Today (September 23 to 25), the global quantum computing event Quantum World Congress 2026 will officially kick off in College Park, Maryland, with industry giants like IonQ, D-Wave, Rigetti, as well as Microsoft and IBM in attendance. However, before the curtain rises, the secondary market has already ignited a celebration: yesterday, after-hours, the quantum computing sector surged collectively, with IonQ jumping over 12%; this morning pre-market, the enthusiasm not only did not fade, but IonQ rose nearly 12% again, while the simulation chips and power management giant Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR) also rose over 8% concurrently.

On one hand is the quantum computing still in the technological breakthrough phase, on the other hand is the power chips for data center foundational power supply, seemingly divergent tracks, but reflecting the market's repricing of the next-generation AI infrastructure's bottlenecks in computing power and energy.

I. On the eve of the conference: funds rush, IONQ showcases independent market performance

Data from the U.S. stock after-hours trading on September 22 shows a very clear steep increase in the quantum computing sector:

Note 1:Data in the table is derived from the after-hours trading period of U.S. stocks (Eastern Time 16:00–20:00) snapshot. After-hours trading has lower volume and liquidity, and prices are easily influenced by large single orders,
not representing the opening price the next day. The pre-market increases quoted (IONQ +11.75%, MPWR +8.55%) are taken from September 23 pre-market trading period (Eastern Time 04:00–09:30), calculated based on the previous day's normal trading closing price.

 II. What is quantum computing? Where are the industry's pain points?

Quantum computing is not a gradual upgrade of traditional computers, but a structural revolution occurring at the foundation of computing power. The architecture of classical computers is built on classical bits in binary—similarly with n bits, the total number of states it can encode is just as many as quantum bits, the difference is that it can only fall into one state at any given moment. The difference with quantum bits is that they allow these states to coexist at the same time, amplifying the probability of the correct answer through interference. If we liken classical bits to a hefty book, where you can only flip to one page at a time; quantum bits are like all pages laid open, interfering with each other.

The pain point between theory and available computing power is noise. Quantum bits are extremely delicate; even minor disturbances in temperature or electromagnetic fields can cause the superposition state to collapse instantly, leading to a rapid accumulation of errors during the computation, ultimately producing meaningless noise. The only solution to noise in the industry is quantum error correction: encoding hundreds or thousands of physical bits into a highly reliable "logical bit," and issuing corrective instructions in real-time through an external classical computer. However, this has also triggered a fatal time lag contradiction: the coherence period of quantum bits is only microseconds, and if the classical decoder's computing power cannot keep up, the symptom data will build up rapidly, causing the quantum computer to halt and wait, and with every microsecond of waiting, environmental noise is creating new errors.

Previously, the industry's crude solution was to pile up computing power, which directly led to an almost paradoxical "cost curse": with each additional logical bit, the cost and power consumption of classical hardware surge nearly exponentially. The deepest concern in the capital market lies here—before quantum computers have commercialized, they may be overwhelmed by their massive, costly, and power-hungry classical logistics system.

III. The resurgence of a single CPU: What has IonQ done right?

IonQ announced after-hours yesterday that it has successfully developed and validated what IonQ calls the world's first end-to-end real-time quantum error correction decoder, with the most striking breakthrough being that it can be driven by just an ordinary commercial CPU, achieving zero slowdown in quantum computing. Following the news, IONQ's after-hours stock price jumped over 12%.

Setting aside the hardcore technical parameters, what does this breakthrough mean? If fault-tolerant quantum computing is likened to a sports car speeding through, the quantum error correction is its braking and steering system. In the past, to prevent the car from losing control due to noise, the industry had to attach a whole bulky server cluster for real-time calculations—before the car had even accelerated much, the logistics dragged it down. What IonQ brings is precisely the key to uproot this "logistical nightmare".

Key data in the announcement also corroborated this: the decoder uses a dual decoder architecture, completing validations on circuits with up to 408 logical quantum bits and 88 memory blocks, processing over 31.5 million quantum operations, with additional overhead under standard operational noise of only 0.02%. It should be noted that this validation was completed on a simulated circuit, not on a complete fault-tolerant calculation running end-to-end on actual physical hardware—it is a crucial intermediary milestone, rather than the endpoint.

IV. AI Agents are forcing CPUs into a corner, how can quantum provide relief?

From Meta's Muse to recent strategic statements from various cloud vendors, the industry is sending a very clear signal: the battlefield of AI is comprehensively shifting from large model training to the ecological landing of AI Agent intelligences. In the past arms race of large models, all attention on computing power was focused on GPUs; however, Agents with autonomous planning and execution capabilities need CPUs the most.

