Best Quantum Computing Pick-and-Shovel Play: Nvidia, Microsoft, or Alphabet?
Nvidia, Microsoft, and Alphabet are emerging as key players in the quantum computing industry, with Nvidia being the best pick-and-shovel play due to its direct exposure and capabilities to serve the market.
Intelligence analysis by Llama
Nvidia's CUDA-Q software runs on most public quantum processors, and the company is already creating the capabilities it'll need to serve the market with real knowledge about what customers need. Microsoft's marketplace format is both low-risk and high-gain, under the rig of its Azure Quantum service.
Imagine you're at a gold rush, and you're not digging for gold yourself, but instead selling shovels to the people who are. That's what Nvidia, Microsoft, and Alphabet are doing in the quantum computing industry. They're not building the quantum computers themselves, but instead providing the tools and services that the people who are building them need.
Analysis
A $60B Vote of Confidence
Nvidia's participation in quantum computing is arguably more direct than Microsoft's, as it's developing its own quantum chip. However, its reach is narrower, since its Azure Quantum runs on a handful of partner platforms rather than sitting under most of the world's quantum processing units (QPUs). The Azure Quantum service rents out cloud access to hardware from pure players like Quantinuum, IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and others, taking a toll per job run on its platform. This is an attractive business model because it lets other people handle the costs of developing the hardware and the costs of using it. It also means that Microsoft is an important upstream supplier for multiple types of businesses in the space. As the industry grows, that'll position the company to be a key player, not to mention bringing in some additional revenue.
Why Cursor?
Microsoft's participation in quantum computing is more direct than Nvidia's, as it's developing its own quantum chip. However, its reach is narrower, since its Azure Quantum runs on a handful of partner platforms rather than sitting under most of the world's quantum processing units (QPUs). The Azure Quantum service rents out cloud access to hardware from pure players like Quantinuum, IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and others, taking a toll per job run on its platform. This is an attractive business model because it lets other people handle the costs of developing the hardware and the costs of using it. It also means that Microsoft is an important upstream supplier for multiple types of businesses in the space. As the industry grows, that'll position the company to be a key player, not to mention bringing in some additional revenue.
The Road Ahead
Alphabet is betting on itself, with Google's Quantum AI building its own superconducting quantum chips. Its 105-qubit Willow processor showed exponential error reduction in December 2024, and a computational advantage over classical computers for some computations in October 2025. It also experimented with a neutral-atom modality in March 2026. The research group responsible for those computers is also publishing a significant number of academic articles that are influencing the conversation and raising its stature in the industry. The most plausible route to the company growing its quantum revenue runs through Google Cloud, which could eventually sell access to Willow the way Azure Quantum resells partner hardware. This is a playbook Alphabet is already applying in an adjacent domain, having begun shipping its custom Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips to a select group of outside customers to install in their own data centers.
Key points
- Nvidia's CUDA-Q software runs on most public quantum processors.
- Microsoft's marketplace format is both low-risk and high-gain, under the rig of its Azure Quantum service.
- Alphabet is betting on itself, with Google's Quantum AI building its own superconducting quantum chips.
If Nvidia's strategy changes or the market grows to be worth more than 10 times what it's expected to be worth in the next few years, the company could realize significant upside from its sales related to quantum computing specifically.
If the market doesn't grow as expected, or if Nvidia's strategy doesn't change, the company's quantum computing revenue could remain small compared to its other data center business.
