{"id":115863,"date":"2025-05-20T02:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T02:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/115863\/"},"modified":"2025-05-20T02:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T02:00:09","slug":"850bn-by-2040-should-i-buy-quantum-computing-stocks-for-my-stocks-and-shares-isa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/115863\/","title":{"rendered":"$850bn by 2040! Should I buy quantum computing stocks for my Stocks and Shares ISA?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Getty-thinking-questions-uncertain-guess-future.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full wp-post-image\" alt=\"Portrait of elderly man wearing white denim shirt and glasses looking up with hand on chin. Thoughtful senior entrepreneur, studio shot against grey background.\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>Image source: Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>My Stocks and Shares ISA holds many companies poised to benefit from powerful global trends unfolding both now and well into the future.<\/p>\n<p>These include digital payments (<strong>Visa<\/strong>), online shopping (<strong>Shopify<\/strong> and <strong>MercadoLibre<\/strong>), artificial intelligence (AI) (<strong>Nvidia<\/strong> and <strong>Taiwan Semiconductor<\/strong>), cybersecurity (<strong>CrowdStrike<\/strong>), and international travel (<strong>Rolls-Royce<\/strong> and <strong>InterContinental Hotels<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the next big one \u2014 which some think could be more impactful than the internet and smartphones \u2014 is quantum computing. These machines could turbocharge drug discovery, AI systems, and develop theoretically unbreakable quantum encryption.<\/p>\n<p>Projections vary on how large this market might become. According to McKinsey, it could be $173bn by 2040. Boston Consulting Group\u00a0goes higher, saying quantum computers will create up to $850bn of global economic value by then.<\/p>\n<p>Either way, this market\u2019s expected to be far larger than today. And while 2040 might sound miles off, it\u2019s actually just 14.5 years away!<\/p>\n<p>So should I buy quantum computing stocks in my ISA to ride this coming mega-trend? Let\u2019s explore.<\/p>\n<p>What is quantum computing?<\/p>\n<p><strong>IBM<\/strong> describes this technology as \u201can emergent field of cutting-edge computer science harnessing the unique qualities of quantum mechanics to solve problems beyond the ability of even the most powerful classical computers\u201c.<\/p>\n<p>Note the word \u201cemergent\u201c. In other words, no commercially useful quantum computers exist yet. They\u2019re still prone to errors and much more research is needed before they\u2019ll start changing the world.<\/p>\n<p>The basic buildings blocks of these computers are called qubits (or quantum bits). Many experts reckon a really useful one will need at least 1m qubits. The most advanced quantum computers today have far less than that. <\/p>\n<p>That said, rapid progress is being made. One Google executive working in this area reckons the industry could be \u201cabout five years\u201d away from a game-changing breakthrough.<\/p>\n<p>IonQ<\/p>\n<p>Despite this, there\u2019s a small handful of pureplay quantum computing stocks in the market today. These include <strong>IonQ<\/strong> (<a class=\"tickerized-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.co.uk\/tickers\/nyse-ionq\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NYSE: IONQ<\/a>), <strong>D-Wave Quantum<\/strong>, and <strong>Rigetti Computing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<tr>CompanyMarket CapOne-year price return2024 revenuePrice-to-sales ratio<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>IonQ <\/td>\n<td>$8.7bn<\/td>\n<td>294%<\/td>\n<td>$43.1m<\/td>\n<td>200<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>D-Wave Quantum<\/td>\n<td>$3.6bn<\/td>\n<td>835%<\/td>\n<td>$8.8m<\/td>\n<td>409<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Rigetti Computing<\/td>\n<td>$3.5bn<\/td>\n<td>948%<\/td>\n<td>$10.8m<\/td>\n<td>324<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<p>As we can see, IonQ\u2019s the largest, with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.co.uk\/investing-basics\/getting-started-in-investing\/what-is-market-cap\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">market-cap<\/a> of $8.7bn. The company develops both physical quantum processors and the software needed to operate them. Customers can rent access to its quantum systems via cloud platforms such as <strong>Amazon<\/strong> Web Services (AWS).<\/p>\n<p>Last year, IonQ\u2019s revenue jumped 95% to $43.1m, and it\u2019s expected to increase another 97% this year. So this is a fast-growing company tapping into early demand for experimentation, research, and quantum infrastructure-building. <\/p>\n<p>Naturally, profits aren\u2019t expected for years, which adds a lot of risk. But the firm did have nearly $700m in cash at the end of March, which will last more than three years at the current cash burn rate ($32m loss in Q1).<\/p>\n<p>My problem here is that the stock\u2019s trading at around 200 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.co.uk\/investing-basics\/how-to-value-shares\/price-to-sales-ratio\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">times sales<\/a> after rising 350% in eight months. That\u2019s an extreme valuation for a company that might not end up being a winner in this space.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, it faces formidable competition from deep-pocketed tech giants such as IBM, Google\/<strong>Alphabet<\/strong>, and perhaps one day Nvidia.<\/p>\n<p>IonQ and the other quantum computing stocks listed above are too speculative for my liking. For investors wanting some exposure to quantum computing, I think established firms including Alphabet, Amazon and Nvidia are currently the best plays to consider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image source: Getty Images My Stocks and Shares ISA holds many companies poised to benefit from powerful global&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3164],"tags":[2166,42473,3284,2168,2169,2170,2171,2172,2173,2174,53,52149,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-115863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-category-investing","9":"tag-category-investing-for-beginners","10":"tag-computing","11":"tag-partner-feeds-dbc-media","12":"tag-partner-feeds-fineco","13":"tag-partner-feeds-flipboard","14":"tag-partner-feeds-msn","15":"tag-partner-feeds-pluto-invest","16":"tag-partner-feeds-sharesight","17":"tag-partner-feeds-yahoo-uk","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-tickers_global-nyse-ionq","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}