According to a report by TrendForce, in the workflow of AI Agents, tool processing and logical orchestration account for 90.6% of the total system latency. In the face of complex logic such as task decomposition, code execution, and multi-round state passing, where there are many branches and strong serial dependencies, the parallel computing advantage of GPUs is rendered useless, and the computing power load is wholly borne by CPUs. Recently, Intel and AMD have successively raised prices due to the shortage of data center CPUs, reflecting the direct mapping of this computing structure shift in the supply chain.

It is precisely against this backdrop that the strategic role of quantum computing has been endowed with a new problem-solving logic. It is never meant to replace CPUs but instead take over CPU-intensive "black hole" tasks like combinatorial optimization and molecular simulation, freeing up precious CPU power for orchestration and tool execution of Agents.

This is also where IonQ's "single CPU + 0.02% extremely low overhead" solution has resonated most with the market: it means that when quantum computing connects to data centers, it will not only avoid squeezing the currently scarce CPU and power resources, but can also serve as a co-processor at a very low threshold, deployed smoothly and seamlessly. This step substantially alleviates the core concerns of cloud vendors and enterprise clients about commercial landing.

V. The hard constraint of power: the reason behind MPWR's pre-market surge of 8%

Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR), which surged 8.55% in pre-market on the same day, represents another urgent hard constraint—power and energy management.

Reportedly, MPWR has recently raised its earnings expectations, increasing the lower limit for the growth of its enterprise data business in 2026 from 85% to 130%. The previous Q2 financial report showed that this sector's revenue reached $380.6 million, a year-on-year surge of 164.3%, with revenue proportion climbing to 38.8%; at the same time, the company has secured the first orders for DDR5 memory components and has begun to sample high-voltage AC-to-DC products for 800V data center architecture.

The core logic driving this strong growth lies in the fact that as the power consumption of AI servers geometrically spikes, traditional data centers can no longer bear the burden, and are being forced to transition from the past 12V/48V power supply to the 800-volt direct current (800V DC) high-voltage architecture. This is not a gradual small fix but a "blood transfusion-level" reconstruction of the entire power supply link components. When the ultimate bottleneck of AI expansion shifts from "can we get GPUs" to "can the data center supply power?", the power management chips located at the core of power supply naturally see their pricing power rise.

This also provides the most vivid footnote to IonQ's extremely low power consumption scheme—in a world where power has become an absolute hard constraint, any computing power solution that "doesn't consume extra power" inherently carries extremely high commercial value.

VI. The main logical thread behind the Nasdaq's new high: recalibrating AI's three accounts

On September 22 (yesterday), the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.45% to 27,244.28 points, setting a new historical high. Behind this index record lies a clear trajectory of capital games showcasing sector rotations:

• Dawn of the 22nd: Storage and hard disk giants like Micron, Seagate, and SanDisk led the rise, as the complex long context and state caching of Agents were crashing memory bandwidth;

• After-hours on the 22nd: IONQ led to a pulse rise in quantum computing, drawing a cost-reduction curve for fault-tolerant computing power with single CPU error correction

• Pre-market on the 23rd: MPWR strengthened sequentially, announcing the importance of power and high-voltage architecture with its above-expectation guidance.

These three seemingly unconnected market movements point to the same core: Wall Street is comprehensively recalibrating the three accounts of AI infrastructure—memory account, power account, cost account. Any sector that can provide definitive solutions for improving storage bandwidth (storage sector), reducing system power consumption and costs (IonQ zero-cost error correction), and resolving high-voltage power supply bottlenecks (MPWR power management) is receiving heightened attention from the capital markets.

Disclaimer｜All market data and information cited in this article are as of September 23, 2026, 12:00 PM (Eastern Time), and any subsequent price changes, corporate announcements, and market fluctuations are not included in this article. This article is compiled based on public market information, company announcements, and third-party research reports, involving a lot of predictive content and comprehensive judgments on the reasons behind the rise and fall of individual stocks, and the related attributions are the author's conjectures based on public information, not representing the official views of any listed company or institution. The actual pace of commercialization of quantum computing technology, the sustainability of capital expenditure on AI infrastructure, and the fulfillment of performance guidance from related companies contain significant uncertainty: the validation of IonQ's decoder was completed on a simulated circuit and does not equate to a complete fault-tolerant calculation running end-to-end on actual physical hardware; the Quantum World Congress spans three days (September 23 to 25), with the anticipated pre-conference rises often facing pressure for realization during or after the conference. Moreover, the quoted pre-market and after-hours increase data are from different statistical periods (explained in Note 1), that liquidity during these periods is far lower than normal trading hours, and prices are easily affected by individual large orders, actual opening and closing performances may vary significantly from these, with everything subject to officially released information and actual market trends. This article does not constitute any investment advice or offers, the mentioned individual stocks do not represent any buy or sell recommendations, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor; investors should independently judge based on their own financial situation and risk tolerance, and bear all risks arising therefrom. The market has risks, and decisions should be made cautiously.

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