This is something of a low-effort article, with a short-sighted focus on immediate profitability. There are many scientific programs that didn't really become private-free-market revenue generators for decades at least (the US space program, for example).
An article with a little more depth might examine the future of trapped-ion quantum computing, for example:
As far as the 'make money off new drugs' mentality, that's not really where QM chemical simulations in molecular dynamics really seems all that promising - it's more about things like the design of new catalysts to improve the efficiency of various industrial processes.
If QM computation is eventually developed, the devices will almost certainly be large and extremely expensive (kind of like the cutting-edge chip fab machines of today in scale). For most businesses, it's unlikely the benefit of owning one will justify the cost, so it'll probably be a national lab / research center type thing.
The key consideration with investments is ROI. When the investor is a government; it can afford to take the long perspective. For most companies; and institutional investors, this works less well.
The key mechanism to protect inventions is patents. Patents have a limited shelf life. If you file a lot of patents today and it takes 30 years before you can apply them, they will have expired by then and others are free to take your inventions and build on that. So, if quantum computing requires another three decades to start making money, most of the companies that are currently being invested in will have failed and their patent portfolios and investment will be worthless. Their patents will have expired, their founding scientists will have moved on or retired, etc. At best those companies may be in a position to file more patents. So, any investors investing right now are making bets on how long it will take before there's a meaningful market to get an ROI and which companies are positioned best to take a chunk out of that market. The further that is out, the higher the risk of losing their investment.
There are billions flowing into quantum computing and the article is simply making the point that in terms of revenue potential there seems to be a lot of uncertainty about the practicality of current approaches, the lack of any real revenue (beyond consulting people on how awesome it would be if we had working quantum computing, etc.). And the lack of perspective on when all this will change. Very valid points. There are a few big companies investing in this stuff but none of them is betting their company on it. It's a side show at MS, Google, IBM, etc.
A long shot that might create some viable business decades further from now but if it all fails, their stocks will be fine. There's enough substance there for them to want to have a finger in the pie if it does take off but none of these companies seems to be counting on that happening any time soon.
An article with a little more depth might examine the future of trapped-ion quantum computing, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapped_ion_quantum_computer
As far as the 'make money off new drugs' mentality, that's not really where QM chemical simulations in molecular dynamics really seems all that promising - it's more about things like the design of new catalysts to improve the efficiency of various industrial processes.
If QM computation is eventually developed, the devices will almost certainly be large and extremely expensive (kind of like the cutting-edge chip fab machines of today in scale). For most businesses, it's unlikely the benefit of owning one will justify the cost, so it'll probably be a national lab / research center type thing.