D-Wave Quantum reports lower-than-expected Q1 sales, though backlog booms on major deals

The April reading of the Consumer Price Index showed headline inflation rose 0.6% month-on-month, with core inflation (which strips out volatile food and energy prices) rising 0.4%.

Economists anticipated inflation to rise 0.6% month-on-month on a headline basis, with core up 0.3% versus March.

Headline inflation rose 3.8% on an annual basis.

Prediction markets pointed to a high degree of confidence in a 0.6% monthly rise for headline CPI, with the annual increase anticipated to be 3.7%, with less than 50% odds of rising more than that.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

The recent stability in labor market data coupled with the potential for another oil-induced inflation shock in light of the Iran war and closure of the Strait of Hormuz have prompted traders to price the end of the Federal Reserve’s easing cycle. Federal funds futures pricing implies a hike is a more than 50% probability at next March’s meeting.

Prediction markets are less hawkish, pricing 41% odds of a hike before July 2027 while still expecting a return to tightening in the second half of next year.

eBay rejected GameStop’s high-profile takeover proposal Tuesday, calling the bid “neither credible nor attractive” in a short letter from the online marketplace’s board of directors.

Earlier this month, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen made the unsolicited offer, valuing eBay at about $56 billion — roughly 5x GameStop’s ~$11 billion market cap at the time — in a half-cash, half-stock deal.

In its rejection letter, eBay’s board cited “uncertainty” around GameStop’s financing proposal, the “leverage” and “operational risks” of a combined company, as well as GameStop’s “governance and executive incentives.”

That last concern is already drawing scrutiny, with Cohen facing questions over whether an eBay deal could affect his proposed GameStop pay package. Indeed, the video game and collectibles retailer filed a preliminary proxy statement with the SEC yesterday, asking shareholders to approve Cohen’s new pay package and authorize more shares. Under his new compensation package, Cohen's financial interests are entirely tied to those of shareholders, with cumulative awards at different market cap and EBITDA thresholds.

It can be pretty jarring, and it certainly makes for an uncomfortable internal vibe, when stocks soar after a company announces a swathe of job cuts. Fewer employees mean lower costs, and likely stronger earnings for shareholders.

But in the age of AI, the market's reaction to a round of layoffs has become less predictable. If investors already rate your company an AI-winner, or even if it's seen to have the potential to benefit from AI, the market tends to reward AI-linked job cuts in a "wow, you're so efficient and innovative" kind of way (See: Block, Coinbase, and Snap). But, if there's even a whiff of AI threatening your business, AI-related job cuts are seemingly interpreted as an admission of weakness — which is exactly the case for GitLab this morning.

Shares in the company are down nearly 9% in premarket trading Tuesday after the software development platform announced a restructuring plan amid what CEO Bill Staples called the “agentic era.”

In a memo to employees and investors, Staples said the company is planning a “workforce reduction” as part of a restructuring it expects to finalize on or before June 1. The plan includes reducing its country footprint by up to 30%, removing up to three layers of management in some functions, reorganizing R&D into roughly 60 smaller teams, and using AI agents to automate internal reviews, approvals, and handoffs. The company did not specify how many jobs would be affected.

Staples said the process will happen “openly,” including a voluntary separation window.

GitLab sells a software-development platform that helps companies manage code from planning and review to testing, security, and release — a workflow AI agents are beginning to automate.

The company reaffirmed its Q1 and full-year fiscal 2027 guidance, adding that the final scope and financial impact of the restructuring will be shared on its June 2 earnings call, after approval by the board.

Shares of GameStop briefly mooned after hours before erasing the entire advance after posts from @TheRoaringKitty appeared, then disappeared from the social media platform X.

@TheRoaringKitty is the account associated with Keith Gill, the messiah of GameStop’s meme-stock moment in 2021 who returned in 2024 to kick off another parabolic rally in the shares.

The tweets came and went before I could lay eyes on them, but Bloomberg tells me there was “one depicting a cat, and another with a picture of the online character Pepe the Frog wearing Roaring Kitty’s trademark red bandanna” around 5:40 p.m. ET. A screenshot posted of one tweet showed that it included a string of text (ending in “pump”) that appears to be the wallet address for a meme coin called “Red Kitten Crew.”

The market cap of the coin briefly jumped to about $12 million around the time of that tweet before cratering to about $2.6 million thereafter.

The emergent consensus on the r/Superstonk subreddit, which is dedicated to discussions of GameStop, is that the account was hacked. The more tinfoil-hatted members, meanwhile, are suggesting that not only is this a hack, but a hack intended to somehow thwart GameStop’s attempt to purchase eBay.

And on that note, GameStop also released a filing after the close of its letter to shareholders regarding their upcoming annual meeting, asking them to approve CEO Ryan Cohen’s proposed pay package as well as an increase in the authorized share count, which is one of the hurdles that would be need to be cleared in order to complete the deal with eBay.

Anyways, all these hacked account scams on X are really interfering with my ability to get people to vote for me to be a major podcast host.