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Quantum stocks rip as IonQ discloses new contracts, hits benchmark milestones

It’s also World Quantum Day.

It’s World Quantum Day, so why wouldn’t quantum stocks be ripping?

Shares of IonQ and its quantum computing peers surged Tuesday as IonQ disclosed new contracts and a new set of benchmarks, investors poured back into retail traders’ favorite stocks, and the mood in the markets was decidedly risk-on. IonQ was up over 20% at points in midday trading, with today marking its best day since February 26, when it jumped 21.7%.

D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Quantum Computing also rose sharply. All of them are still down by more than 50% from their peaks in October.

IonQ CEO Niccolo de Masi said in a CNBC appearance that the company made four recent announcements that are boosting the stock:

“First one was an increase of our partnership with Air Force Research Lab — meaningful contract win. Second one was an increase in our partnership with the University of Maryland — meaningful contract win. Third one was of course the DARPA contract.”

And the fourth, he said, was the company’s new benchmark results.

“We released our benchmarks, which is really probably the most important thing for the sector, around the cost dissolution and time dissolution using our quantum computers, which we believe lead the industry on both metrics considerably.”

Of course, he also acknowledged, “Our stock’s up partially because of World Quantum Day.”

Jon Keegan2h

Report: US Treasury wants to get a look at Anthropic’s Mythos model

Anthropic’s relationship with the US government is complicated – and the Treasury Department is reportedly looking to make it even more so.

The Pentagon has officially deemed the startup a national security supply chain risk after it refused to allow its Claude AI to be used for any and all national security applications including domestic surveillance and autonomous killing.

But since Anthropic’s unusual announcement of its next model Mythos, other parts of the US government want to get their hands on it.

Bloomberg reports that the US Treasury is interested in getting access to Mythos for its own security testing. Last week Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent summoned top Wall Street CEOs to Washington to discuss the cybersecurity implications of the new model.

Mythos has not yet been released to the public, as Anthropic has deemed its potential offensive cybersecurity capabilities to be too dangerous for wide release, and has opted to only share the powerful new model with a group of leading tech companies.

Anthropic wants these early-access partners to test out the model, hoping to secure any major vulnerabilities before a public release. OpenAI also shared a forthcoming AI-powered cybersecurity tool with a select group of partners to shore up defenses in light of advances in detecting vulnerabilities.

European regulators were apparently left out of the loop from the Mythos announcement, and are also eager to test the new model.

US Treasury Seeking Access to Anthropic’s Mythos to Find Flaws

But since Anthropic’s unusual announcement of its next model Mythos, other parts of the US government want to get their hands on it.

European regulators were apparently left out of the loop from the Mythos announcement, and are also eager to test the new model.

Rani Molla5h

Report: SpaceX’s satellite internet business is propping up its rocket and AI businesses

Ahead of SpaceX’s highly anticipated IPO in June, new reporting from The Information reveals just how dependent the rocket and AI company is on its internet business.

According to the report, in 2025, Starlink generated $11.4 billion in revenue and $7.2 billion in adjusted EBITDA — a striking 63% margin — making it SpaceX’s only meaningful source of profit.

By contrast, the company’s core rocket launch business and its recently acquired AI unit, xAI, lagged far behind financially. The space launch business generated $4.1 billion in revenue and about $700 million in adjusted EBITDA, while the AI segment brought in $3.2 billion in revenue but lost roughly $1.2 billion on an EBITDA basis.

In other words, Starlink accounted for most of SpaceX’s revenue — and more than all of its adjusted profit.

Starlink’s profitability is already attracting rivals. Amazon on Tuesday agreed to acquire satellite company Globalstar in an effort to more directly compete with Starlink.

Jon Keegan

23h

Stanford AI report: Model capability accelerating, China has closed the gap with the US

Stanford’s annual AI Index Report says “leading models are now nearly indistinguishable” from each other, and benchmarks used to evaluate them are falling behind their accelerating capabilities.

Rani Molla4/13/26

Meta will surpass Google in ad revenue this year, new industry data shows

In a world supported by digital ad dollars, Meta may soon be king. The Instagram owner’s net digital ad revenues are expected to hit $243.5 billion in 2026, surpassing Google’s projected $239.5 billion, according to new data from eMarketer.

The shift is happening as Big Tech companies, including Meta and Google, are increasing their spending on AI in hopes that AI will grow their top and bottom lines.

On the company’s last earnings call, Meta CFO Susan Li credited AI with driving performance gains, and said that growth will continue: “We expect the set of investments we’re making in 2026 will enable us to drive further gains as we continue to integrate AI across all layers of the marketing and customer engagement funnel.”

“In surpassing Google, Meta has essentially had many of its core strategies validated,” said Max Willens, principal analyst at eMarketer. “Meta has long understood that scale, network effects, and habits are more important than anything else in digital media. It has carefully built and defended the advantages it has in all three areas.”

JAPAN-FOOD-DRINK-SCIENCE-REASEARCH-MSG-AJINOMOTO

What does delicious Asian food seasoning have to do with a potential bottleneck for AI chips?

Japanese food flavoring company Ajinomoto, which commercialized MSG, also makes a key component in AI chips. It’s having trouble scaling to meet demand.

Jon Keegan4/13/26