By Luke Lango
Publication Date: 2026-04-21 12:55:00
Six months ago, Nvidia‘s (NVDA) Jensen Huang told the world that practical quantum computing was 15 to 30 years away.
Quantum stocks collapsed, and the sector bled out for the better part of a year…
Until last week — when Nvidia changed the conversation.
On April 14 — fittingly, World Quantum Day — Nvidia launched NVIDIA Ising: the world’s first family of open-source AI models built specifically to make quantum computers work. IonQ (IONQ), Rigetti (RGTI), D-Wave (QBTS), and Quantum Computing (QUBT) all surged more than 25% in a single week — one of the sharpest sector comebacks in recent memory.
So the obvious question: dead cat bounce, or the start of a genuine turnaround?
The honest answer is that it’s complicated. But here’s what we can tell you — the case for “genuine turnaround” just got meaningfully stronger.
It comes down to who is making this bet — and what they’re actually building.
(If you want the full picture on quantum computing’s long-term potential, the commercial timeline, and the spectacular rise and fall of these stocks over the past 18 months, we covered all of it in depth right here. It’s essential context. We’ll pick up from there.)
What Nvidia Ising Actually Does (And Why It Matters)
Nvidia named its latest products after the Ising model — a foundational framework in physics for understanding complex, interacting systems. It’s an apt choice because that’s exactly what…