[2025 Future Business Forum] "Expectations for Quantum Computer Commercialization Rise... Will Transform Industries such as Finance, Healthcare, and Transportation"

Soaring Stock Prices of Quantum Computer Companies
Faster Computation Through "Parallel Processing"
Expected Applications in Investment Management and New Drug Development

"The sharp rise in the stock prices of quantum computer-related companies this year indicates that expectations for the commercialization of quantum computers are spreading even among general investors."

Seungcheol Kim, Senior Researcher at Samil PwC Management Research Institute, made this statement while presenting the recent stock price increases of quantum computer-related companies during a special lecture at the '2025 Asia Future Business Forum' held at Lotte Hotel in Sogong-dong, Seoul on the 11th.

IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum are all prominent companies in the quantum computer sector. From January 2023 to April this year, their stock prices rose by 1,376%, 2,647%, and 676%, respectively. Kim explained that all of these companies experienced rapid gains, and that their stock prices began to rise from the end of last year, when big tech companies such as Google and Microsoft (MS) announced quantum computer chips.

Seungcheol Kim, Senior Researcher at Samil PwC Management Research Institute, is giving a special lecture at the '2025 Asia Future Business Forum' hosted by Asia Economy at Lotte Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul on the 11th. Photo by Jinhyung Kang

The term "quantum" refers to the smallest unit of matter or energy, and quantum mechanics is a theory in physics that deals with a world much smaller than the objects we encounter in everyday life. Kim added, "The core characteristic of quantum is superposition?the possibility of existing in multiple states at once," and explained, "While conventional computers represent information in bits of 0 or 1, quantum computers use 'qubits' as the basic unit, which can exist as both 0 and 1 simultaneously."

This means that when the state of one particle is determined, the state of another distant particle can also be determined at the same time, enabling faster calculations. Whereas conventional computers perform calculations sequentially, quantum computers can conduct parallel processing by calculating multiple possibilities at once.

Major Quantum Computer Companies Stock Trends, Samil PwC Management Research Institute.

Kim predicted that the commercialization of quantum computers would bring changes across a wide range of sectors, including finance, healthcare, and defense. He specifically assessed that their utility would be high in the banking, finance, insurance, and healthcare sectors. He said, "When managing investment portfolios, it will be possible to search for better optimal values under complex constraints," and added, "With the parallel quantum state search method, it will be possible to process massive market data simultaneously and instantly identify potential arbitrage opportunities."

He also anticipated diverse applications in fields such as new materials and pharmaceuticals, including faster and easier development of personalized medicines and more precise analysis of climate change scenarios. In the logistics and transportation sectors, he predicted that it would be possible to optimize numerous vehicle routes simultaneously, reducing traffic congestion and enabling more efficient vehicle operation. Kim emphasized, "By utilizing quantum computers, it will be possible to achieve exponential improvements in computing speed compared to conventional computers, and the potential to apply quantum technology to machine learning for large-scale data, artificial neural network models, and data compression and summarization will increase."