Quantum Computing

Quantinuum secured a finalized US$100 million CHIPS R&D award from the U.S. Department of Commerce to support trapped ion quantum computer manufacturing in the United States. The company also announced new collaborations with Quanta Computer and Oracle tied to its trapped ion quantum hardware. As part of the Oracle tie-up, Quantinuum will place its Helios quantum computer inside Oracle data centers to support quantum cloud computing access. Quantinuum, a quantum computing hardware and software specialist in the IT industry, has a market cap of about US$12.7b. The company said the CHIPS R&D award and Oracle data center placement support its push to integrate quantum systems with AI and high performance computing through partners such as Oracle and HPE, though heavy reported losses and the risk of delays around its Sol and Apollo systems remain open issues.

IonQ announced a real-time quantum error correction decoder that runs complex workloads without slowing quantum computations. The company reported new deployments at the NVIDIA Accelerated Quantum Research Center, integrating its hardware into NVIDIA's quantum research stack, and disclosed a partnership with SDT in South Korea to support quantum computing access for regional enterprises and researchers. IonQ said the decoder handles benchmark circuits with up to 408 logical qubits and more than 31.5 million quantum operations with just 0.02% added time, running on a single off-the-shelf CPU while the quantum system keeps operating. IonQ, a US semiconductor player valued at about $17.4b, builds quantum computing systems for clients in the United States, Switzerland, and other regions. Investors will watch how many Superion 256 deployments move from contract to installed and active systems at sites like NVIDIA's research center, FIU and SDT's data center from 2027.

MarketsandMarkets projects the global post-quantum cryptography market will grow from $0.42 billion in 2025 to $2.84 billion by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 46.2%. The forecast is a third-party projection, not a guarantee, and timelines for quantum capability remain debated, though large infrastructure vendors have started publishing migration dates and quantum hardware companies are reporting rapid revenue growth off small bases. Among this week's developments, Vancouver-based Quantum Secure Encryption Corp. appointed Joseph Hall as Chief Intelligence Officer, adding more than 20 years of frontline cybersecurity and threat intelligence experience, with prior roles including Director of Threat Intel R&D at Infoblox and Principal Security Consultant at Fortinet; he will work with Chief Technology Officer Michael Massing, who previously led Dell SonicWall's Unified Threat Management business unit. QSE also announced grants of 350,000 stock options and 350,000 restricted share units to employees. Separately, Cloudflare announced plans to become a public certificate authority issuing post-quantum Merkle Tree Certificates with production issuance scheduled for the first quarter of 2027, IonQ reported second quarter 2026 revenue of $80.1 million, up 287% year over year, and raised its full-year 2026 revenue outlook to $450 million to $460 million, Akamai announced an $11.6 billion multi-year agreement with Anthropic to supply distributed AI infrastructure and cloud computing services over seven years, and Okta reported second quarter fiscal 2027 total revenue of $805 million, up 11%, guiding to fiscal 2027 revenue of $3.216 billion to $3.226 billion.

Deutsche Telekom AG and Cloudflare, Inc. announced a strategic partnership to strengthen the security and resilience of digital infrastructure for enterprises across Europe. Under the collaboration, Deutsche Telekom will expand its enterprise portfolio with Cloudflare's security and connectivity solutions, while the two companies directly interconnect their networks to give European organizations access to Cloudflare's global cloud platform combined with Deutsche Telekom's services. Deutsche Telekom's enterprise arm, T-Systems, will strengthen its enterprise portfolio with Cloudflare's connectivity cloud solutions across performance, reliability, and security, and Cloudflare will leverage Deutsche Telekom's established sales and service organization to serve enterprise customers across the European region. Deutsche Telekom will also train and certify its professionals on the Cloudflare platform so customers can receive support from a single provider, from consulting and implementation through ongoing operations and managed security services. Beyond the portfolio and channel partnership, the two companies intend to collaborate on new approaches to European security and digital sovereignty requirements, including the use of scalable advanced post-quantum cryptography.

International Business Machines introduced an on-premises version of its Digital Asset Haven platform for regulated institutions, letting banks and other supervised entities run the platform inside their own data centers using existing controls. The beta deployment runs on IBM Z and LinuxONE, keeping digital asset keys, workflows, and compliance controls within existing environments, and includes an ISO 20022 adapter and Swift ledger connectivity. Separately, IBM and Anderon LLC reported operational production of quantum wafers, a manufacturing milestone for quantum hardware in the US tied to a CHIPS Act backed facility. Investors will watch how many regulated institutions move from pilot to production on the on-premises beta and Swift shared ledger integration through 2027, and whether Anderon's quantum wafers progress from initial runs to volume orders once that facility ramps.

