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2025-10-14 12:15:00| Fast Company

Shares in Americas Quantum Four quantum computing companies surged again yesterday. D-Wave, IonQ, Quantum Computing, and Rigetti all saw their stock prices jump by double-digit percentages.  But why? The Quantum Fours big stock price gains had nothing to do with radical new quantum computing breakthroughs. Instead, investors can thank banking giant JPMorganChase for the gains. Heres what you need to know. Why did quantum computing shares surge yesterday? Yesterday, Americas four most prominent quantum computing companies saw their stock prices surge by double-digit percentages. But the genesis behind these soaring share prices wasn’t directly related to news about the companies. Instead, the upward movement in the Quantum Fours share prices was largely due to financial giant JPMorganChase. On Monday, the investment bank announced a Security and Resiliency Initiative to invest in industries critical to Americas national economic security interests. This initiative will see JPMorganChase invest $1.5 trillion in select industries over the next 10 years. And the first wave of this fundingto the tune of up to $10 billionhas already been decided upon. The banking giant announced it will invest the 11-figure sum via direct equity and venture capital investments in companies operating across four key areas, which include: Supply Chain and Advanced Manufacturing Defense and Aerospace Energy Independence and Resilience Frontier and Strategic Technologies For quantum computing investors, its that last areafrontier and strategic technologiesthat matters. Included in that grouping are companies in the AI, cybersecurity, and quantum computing space. It has become painfully clear that the United States has allowed itself to become too reliant on unreliable sources of critical minerals, products, and manufacturingall of which are essential for our national security, JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon said in a press release announcing the initiative.  He added, This new initiative includes efforts like ensuring reliable access to life-saving medicines and critical minerals, defending our nation, building energy systems to meet AI-driven demand, and advancing technologies like semiconductors and data centers. Our support of clients in these industries remains unwavering. However, it is worth noting that Dimon did not specify which quantum computing companies would receive investments from the bank. In an accompanying chart, the bank merely said that strengthening capabilities in quantum computing and other areas, including AI and cybersecurity, could directly translate into higher GDP and create military, intelligence, biotech, and cyber resilience benefits. Yet despite not name-dropping any of the Quantum Four, their stocks surged. Quantum stocks soared by double digits In the United States, there are four prominent publicly traded quantum computing companies: D-Wave, IonQ, Quantum Computing, and Rigetti. All four companies saw their stock soar yesterday after JPMorganChases announcement. D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS): up 23% to $40.62 IonQ (NYSE: IONQ): up 16% to $82.09 Quantum Computing (Nasdaq: QUBT): up 12% to $21.46 Rigetti Computing (Nasdaq: RGTI): up 25% to $54.91 In addition to Americas Quantum Four, shares in the United Kingdoms Arqit Quantum (Nasdaq: ARQQ) also jumped 20% to close at $58.27. Despite Mondays price surges, all Quantum Four stocks and the U.K.s Arqit are currently down in premarket trading on Tuesday morning, as of the time of this writing. The drops arent large: QBTS is down less than 3%, IONQ and QUBT are down around 4%, RGTI is down just over 3%, and ARQQ is down just under 3%.  These modest declines suggest that some investors are engaging in profit-taking after yesterday’s share price surge. Still, many quantum investors are likely buoyed by the notion that one of Americas biggest investment firms thinks quantum computing will be critical to national security in the years ahead. If that conjecture is correct, companies operating in those spaces have a lot to gain. Shares in the Quantum Four have had a great year While the real-world benefits of quantum computing, which uses the properties of quantum mechanics to solve computational problems that classical computers couldnt hope to, are likely still years away, the companies operating in the nascent space have seen tremendous returns over the past year. When it comes to the Quantum Four, all have had incredible returns both year-to-date (YTD) and over the past twelve months (12/m), as of yesterdays stock market close: D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS): up 383% YTD, up 4,087% (12/m) IonQ (NYSE: IONQ): up 96% YTD, up 670% (12/m) Quantum Computing (Nasdaq: QUBT): up 29% YTD, up 3,001% (12/m) Rigetti Computing (Nasdaq: RGTI): up 259% YTD, up 6,629% (12/m) These are gains that many investors are hoping will continue well into the future.


