Quantum computing firm IonQ is facing scrutiny after allegations surfaced that it misled investors about its revenue and demand, while a correction was issued for a Nature article on ribosome function. According to multiple news sources, a report by Wolfpack Research accused IonQ of overstating its organic demand and revenue, particularly concerning undisclosed Pentagon earmarks that have since been cancelled. This led to a significant drop in IonQ's stock price, raising concerns about the viability of its technology and the broader quantum computing sector, which is still in early stages of development, according to Fortune.
The Wolfpack Research report alleged that IonQ misled investors about the true sources of its revenue, specifically highlighting the reliance on now-cancelled Pentagon earmarks, Fortune reported. This has cast doubt on the company's claims of organic demand and raised questions about the long-term commercial prospects of its quantum computing technology. The quantum computing sector, despite advancements from major tech companies, remains in its nascent stages, making it particularly vulnerable to such allegations.
Separately, a correction was issued for a Nature article titled "Cotranslational assembly of protein complexes in eukaryotes revealed by ribosome profiling," Nature News reported. The correction addressed errors in Extended Data Fig. 2a and 4d, where strains were partially misannotated and one figure was inadvertently presented as a partial duplicate of another. The authors stated that the errors occurred during figure preparation, as assays for multiple strains were performed together on the same petri dish, sharing a wild-type control.
Despite the errors, the authors maintained that the overall conclusions of the study remain valid, according to Nature News. The corrected figures are now available, and the original article was published on August 29, 2018. The study concerns protein aggregation and ribosome function.
In other news, Mistral AI released new open-source speech-to-text models, according to multiple news sources. Other reports include a diverse range of events, including investigations into alleged misconduct by public figures, the closure of a U.K. law firm due to regulatory issues, and a NASA reauthorization act amendment that could broaden commercial involvement in lunar missions, Time reported. These reports are interspersed with other news items, such as corporate policy violations, celebrity opinions, controversies surrounding social media activity, concerns about AI's impact on job skills, and political commentary on immigration enforcement.
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