Bank of America initiated coverage of IonQ on September 28 with a Buy rating and a $60 price target, calling the company the largest public pure-play quantum company by revenue. The call lands as IonQ reported $80.1 million of Q2 2026 revenue, up 287% year-over-year, its strongest quarter on record and a fifth consecutive quarter of record results, with organic revenue up 132%. Management raised full-year 2026 IonQ revenue guidance to $280 million to $290 million and maintained its expectation for approximately 100% organic growth, while remaining performance obligations reached $485 million, up from $122 million a year earlier. Following its $1.8 billion acquisition of SkyWater, IonQ said it received its first fully integrated quantum processing units from the foundry and plans to begin commissioning 256-qubit systems in 2027, and it announced Superion 256 deployments at Florida International University and NVIDIA's Accelerated Quantum Research Center. BofA also pointed to IonQ's semiconductor-enabled approach to scaling qubit counts and its expansion across quantum computing, communications and sensing.

IonQ agreed to deploy its first on-premise Superion 256 quantum computer for Florida International University in Florida. The Superion 256 system will anchor a secure quantum research and education facility intended to serve FIU and partner institutions. The FIU hub is expected to support work in material science, artificial intelligence, health, logistics and other scientific applications using IonQ hardware. IonQ develops quantum computing systems for customers in the US, Switzerland, and other regions, so placing a Superion 256 machine at FIU gives the company a physical foothold inside an academic research pipeline that can stress test its hardware on real scientific workloads. The deployment is IonQ's first Superion 256 university installation.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has unveiled an architectural blueprint for Ethereum through 2030, saying the network will no longer be just a blockchain but a hybrid architecture that fuses the blockchain with modern cryptography. Buterin wrote in a post on X that this approach is the foundation for everything planned for Ethereum, starting with the fork after Hegota, an upgrade planned for next year that will likely be Ethereum's last regular fork before everything that follows involves recursive STARKs, formal automated verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms, and making all of it quantum-safe. Glamsterdam, the upgrade preceding Hegota, is expected to ship in the fourth quarter of 2026, after previously being expected to go live in the first half of 2026. Buterin also projected slot times of 4 to 8 seconds by 2030 and absolute finality of 8 to 32 seconds. The price of ETH traded near 2,700 dollars on Sunday, little changed over 24 hours.

IonQ said on September 23 that its Superion 256 will become the first on-premise quantum processor deployed at Nvidia's Accelerated Quantum Research Center, with the deployment planned for 2027. Nvidia will place IonQ's quantum processing unit alongside conventional accelerated computing hardware in a setting designed to develop large-scale hybrid systems, targeting applications including financial optimization, materials science and computational chemistry. IonQ introduced Superion 256 on September 8 and has begun accepting orders, with first customer deliveries expected in 2027 and commercially manufacturable fault-tolerant systems targeted for 2028. On September 22, IonQ reported a decoder breakthrough, demonstrating a real-time decoder running continuously on a single conventional CPU across benchmark circuits simulating up to 408 logical qubits and more than 31.5 million quantum operations, with as little as 0.02% additional execution time. The financial value of the Nvidia deployment has not been disclosed, and IonQ's 2026 revenue guidance of $450 million to $460 million includes SkyWater revenue from July 31 through year-end, so the increase cannot be attributed entirely to accelerating organic quantum-computing revenue.

Quantum Computing Inc. is presenting an integrated quantum security platform at the ECOC Exhibition in 2026. The system combines quantum key distribution with hardware based quantum identity authentication for secure communications, built on the company's patented, award winning technology and shown in a live deployment style demonstration. The launch sits within Quantum Computing's broader effort to turn lab grade quantum technology into practical tools for secure data transmission, linking its photonics, patents and vertically integrated manufacturing to a complete security stack that network operators could test against incumbents such as Toshiba's QKD offerings or efforts from ID Quantique and similar peers. The company operates as a US based integrated photonics business supplying quantum machines to commercial and government clients, and the article cites a fair value of $18.33 for Quantum Computing. The bear case remains, as the business is spending heavily ahead of large-scale demand and turning the demo into repeatable, multi-site contracts is still unproven.

