IonQ and D-Wave Quantum spike as Jefferies initiates coverage with “buy” ratings

Shares of IonQ and D-Wave Quantum are soaring on Tuesday after Jefferies initated coverage on the stocks with “buy” ratings and price targets of $100 and $45, respectively.

Rigetti Computing, which Jefferies started with a “hold” rating and $30 price target, is modestly lower. These three quantum computing companies are all down between 40% and 60% from their October all-time highs.

All 13 analysts who cover D-Wave have a “buy” (or equivalent) rating, while 75% of the dozen on Wall Street who have a rating on IonQ recommend the stock.

While the speculative AI-linked stocks continue to largely get crushed, this pocket of the market also favored by retail traders is showing some signs of life.

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J. Edward Moreno36m

Fundrise’s venture fund falls amid concerns about valuation gap

Fundrise Innovation Fund, a publicly traded venture capital fund with stakes in private companies like Anthropic and SpaceX, is coming back down to earth after swelling to more than 25x the value of its assets early this week.

Shares of the fund, which went public on March 19 and uses the ticker VCX, closed at $262 on Thursday and had sunk to $189.26 shortly after market open on Friday. The stock closed at $533 on Wednesday.

The fund is still trading well above its net asset value (NAV), which was $18.26 per share as of March 2, 2026, according to its IPO documents. That means retail investors, desperate for exposure to high-flying private companies but left with no other ways in, are paying a hefty premium.

The gap between its NAV and the stock price led Citron Research to go short on the stock, the firm revealed Thursday.

Ben Miller, Fundrise cofounder and CEO, pushed back on the short report in an interview on CNBC Friday morning, saying his firm can’t control the stock price and noting that pre-IPO investors were actually worried the fund would end up trading at a discount, not a premium.

Luke Kawa52m

Cyber stocks plunge after reportedly leaked document shows Anthropic is worried its new model will enable indefensible online attacks

Cybersecurity stocks are suffering from another case of Claude-struption:

Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, Cloudflare, Fortinet, Zscaler, and Okta are all slumping in premarket trading after Fortune reported that a data leak from Anthropic revealed an updated AI model the company fears is so powerful that malicious actors could launch cyberattacks that these companies wouldn’t be able to defend against.

Per the leaked document reviewed by Fortune, the new model “presages an upcoming wave of models that can exploit vulnerabilities in ways that far outpace the efforts of defenders,” and Anthropic plans to release it early to cybersecurity companies in order to help improve their ability to withstand attacks.

According to experts cited by Fortune, this leak was able to be discovered because digital assets created in Anthropic’s content management system “are set to public by default” unless a user shifts them to be kept private. Anthropic refers to this as “human error.”

But given how Claude Cowork was created by Claude Code, one presumes that Anthropic makes extensive use of its AI tools for code and products deployed both internally and externally.

This leaves us with a bit of a conundrum. Anthropic is simultaneously able to:

Develop an AI model so powerful that traditional cyber defenders might be bringing a paper shield to a gun fight; and
Not utilize anything resembling appropriate safeguards for protecting its own information and products using those same powerful AI tools it has developed.

When “hey, maybe make sure we don’t default to publishing information publicly!” can be considered an improvement on one’s own cybersecurity standards, it’s a little difficult to trust one’s assessment of future threats.

These cyber stocks had previously slumped in late February after Anthropic launched a new security feature for its AI model.

Luke Kawa2h

Argan spikes on massive Q4 sales beat as power plant supplying PJM region completed ahead of schedule

The ability to add supply ahead of schedule to an energy-hungry AI boom drove a massive earnings beat for power plant builder Argan in Q4.

In the three months ended January, Argan’s adjusted earnings per share of $3.47 crushed the consensus estimate for $1.98, while revenues of $262 million modestly exceeded the consensus call for $255 million.

Following this release, JPMorgan analyst Michael Fairbanks hiked his price target to a Wall Street high of $550 (from $370) and upgraded the stock to “overweight” from “neutral.”

Goldman Sachs also hiked its price target to $518 from $399 in the wake of these results, maintaining a “buy” rating on the shares.

Management attributed the strong profitability to its project mix and execution, including reaching “substantial completion” on its Trumbull Energy Center project early. This natural gas plant supplies energy to the PJM region, the largest US grid operator, at a time when the nation’s spending on data centers has recently overtaken office expenditures.

“Our power grid is under increasing strain, rapid growth in AI and data centers, electrification of everything, the need to replace aging power facilities and years of underinvestment in power infrastructure are driving urgent demand for new reliable power generation capacity,” CEO David Watson said on the conference call.

Hyunsoo Rim3h

President Trump extends Strait of Hormuz opening deadline to April 6

President Trump said that he will give Iran another 10 days to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, postponing the strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure that he had threatened last weekend. Markets have been broadly muted on the deadline delay, however, with oil up moderately and stocks slightly in the red in early trading Friday.

Not long after markets closed Thursday, the president posted on Truth Social that he will pause “Energy Plant destruction” for 10 days until Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 p.m. ET, at the request of the Iranian government, adding that talks are “going very well.” Iranian mediators told The Wall Street Journal that they hadn’t requested the delay. Oil prices fell briefly on the news but snapped back within minutes, with Brent crude futures now up 2% to $110 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate crude also up 2% to around $96 a barrel.

Global stock markets are mixed with uncertainty around any actual ceasefire prospects: Japan’s Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s KOSPI both closed around 0.4% lower, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged up 0.4% on Friday. Meanwhile, Europe’s STOXX 600 is down 0.9% this morning, with other major indexes across the region also lower. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures are down 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively, at 7 a.m. ET.

Claire Yubin Oh4h

Unity soars on strong Q1 preliminary results and news it will exit nonstrategic ad business

Unity Software is up around 15% in premarket trading on Friday after the gaming software company announced preliminary results for Q1 2026 that were above analyst guidance, largely driven by its Vector AI ad engine.

Per Unity’s statement released after the bell on Thursday, the company now expects Q1 sales to fall between $505 million and $508 million, above its guidance of $480 million to $490 million and ahead of analyst expectations of $494 million (compiled by FactSet). The company also now forecasts adjusted EBITDA to land between $130 million and $135 million, topping its guidance for $105 million to $110 million and representing a 58% rise from last year.

In the preliminary report, Unity President and CEO Matt Bromberg highlighted Vector, its AI ad tool that matches players with games, delivering “better long term results” for its advertisers as a key driver. The company expects ~$352 million from its Grow segment, which includes Vector.

Unity also announced that it will be exiting its ironSource Ads Network starting April 30, which has waned of late to represent only 11% of total revenue growth in the previous quarter. In addition, Unity has engaged a financial adviser to divest its Supersonic game publishing business, noting that these changes will drive “faster revenue growth, increased Adjusted EBITDA, and higher Adjusted EBITDA margins.”

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