there's more willingness than ever before to try to play that lottery ticket, to try to win big. Um and, you know, these quantum companies have have definitely um been benefiting from it.03:55 Speaker B And it's not just small firms. IBM has also made quantum a huge part of their technological push.04:00 Speaker A Yes. They're going to be spinning off their quantum in partner and you know, the government is also investing in quantum.04:06 Speaker B Of course, because it would it would be a huge step forward for computing. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I've seen calculations of how much faster it can move than a normal computer, and it would be staggering for what it could unlock. But it also opens up a lot of questions of how expensive is it? How do you commercialize it? How do you handle security? All of that will have to get uh hammered out.04:30 Speaker A Yeah. It will. And incidentally, um IonQ is the top trender on the Yahoo Finance platform. So definitely people are interested in it this morning.04:41 Speaker B It's also an AI supercharging trade, right?04:43 Speaker A That's right. That's right.04:44 Speaker B It it could really push the AI industry forward.04:46 Speaker A And then there's all the concern about that once quantum is ready, that it will uh crack the Bitcoin code.04:52 Speaker B That's right.04:53 Speaker A Right? And that that, yeah.04:54 Speaker B This is part, because it can do so many calculations so quickly.04:58 Speaker A Yes. So there's all that.05:00 Speaker B that we can crack Bitcoin. This is where you get security problems. How do you encrypt something against a quantum computer?05:06 Speaker A Exactly. With non-quantum technology.05:08 Speaker C Okay. All right.05:09 Speaker A I guess everybody in the in the future, everyone will have quantum technology. Is that what?05:12 Speaker B We're all quantum.05:13 Speaker A Sure.05:14 Speaker B Why not?05:14 Speaker A Maybe this is the cyborg era.05:17 Speaker A Well, except I think of like Marvel when they go into the quantum, right, right, right. It's called the Quantum Zone or the quantum realm.05:23 Speaker C Yeah, that's that's a battery company. Well, maybe might maybe quantum will power my AI agent and we can just, we can just duplicate me and I can be here and take us out.