The European Banking Authority, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, and the European Securities and Markets Authority published a joint risk report on September 23, warning that quantum computers pose a serious risk to the cryptography protecting communications, transactions, databases, and blockchains. They said the threat could materialize sooner than the commercialization of quantum technology, and called on financial institutions and market participants to prepare for the rapid development of quantum computers. In crypto assets, ownership is proven through digital signatures using public and private keys, but future quantum computers could derive a private key from a public key and impersonate the owner to move assets. CoinDesk, citing data from CryptoQuant, reported that roughly 6.9 million bitcoins could be exposed to quantum attacks. The EU has already set out a plan to migrate to post-quantum cryptography, asking member states to begin the transition by the end of 2026 and aiming to protect high-risk sectors by the end of 2030 at the latest. On September 10, Eigen Labs published research showing that the key computational processing required for a quantum attack on the cryptography used by Bitcoin and Ethereum could be reduced by more than 50 percent in resource terms compared with previous estimates.

International Business Machines Corporation and Lockheed Martin Corporation have established a quantum innovation hub at ETH Zurich through an offset agreement with armasuisse, Switzerland's Federal Office for Defence Procurement. The initiative will host Switzerland's first IBM Quantum System Two, powered by IBM's advanced Quantum Nighthawk processor, at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center in Lugano. Operating the facility alongside ETH Zurich, the collaboration bridges IBM's expertise in quantum computing and AI with Lockheed Martin's focus on quantum sensing and additive manufacturing. For both tech and defense investors, the hub reinforces a shared commitment to developing next-generation compute capabilities for complex industrial and national security applications. The joint Swiss initiative offers a clear strategic catalyst for both companies, though its near-term financial impact remains conditional.

Infleqtion announced a joint research and development collaboration with Cisco Systems on September 10, 2026, to connect, operate, and scale quantum systems into distributed networks. The effort pairs Infleqtion's neutral-atom quantum processors and sensors with Cisco's quantum networking stack, aiming to move standalone quantum hardware into scalable, interconnected networks; Infleqtion Chief Technology Officer Pranav Gokhale compared the shift to how the internet emerged from linked classical computers. Infleqtion brings record Q2 2026 revenue of $12.6 million, trailing 12-month revenue of $42.44 million, an updated 2026 revenue outlook of roughly $43 million, a $100 million Department of Commerce grant and a roughly four-year funding runway, but it also posted a $24.7 million operating loss in Q2 2026 against $13.5 million in revenue, and the collaboration remains an early-stage joint R&D effort that generates no immediate commercial software or hardware sales. Cisco gains an early foothold in next-generation quantum networks that expands its long-term addressable market, though it must weigh that against a more leveraged balance sheet, margin pressure from a higher hardware mix and rising memory costs. Infleqtion's path to material revenue depends on unproven milestones including 30 logical qubits in 2026 and field tests in 2027, alongside its 2027 fault-tolerant Illinois system.

D-Wave Quantum and CGI announced a new partnership to promote quantum computing adoption across enterprise customers. The collaboration brings D-Wave's Advantage2 system and hybrid solvers into CGI's services for sectors including logistics, transportation and retail, with both parties aiming to move beyond research use cases toward commercial projects for corporate clients. The CGI partnership for D-Wave's Advantage2 and hybrid solutions is only one part of the wider investment story, and the article notes that its analysis turns up 2 warning signs for D-Wave Quantum as well. D-Wave Quantum develops and sells quantum computing hardware, software, and related services, positioning the group as a specialist infrastructure provider rather than a general-purpose software vendor. The article also cites a $35.24 fair value for D-Wave Quantum and notes that many reference customers are still stuck in proof-of-concept mode while losses continue to widen.

The processing cost for preparing quantum-resistant Bitcoin transactions has fallen to under $67, down from about $320, a reduction of roughly 79%, according to benchmark tests. The improvement follows the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge, which StarkWare launched together with Yukon Research and Eigen Labs on September 16, producing 62 accepted improvements covering the two computing tasks needed to prepare QSB transactions. The first QSB transaction was mined and confirmed on the blockchain on August 26, taking about 3,100 GPU hours on roughly 100 GPU machines and submitting the transaction through MARA's Slipstream service. Meanwhile, Avihu Levy, a researcher at StarkWare, published the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin design in April, describing it as a last-resort measure that uses hash-based protection without changing Bitcoin's consensus rules. StarkWare continues to back soft forks as the long-term answer for broad quantum protection.