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2025-10-14 11:41:00| Fast Company

Headaches continued for U.S. travelers over the weekend as a combination of bad weather and impacts from the ongoing government shutdown ensnarled many would-be fliers. Flight delays and cancellations piled up over the three-day holiday period, with flight-tracking service FlightAware showing nearly 30,000 delays in, within, and out of U.S. airports from Sunday of last week through Monday. Here’s the latest on the situation at U.S. airports and what travelers need to know: How bad have flight delays been? Delays and cancellations at many airports have grown progressively worse since the U.S. government shut down on October 1. With no end in sight to the political impasse in Washington that brought us here, the shutdown will enter its third week tomorrow. FlightAware data shows there were 7,928 delays in, within, and out of U.S. airports yesterday, along with 592 cancellations. Saturday and Sunday were roughly the same, with 5,007 delays and 114 cancellations on Saturday and 7,981 delays and 271 cancellations on Sunday. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Airlines for America, a trade group representing U.S. airlines, had warned before the weekend that shutdown-related shortages in air traffic controllers could create travel headaches at a number of airports, although the group insisted that flying remains safe, as CNN reported. Bad weather, including a nor’easter that made its way up the East Coast, contributed to the chaos, causing delays at Northeast airports including New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Will delays continue this week? As of early Tuesday morning, FlightAware data showed significantly fewer delays and cancellations so far, but the numbers were significantly rising by the hour. As of 9 a.m. ET, the site reported 771 delays and 42 cancellations, up from roughly 499 and 26 an hour earlier. Only time will tell what the future has in store. Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill remain deadlocked over key sticking points. Most crucially, Democrats want to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that are set to expire this year. According to estimates from KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation), the loss of the credits would lead to significantly higher healthcare premiums for millions of Americans. This story is developing…


Category: E-Commerce

 

