markets

Claire Yubin Oh

5h

IONQ rises after signing agreement with Department of Energy to advance the development and deployment of quantum tech in space

IonQ shares are 6% higher in pre-market trading on Thursday after the quantum computing company signed a memorandum of understanding with the US Department of Energy “to advance the development and deployment of quantum technologies in space.”

Per the “understanding”, IonQ will design and execute an orbital demonstration of quantum-secure communications using its satellite platform, as well as explore other quantum applications in space.

“This Collaboration is about turning possibility into practice and learning by doing,” said Rima Kasia Oueid, DOE Senior Commercialization Executive and lead architect of the Quantum-in-Space Collaboration. “By bringing in new partners, we are accelerating commercialization, demonstrating applications like secure quantum communications, advanced quantum PNT, and quantum sensing, and expanding America’s role in the space economy."

Alongside IonQ, the DoE announced new partnerships with Honeywell and the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga as part of its Quantum-In-Space initiative, an effort to push US leadership in space-based quantum technologies. Other stocks in the sector, such as Rigettiand D-Wave Quantum are also rising more modestly this morning, with the latter building on yesterday’s 18% gain, which came as part of a wave of bullish options bets.

Separately, yesterday, IonQ announced plans to acquire quantum sensor company Vector Atomic in an all-stock deal worth approximately $400 million, which Needham analysts said could help support IonQ secure government contracts and projects in the future.

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1h

Analyst spotlights oil refiners’ outperformance

Major US oil refiners like Valero, Marathon Petroleum, and Phillips 66 are outperforming more than 90% of the S&P 500 this year, as a surge in global supply from OPEC+ — essentially a price-setting alliance between OPEC and Russia — has put refiners in the catbird seat when it comes to price negotiations with producers.

“We continue to assess that refiners will set the price of crude and refiners will win in a wide range of scenarios for crude, making refiners the best vehicle for long petroleum exposure,” wrote Colin Fenton, head of commodities research at 22V Research.

Crack spreads, a measure of profit margins at refiners, have risen nearly 50% so far this year.

Olive Garden parent company Darden dips after serving up a Q1 earnings miss

The restaurant giant saw strong comps, but is facing higher costs and more price-conscious consumers.

Olive Garden Italian Kitchen. Olive Garden is a division of Darden Restaurants.

markets

2h

CrowdStrike pops as Wall Street boosts price targets following analyst event to talk AI strategy, revenue outlook

Cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike is climbing on Thursday after the company gave a beefy revenue outlook. Its shares are up more than 9% in early morning trading on Thursday.

CFO Burt Podbere said the company expects its fiscal year 2027 net new annual recurring revenues to grow more than 20%, an increase that would put the figure well past analyst estimates.

Assuming Wall Street’s consensus for the company’s net new ARR in fiscal 2026 ($940.3 million) is met, the company is essentially guiding for $1.13 billion in net new ARR for fiscal ’27. Wall Street was expecting $1.05 billion.

In its most recent earnings report, CrowdStrike’s total annual recurring revenue surged 20% to $4.66 billion.

Wall Street moved quickly to adjust for the bullish forecast. Deutsche Bank, Jefferies, Morgan Stanley, Capital One, and Truist, among others, all boosted their price target for the company.

markets

2h

Rigetti Computing jumps on $5.8 million contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory to advance quantum networking

Shares of Rigetti Computing are rallying in premarket trading after the company announced that it won a three-year, $5.8 million contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) “to advance superconducting quantum networking.”

The quantum computing company plans to collaborate with Dutch startup QphoX on this endeavor.

“This project aims to deliver systems providing entanglement between superconducting qubits and optical photons, the essential building block of quantum networking,” per Rigetti’s press release.

This less than $6 million contract has seen Rigetti’s market cap swell by about $250 million.

“We are very pleased that AFRL is supporting this technology, which is important for the US to maintain its global leadership in quantum information science,” Dr. Subodh Kulkarni, CEO of Rigetti, said.

As gate-model quantum computers have not yet demonstrated much aptitude for commercial applications, governments and research organizations are key ways these companies make money.

Peer IonQ is also continuing its romp higher on news that it signed a memorandum of understanding with the US Department of Energy “to advance the development and deployment of quantum technologies in space.”

markets

4h

Intel spikes on Nvidia’s plan to invest $5 billion as part of a partnership to develop data center and PC products

Shares of Intel are mooning as the chipmaker has successfully hitched its wagon to the biggest star in the semiconductor space: Nvidia.

In a joint press release, the two companies announced “a collaboration to jointly develop multiple generations of custom data center and PC products that accelerate applications and workloads across hyperscale, enterprise and consumer markets” that will also see Nvidia purchase $5 billion in Intel stock at a price of $23.28.

“We appreciate the confidence Jensen and the NVIDIA team have placed in us with their investment and look forward to the work ahead as we innovate for customers and grow our business,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said.

Shares of Intel were up as much as 34% in premarket trading, which, if sustained, would be the biggest one-day gain for the stock ever, surpassing the 26.4% gain on October 29, 1987.

“The chip landscape remains NVDA’s world with everybody else paying rent as more sovereigns and enterprises wait in line for the most advanced chips in the world,” said Dan Ives, senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities. “Today’s announcement further strengthens the US lead in the AI Arms Race against China as Intel now goes from a laggard to a catalyst.”

This deal, which is subject to regulatory approval, would make the chip designer one of Intel’s largest shareholders, behind only index fund providers BlackRock and Vanguard, and also the US government.

Intel and Nvidia plan to codesign two products:

Custom-made CPUs for data centers that Nvidia would integrate into its AI infrastructure platforms, and
System-on-chips for PCs that integrate Nvidia’s RTX GPUs for better performance.

“This historic collaboration tightly couples NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing stack with Intel’s CPUs and the vast x86 ecosystem — a fusion of two world-class platforms,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said. “Together, we will expand our ecosystems and lay the foundation for the next era of computing.”

Advanced Micro Devices sank on this news, as the hits seemingly come on both sides: the PC-chip partnership threatens to see Intel reclaim market share from AMD in that space, while the deepening of Nvidia’s data center offerings may also further entrench its dominance in that market to AMD’s detriment.

“For Intel, the deal provides a lifeline for its struggling AI GPU efforts and a potential lift in AI PC share,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Kunjan Sobhani and Oscar Hernandez Tejada wrote. “For Nvidia, it secures a path to remain central in AI compute regardless of whether x86, Arm or custom CPUs dominate, by embedding NVLink and CUDA deeper into the ecosystem.”

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