Coinbase Global has introduced enterprise-scale, fixed-rate Bitcoin-backed loans using the Morpho protocol for on-chain lending, alongside a post-quantum security architecture designed to harden its Bitcoin custody against future quantum computing threats. The fixed-rate loans target institutional borrowers seeking predictable on-chain financing terms rather than variable-rate crypto credit arrangements. The company said the two initiatives are only one part of its broader crypto infrastructure push, feeding directly into its role as an infrastructure provider for institutional clients that want more predictable and security-focused crypto services. The early tell for investors will be whether Coinbase starts disclosing specific metrics around Morpho-based loan balances, institutional borrower adoption and quantum-ready custody features in upcoming quarterly updates, instead of leaving these initiatives as purely technical announcements.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise said it will integrate QuEra Computing's fault-tolerant quantum systems with its Cray supercomputers for on premises high performance computing environments. The collaboration targets national labs, enterprises and high performance computing centers that want quantum and classical workloads running on a single infrastructure. QuEra's quantum technology is being positioned for scientific and energy research tasks that run alongside traditional Cray supercomputing jobs inside existing data centers. The move fits HPE's wider push to serve complex on premises workloads for governments and large enterprises, reinforcing its role as a full stack provider rather than just a server vendor. The real test will come from the first disclosed integrated testbeds or customer deployments where QuEra systems sit alongside HPE Cray supercomputers, especially at national labs or major HPC centers, along with any concrete timelines or contract details.

IonQ announced it successfully developed and tested what it calls the industry's first end-to-end real-time quantum error correction decoder running on a single standard off-the-shelf central processing unit, sending its shares up 12% in morning trading. The news lifted the broader quantum computing trade, with QTUM, the largest ETF tracking the sector at about $5.7 billion in assets, up 41% year to date. IonQ was the top trending ticker on the Yahoo Finance platform following the announcement. The decoder addresses one of quantum computing's central obstacles, the errors that make current systems unsuitable for commercialization, and is seen as a significant step forward for the industry. The discussion also noted that IBM has made quantum a major part of its technological push and plans to spin off its quantum unit, while government investment in the field continues.

D-Wave Quantum has executed a definitive agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce, based on its previously announced Letter of Intent, giving it access to up to $100 million in funding under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act to accelerate research and development of its annealing and gate-model quantum systems. NTT DOCOMO, Japan's largest mobile operator, deployed a second D-Wave-powered quantum computing application in production, which cut location-registration signals generated when devices crossed tracking-area-list boundaries by 65.3% at the daily peak and reduced paging signals by 7.0%. D-Wave was also awarded up to CAD $300,000 from the National Research Council of Canada's Applied Quantum Computing Challenge program to advance annealing quantum computing software for commercial applications, and AT&T agreed to expand its use of D-Wave's quantum computing technology to address complex optimization challenges across its network operations. Separately, Rigetti plans to partner with HPE and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to build the TangleLab supercomputing testbed, delivering a 9-qubit Novera system to the testbed, which is funded by a $5 million National Science Foundation grant, while Quantum Computing signed a three-year framework agreement with Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar covering quantum computing, quantum sensing and quantum communications. Over the past year, QBTS shares have lost 36.2% compared with the broader Internet Software industry's 5.8% decline, and the stock trades at a forward 12-month price-to-sales ratio of 93.25X versus the industry average of 4.40X.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said at Splunk's .conf26 conference that CPUs, GPUs and quantum processors will likely work together across different applications, citing error correction as an area where the technology still needs to advance. Days later, IonQ said it had tested a real-time quantum error-correction decoder running on a single standard CPU, with the system tested on simulated workloads representing up to 408 logical qubits and more than 31.5 million operations. IonQ said the decoder added as little as 0.02% to execution time under standard operating-noise assumptions, though the research used simulated workloads rather than a quantum computer operating with 408 logical qubits, so it does not establish that the technology is ready for commercial-scale deployment. Still, the test illustrates how conventional computing could handle error correction while quantum processors perform specialized calculations. INTC shares rose 1.7% Tuesday to $123.86, while IonQ has drawn renewed attention from investors following the milestone, and the next catalyst is whether IonQ can demonstrate the decoder on increasingly large, real quantum systems.

