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Claire Yubin Oh

IonQ rises after company releases two technical papers that demonstrate 99.99% two-qubit gate performance

IonQ is up in early trading on Tuesday after the quantum computing company shared two technical papers that demonstrate 99.99% two-qubit gate performance.

According to IonQ’s press release, this marks a new “quantum computing world record” for a two-qubit system, topping the previous world record of 99.97% set last year by Oxford Ionics, which IonQ acquired earlier this year. Though 99.99% and 99.97% sound very similar, the former represents an error rate of 1 in 10,000 operations; the latter represents an error rate of 3 in 10,000 operations.

The company says it is the first and only quantum computing company to cross the “four-nines” benchmark, per the release, putting IonQ on track to scale up toward millions of qubits by 2030.

The “two-qubit gate fidelity,” or the error rate of quantum computers’ two-qubit operations, is an important yardstick to measure the performance of a quantum computer. When accuracy improves, the technology’s window for commercial operations widens — a welcome development in the nascent industry, which has been fueled by increased US government interest and speculative trading as much as it has been by technical breakthroughs this year.

In July, peer Rigetti Computing announced that its two-qubit fidelity was 99.5%, catalyzing its largest one-day gain since January. The two companies both operate gate-based models, but with different approaches: Rigetti uses superconducting circuits, while IonQ, as its name implies, uses trapped ions.

In CEO Niccolo de Masi’s words:

“This level of quantum performance has been the industry’s north star for decades and crossing it brings fault-tolerant quantum systems years closer to mass market adoption. For our global customers, it means unlocking more value from quantum computing sooner, while dramatically lowering the cost and complexity of large-scale systems.”

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Luke Kawa

Nvidia’s favorite stocks are getting shellacked as AI credit risk spreads

Nvidia’s “House of GPUs” is looking a little wobbly.

Shares of Applied Digital, CoreWeave, and Nebius — three of the four biggest equity positions held by the chip designer as of September 30 — are getting crushed on Monday.

Nvidia owned about $3.6 billion worth of these data center and neocloud stocks (with the overwhelming majority in CoreWeave) per its most recent 13F filing.

The AI credit risk that’s been most talked about in reference to Oracle’s widening credit default swaps spreads is also present in some of these firms, as well.

An Applied Digital bond due in 2030 is trading below $96 for the first time this month. That issuance was made to support data centers where CoreWeave will be the main tenant.

CoreWeave, which earlier this year received warrants enabling it to purchase a large chunk of Applied Digital shares as part of a data center leasing deal, sank last week after announcing a $2 billion convertible note offering that was later upsized.

Of course, it’s not just Nvidia-owned stocks, but the entire data center ecosystem that’s under pressure on Monday. Cipher Mining and IREN are also getting walloped — with Monday’s crypto tumble also likely weighing on these two bitcoin miners turned data center companies.

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Matt Phillips

GE Vernova up, as Evercore ISI initiates shares with “outperform”

Analysts at Evercore ISI began coverage of AI energy play GE Vernova with an “outperform” rating and a price target of $860 on Monday, citing a number of reasons to be bullish about the maker of turbines used for power generation. Evercore’s price target implies gains of roughly 27% for the shares.

Analysts at the shop write of GE Vernova:

1) Growth is strong and well supported by backlog in both Power and Electrification… with visibility into the 2030s. Despite headwinds from a shrinking Wind business, we see 12% CAGR 2026-28E, the strongest growth ex-Siemens Energy in our coverage.

2) Margin is expanding with operating leverage, pricing & productivity in both Power & Electrification. Full ownership of Prolec should drive another step up in estimate revisions upon closing (mid-2026). The equipment dynamics (pricing, margin expansion) should repeat in the service business 2030+.

3) Shareholder returns are very well supported, with EBITDA margins rising from 7% in 2024 to 21% in 2028 and FCF of >$5bn pa on average – recent buyback upgrade to $10bn (vs. $6bn prior) and dividend increase amplify an already attractive growth algorithm.

There are some risks to the rally for the shares, which have more than doubled this year. For instance, the company’s struggling wind power division could weigh on results. Also, the high valuations on the stock — its forward price-to-earnings ratio is roughly 55x — make it vulnerable to rapidly shifting investor vibes toward AI, analysts say.