2025-10-14 11:00:00| Fast Company

Data centers have become the starting blocks in the global race for AI supremacy. Tech giants like Meta, Alphabet, and OpenAI have committed hundreds of billions of dollars collectively to building more of them. States are offering incentives for their development, and President Donald Trump signed an executive order in July cutting regulations to speed up construction. For all the breakthroughs they promise, the environmental toll of these facilities is already staggering: According to the International Energy Agency, U.S. data centers used roughly 185 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024more than all of Pakistans 248 million people used that year. To keep hot servers cool, a typical 100-megawatt hyper-scale data center consumes as much water per day as 6,500 homes. And, as with the factories and railroads that powered previous technological revolutions, the impact on surrounding communities can be especially profound. This premium story, accompanied by original photography commissioned by Fast Company, documents: Why one of Metas data center neighbors says, “I haven’t drank my water in years.”  The number of homes that could be powered with the electricity consumed by one Meta data center How much the area’s light pollution has increased since 2020 What the ongoing data center boom is doing to electricity prices in states like Georgia What does the cloud look like? For Beverly Morris, its hulking, windowless buildings, bright lights, and literal clouds of dust.  The Stanton Springs Industrial Park in Newton County, Georgia, is home to one of Metas largest data centers, a sprawling 2.5 million-square-foot complex. [Photo: Peter Essick] In 2020, two years after Beverly and husband Jeff Morris bought their home in Mansfield, Georgia, construction crews began clearing the way for what would turn out to be one of Metas largest data centers, a sprawling, 2.5 million-square-foot complexlarger than the states largest shopping malljust 1,000 feet from their front door.  With no official notice to Morris from Meta or surrounding Newton County representatives, the oak forest across her dirt road was felled; eventually, a white glow from a row of perimeter spotlights flooded their home nightly. Nature was run out of there completely, Morris says.  By 2022, during busy construction days, thick plumes of red dust would storm across their property. After a particularly bad onslaught, Morris called the phone number she found on a construction sign; a crew soon showed up with power washers to hose down her house.  There was a red river running off of my roof, she says. It was such a spectacle that one of the workers insisted on capturing it on his phone. She now wishes shed obtained the video. Everything was covered in red. The massive Meta data center was built just 1,000 feet from the Mansfield, Georgia, home of Beverly and Jeff Morris. [Photo: Peter Essick] The new factories The cloud has never been a very helpful description of the global infrastructure of the internet, but as the global race for AI supremacy ramps up, a new, more apt metaphor has emerged.  I think everybody should stop saying data centers, interior secretary Doug Burgum told a conference in D.C., where in July, Trump signed an executive order cutting regulations to speed up data center construction. Burgum cited the term used by the CEO of Nvidia: It’s not data centers. It’s AI factories. But these giant warehouses arent factories in the traditional sense. Even the most compute-intensive data centers employ few full-time workers. Most of the work in a data center is done by automated systems and software that manage the infrastructure, while the core computation of training and inference is powered by energy-hungry chips, often made by Nvidia.  In the first half of 2025, spending on data centersincluding big investments from Meta, Alphabet, OpenAI, Amazon, and xAI contributed as much to U.S. GDP growth as household consumer spendingan unprecedented economic shift.  But tremendous cash isnt the only cost, and tech companies arent the only ones shouldering the burden.  In Mansfield, Morris says the impact of all the digging and blasting to build Metas data center, known as Stanton Springs, eventually extended to her well water. By 2023, the pipes in her house were clogged with sediment, wrecking appliances and slowing faucets to a drip. I havent drank my water in years, says Morris, who estimates shes spent about $5,000 on repairs so far. She said a July appraisal found that her propertys value had cratered.  The Meta data center creates a dome of artificial light visible from miles away. [Photo: Peter Essick] The extent to which the construction of the data center contributed remains unclear. A Meta spokeswoman told The New York Times that the company had recently commissioned a well study on the Morrises property and said it was unlikely that its data center affected the supply of groundwater in the area. Though the studya copy of which was reviewed by Fast Companyassessed the impact of the facility’s construction and operations on local groundwater and nearby wells, Morris says “Neither Meta nor anyone else came on my property to do a groundwater study. Meta declined repeated requests for comment on this story. It has changed the way that I live here, she says. And they really accept no responsibility for it. And they’re big enough to do that. How AIs power needs affect everyone Tax breaks and relatively cheap power have turned the Atlanta area into the countrys fastest-growing hyper-scale data center market. Demand is so high that the Peach State has delayed closing several coal-fired power plants.  Only a few years ago, Big Tech touted bold carbon targets. Now Bob Sherrier, a staff attorney in the Southern Environmental Law Centers Georgia office, says the data center blitz will deepen our reliance on dirty, volatilely priced methane gas and coal for decades. (Stanton Springs consumed 968,000 megawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, according to Metas most recent numbers, enough to power about 90,000 average homes.)  Nationally, Morgan Stanley estimates that forecasted data center demand will require an additional 45 gigawatts, or about 10% of all current U.S. generation capacityequivalent to 23 Hoover Dams. The data center build-out also means that all the cheap power thats drawn developers to states like Georgia isnt actually that cheap: Nationally, the cost of building out new transmission lines and substations to power the AI push is contributing to surging electricity rates for customers across the country. In Georgia, our rates have gone up six times, Morris says. A late evening thunderstorm passes over the Meta data center in Social Circle, Georgia. [Photo: Peter Essick] Power is only part of the equation: Keeping chips cool means withdrawing and consuming immense amounts of water, and developers prioritize places that are hot and dry, where power tends to be cheaper, meaning most data centers are being built in areas with high water stress.  According to the local water authority, the Stanton Springs facility guzzles about 10% of Newton Countys daily water supply. In Newton County, demand is rising so fast that residents could face a water deficit by 2030, according to a 2024 report.  Growing AIs footprintand impact Some of the worlds biggest projects are emerging in neighboring Louisiana. In Memphis, a supercomputer for Elon Musks xAI has been relying on dozens of unpermitted temporary gas turbines, exacerbating health issues in the surrounding community. In Richland Parish, a plan to build 2 gigawatts worth of gas turbines for a Meta data center project was recently approved by planning authorities, despite local objections that the process was rushed and lacked transparency. But the scale of the project is no secret: Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook.  Not to be outdone, OpenAI and Oracle are building an 800-acre data center in Texas that will form part of the Stargate project, a partnership with the Trump administration to create a nationwide backbone for training ever-larger AI models. Backed by a $100 billion investment from Nvidia (much of it to be spent on its own chips), the five-data-center project could demand upwards of 10 gigawattsabout as much energy as consumed by all of New York City. Morris, who grew up in Georgia, misses the fireflies that used to surround her house, which glowed until the data center showed up.  Even with the spotlights switched off, the facility, now operational, still creates a dome of light visible from miles away. (The areas Bortle score, a measure of light pollution, shows a 25% increase in artificial brightness since 2020.)  The sounds of construction have been replaced by a constant electric hum, periodic alarms, and the intermittent buzz of diesel generators.  Morris admits to feeling powerless, but has found some comfort onlineeven on Facebookconnecting with others across the state who are pushing back against new data center development. I know Im not the only one now, she says. And shes right. Last month, the city council for the nearby city of Social Circle unanimously enacted a 90-day moratorium on new data centers.   A version of this story appears in the latest issue of Fast Company magazine.


Category: E-Commerce

 

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