Crypto exchange Coinbase revealed by September 22 that it is developing a crypto custody system capable of supporting any post-quantum signature scheme blockchains may adopt in the future, in preparation for the risk of quantum computers cracking encryption. Yehuda Lindell, the company's head of cryptography, explained this in a video interview with the Mara Foundation. The company is upgrading its current custody infrastructure, which uses multi-party computation, so that it can withstand attacks by quantum computers, and is also considering an alternative approach using specialized devices called hardware security modules in case a signature scheme is adopted that multi-party computation cannot handle. According to the Mara Foundation, the company protects roughly 250 billion dollars' worth of digital assets centered on this system. On July 23, Coinbase explained on its official blog that its current key management system, CoreKMS, protects about 99.9 percent of its custodied assets, and that it is also developing a quantum-resistant version, PQ-CoreKMS, with plans to build an automated infrastructure within one year that can securely sign while distributing keys across multiple locations. Over the following two to three years, it aims to develop multi-party computation that does not require generating a complete private key even for quantum-resistant signatures.

B. Riley Securities is maintaining bullish ratings on IonQ, D-Wave Quantum and Rigetti Computing ahead of Quantum World Congress, betting that a shift in government policy from pure research toward commercialization could open a more meaningful revenue path for the quantum-computing sector. The firm kept Buy ratings with price targets of $100 for IonQ, $40 for D-Wave and $35 for Rigetti. Analyst Craig Ellis pointed to the Department of Energy's From Lab to Market session at the September 23-25 conference as a sign that federal policy may increasingly focus on moving quantum technologies into commercial applications. The event will also feature a two-hour National Quantum Updates session with more than 10 governments, participation from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and back-to-back keynotes from Microsoft and IBM. B. Riley's thesis is sector-wide, but the report provides no fresh revenue forecasts, cash-flow estimates, technical milestones or new valuation work behind the three price targets, leaving the stocks dependent on long-term expectations rather than near-term financial evidence.

International Business Machines and NASA have released an open Lunar Foundation Model for scientific lunar research to the public, while IBM, Lockheed Martin and ETH Zurich have created a quantum innovation hub to broaden access to quantum computing research and training. The ETH Zurich quantum hub is intended to support industrial use cases in areas such as materials science, financial services and aerospace. International Business Machines is a US IT group with a US$216.3b market cap that sells integrated hardware, software and services, and its work with NASA and the ETH Zurich quantum hub taps into areas where large research and enterprise clients already use its infrastructure and consulting capabilities. The clearest test of the bull case will come as IBM reports how many paying industrial and research workloads actually run on Quantum System Two and related services at ETH Zurich once that system is deployed, and whether management starts breaking out any quantum or lunar AI related revenue or backlog in future quarterly updates. The bear case centers on execution risk in turning complex research collaborations into scalable, high margin Software and Consulting revenue rather than isolated projects.

Aviatrix announced Harvest and Decrypt Protection, which it calls the first post-quantum protection that encrypts data and simultaneously governs what a compromised workload can reach, delivering crypto-agile encryption and Communication Governance as one policy in software on the network enterprises already run. The offering arrives a month before federal civilian agencies must file post-quantum migration plans on October 22, and ahead of the 2029 full quantum-readiness roadmaps published by Google and Microsoft; Amazon Web Services publishes no equivalent target. Harvest Protection comes with five free policies to start, with no trial clock and no purchase required, and is free to start for existing Aviatrix customers, with the first five policies and five nodes free with no license and no time limit. Aviatrix said its patented High-Performance Encryption engine removes the throughput trade-off that causes most enterprises to leave cloud transit unprotected, citing one Fortune 5 customer running 400 gigabits per second fully encrypted in production at line rate, and that key establishment on the control plane uses the ML-KEM standard today, with hybrid ML-KEM on the data plane a fast-follow release. The company is working with global systems integrators and security services providers and collaborating with Microsoft on the Quantum Safe program as the network traffic and Harvest Now, Decrypt Later containment solution. Aviatrix also cited deadlines including Executive Order 14412, which sets December 31, 2030, for post-quantum key establishment and December 31, 2031, for digital signatures on high-value assets, and said enterprises can begin with a free Containment Assessment that returns a provisional Blast Radius and harvest exposure read in about five minutes.