“Investment sentiment is tied up in the AI/Data centre cycle, so any suggestion of delays or diminished energy demand would weigh on the stock as investors would fear over-capacity,” they noted.

markets
Luke Kawa

Nvidia gains after launching new suite of open models

Nvidia extended gains in early trading after announcing an updated edition of its open models, the Nemotron 3.

This family of models comes in three “sizes” — Nano (available today), Super, and Ultra (both expected to be launched in the first half of next year). These sizes reflect the different parameters of each model, which govern the complexity of a given request it can handle.

The company highlighted the flexibility benefits of these models, saying they can be integrated with their proprietary counterparts to produce cost savings.

“As multi-agent AI systems expand, developers are increasingly relying on proprietary models for state-of-the-art reasoning while using more efficient and customizable open models to drive down costs,” per the press release. “Routing tasks between frontier-level models and Nemotron in a single workflow gives agents the most intelligence while optimizing tokenomics.”

This strong start of the week helps reverse a substantial run of underperformance for Nvidia versus its peers. It’s the only member of the VanEck Semiconductor ETF that’s declined since the S&P 500 closed at an intermediate bottom on November 20.

Last week, the chip designer closed at its lowest level versus this fund of 2025, falling below the trough seen in the wake of the DeepSeek freak-out, where nearly $600 billion in market cap was obliterated in a single session.

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Luke Kawa

Opendoor jumps after announcing Coinbase Canada CEO Lucas Matheson will be its next president

Opendoor is surging this morning after announcing that Lucas Matheson, CEO of Coinbase Canada, will be its next president.

Management changes have been a key catalyst for Opendoor Technologies as the online real estate company looks to reverse its fortunes. Shares booked a record one-day gain of nearly 80% on September 11, following its announcement that cofounders Keith Rabois and Eric Wu were rejoining the company to serve on its board of directors and that Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian would serve as CEO. Matheson worked at Shopify from 2016 to 2021, with his tenure overlapping with Nejatian’s for two years.

Per the press release, Matheson will “oversee Corporate Development, Financial Planning & Analysis, and emerging strategic initiatives, including the Company’s exploration of how blockchain technology and tokenization might create new pathways to homeownership.”

Traders have enthusiastically greeted previous rumors and reports that Opendoor would pursue real estate tokenization, as this would seem to de-risk the inventory of homes it holds on its balance sheet by enhancing the liquidity for those assets, freeing up the company to go after even higher volumes.

In addition, Opendoor also said that Christy Schwartz would be its permanent CFO, after she was appointed to that position on an interim basis in September.

“We looked everywhere,” Nejatian said in the press release. “We talked to CFOs from nearly every sector. And we realized the person with the deepest command of our business, the trust of every team, and the bias for action we need was already here.”

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Luke Kawa

ServiceNow tumbles on report that it’s nearing a deal to buy cybersecurity startup Armis for up to $7 billion

ServiceNow is deep in the red in premarket trading Monday after Bloomberg reported that the software company is in “advanced talks” to buy cybersecurity firm Armis for up to $7 billion, citing people familiar with the situation.

In early November, a pre-IPO funding round valued Armis at $6.1 billion. The firm touts United Airlines, Mondelez, “3 of 5 largest retailers in the US, 3 out of 5 largest banks and many more” as customers, and said in August that it had surpassed $300 million in annual recurring revenue.

A stake in Armis is a hot commodity. CEO Yevgeny Dibrov told Bloomberg in September that it was weighing six to seven offers from investors — one of whom was reported to be private equity firm Thoma Bravo — that were looking to take a position in the firm.

“ServiceNow’s possible acquisition of Armis, as reported by Bloomberg News, would help its IT asset management practice, which complements its much larger IT service management business,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Anurag Rana and Andrew Girard wrote. “Though ServiceNow isn’t a pure-play cybersecurity vendor, Armis could help provide bundled services amid rising threats, especially with increased use of LLMs.” However, they also noted that “the reported deal price of $7 billion to gain $300 million in annualized recurring revenue seems expensive.”

Along with this news, KeyBanc analyst Jackson Ader also downgraded shares of ServiceNow to “underweight” from “sector weight,” with a price target of $775, warning that the software company is facing stiff competition from Microsoft’s Agent 365.

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