IonQ has entered a multi-year strategic partnership with Seoul-based quantum software and technology provider SDT, Inc. The deal marks a double milestone for South Korea, delivering both its first IonQ Superion 256 quantum system and its first silicon-vacancy quantum memory module. The Superion 256 unit will be deployed for an SDT client in South Korea to anchor a collaborative effort in designing next-generation hybrid quantum-classical data centers. To support this deployment and future expansion, SDT is establishing a dedicated quantum manufacturing and integration facility in Gumi, South Korea, which will oversee the assembly, packaging, and commissioning of IonQ's SiV quantum memory modules and complete systems. SDT CEO Jiwon Yune said the Gumi facility is slated to become an active operational hub within IonQ's broader global supply chain, and noted the company's role will also extend to a separate in-country cancer center project developing hybrid quantum-classical infrastructure for medical and biomedical research with IonQ. The partnership elevates the two companies' relationship beyond cloud software integration into physical hardware production, assembly, and regional distribution, complementing IonQ's existing partnerships with Hyundai Motor Company, SK Telecom, KISTI, Seoul National University, and Sungkyunkwan University.

At the 2026 Hangzhou Apsara Conference held on September 22, Alibaba's T-Head unveiled the self-developed AI chip Zhenwu V900, boosting computing power to three times that of the Zhenwu M890. A single cluster can scale to 500,000 cards. The chip is scheduled for volume production and market launch in the first quarter of 2027, and will be deployed at scale first in Alibaba Cloud data centers. Alibaba also announced that the Qwen4 large model, based on a new-generation architecture, is already in training, and future versions such as Qwen4.5 and Qwen5 will expand to 5 to 10 trillion parameters. Alibaba Cloud aims to operate more than 20 gigawatts of global data center capacity by 2032. T-Head also publicly revealed for the first time the update roadmap for its Yitian series server CPUs, completing a full-stack self-developed product portfolio spanning computing, storage, and networking. On the same day, the State Administration for Market Regulation pushed forward the formulation of a batch of national standards for core quantum devices, releasing two new national standards, the Technical Specification for Quantum Squeezed Light Sources and the Test Method for Performance of Periodically Poled Lithium Niobate Quantum Frequency Conversion Devices, and newly approving four national standard projects. Li Chao, deputy director of the Policy Research Office of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at the commission's September press conference that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China will push the BeiDou industry to exceed 1 trillion yuan in scale within five years, achieve new breakthroughs in marketization, industrialization, and internationalization, and accelerate the introduction and implementation of the Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Satellite Navigation. A report released by the China Electricity Council on September 22 shows that China's electrification rate has surpassed 29 percent and will rank first among major global economies by 2030. An Omdia report shows that global semiconductor revenue exceeded 425 billion US dollars in the second quarter of 2026, up 31.4 percent quarter on quarter. An IDC report shows that in the first half of 2026, the global market size for industrial-grade quadruped robot applications grew 125.1 percent year on year.

IBM finalized a $1 billion Commerce Department award for its Anderon subsidiary, adding federal backing to its domestic quantum-chip manufacturing push. The company is putting another $1 billion of its own capital behind Anderon's 300-millimeter Albany foundry, taking the disclosed funding package to $2 billion before counting previous investment at the site. Early wafers are already moving through production, targeting superconducting qubits alongside the signaling and readout hardware needed to connect them, with more quantum architectures expected to follow. Shares fell 0.5% to $228.46, a price 5.91% below IBM's GF Value estimate of $242.80. Washington is covering half of the newly disclosed $2 billion commitment, but IBM has not disclosed outside customers, purchase commitments, expected utilization or revenue targets for the foundry.

Kevin O'Leary said Bitcoin will reach $1 million, but only if the crypto industry resolves the quantum-computing threat known as Q-Day, the point at which a quantum computer could forge the signatures securing every Bitcoin wallet. Speaking at Avalanche Summit, O'Leary said no such machine exists and estimates for when one arrives run from the early 2030s to never, but that the doubt alone is why large funds cap Bitcoin exposure near 3%, treating it as a sliver of gold rather than a core holding. He also reversed his Ethereum thesis, saying his eighteen-month-old view that owning Bitcoin and Ethereum captured 97% of crypto's upside did not pan out, and that he now expects entire industries to pick their own chain, with whichever blockchain the first major exchange adopts for tokenization seeing that token soar. The interview came after the SEC approved its Innovation Exemption for tokenized stocks last week and as ICE evaluates Avalanche as the settlement layer for the NYSE's in-development trading system. O'Leary frames crypto as becoming the twelfth sector of the S&P because it services the other eleven.