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Cisco is the latest company to announce a quantum breakthrough. On Tuesday, the company said it has developed a prototype entanglement source chip that has the potential to cut the timeline for practical quantum computing by as much as a decade. The chip was developed in partnership with UC Santa Barbara and is novel in that it generates up to one million entangled photon pairs per second, and does so at room temperature, saving considerable resources. Additionally, Cisco is also announcing the opening of Cisco Quantum Labs, which will be the companys dedicated quantum research hub in Santa Monica, California. The chip itself was developed at Ciscos Outshift incubator, where Viljoy Pandey, senior vice president at Outshift by Cisco, says the company works on projects that are slightly out of the comfort zone. Were a networking company, says Pandey. Were looking at quantum networking and quantum security.” “Our thesis is pretty straightforward: To make [quantum computing] practical, you need to scale it out, he adds. You need a network, and to have a quantum network, you need a quantum entanglement chip. Thats the first building block. In practice, the chip will allow quantum computers to be networked togethersimilar to existing networks for classical computersenabling distributed quantum computing. ‘There’s going to be a ChatGPT moment for quantum’ While other companies are focused on building quantum computers themselves, Cisco is working on the infrastructure to make quantum computing actually workand it’s attempting to get ahead of things by developing the network and security frameworks while large-scale quantum demand is still likely years away. Moreover, while some experts have mused that quantum computing could be as far as 20 years down the road, Pandey says that Ciscos breakthrough likely cuts that timeline by between five and 10 years. [Photo: Cisco] Building the chip took between three and four years, and now Cisco is looking at moving it into production, says Reza Nejabati, head of Quantum Research and Quantum Labs at Outshift by Cisco. Were working toward more commercial fabrication, he says. Theres a whole bunch of hardware and software technology that were bringing up. The quantum proof of concept is happening. As for whats next, Pandey says Cisco will work on software to help build out a quantum network and continue work on a quantum roadmap. Theres going to be a ChatGPT moment for quantum, he says. We need to start putting the fundamental building blocks together to prepare.
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E-Commerce
Shares of Palantir Technologies slumped more than 13% on Tuesday, after quarterly results and a raised forecast failed to meet the high expectations of Wall Street investors, who had driven the stock price up significantly ahead of earnings. The data analytics company’s stock had gained 63% ahead of earnings this year, following a more than fourfold increase last year, fueled by AI-powered growth and government contracts. “We believe we have reached a point where respectable earnings beats and raised guidance aren’t enough to materially move the stock to the upside,” Morningstar analyst Mark Giarelli said. Palantir is set to lose more than $40 billion from its market valuation of $292.06 billion if losses hold. The Denver, Colorado-based company is a significant beneficiary of increased AI-driven demand and strong government contracts, with its AI software solutions being widely used across U.S. commercial sectors such as healthcare, energy, and automotive. Palantir’s total revenue grew 39% in the first quarter to $883.9 million, with U.S government revenue up 45% from a year earlier. Analysts had expected quarterly revenue of $862.8 million, according to data compiled by LSEG. Despite the seasonally light quarter, analysts noted strong demand for Palantir’s solutions, with its U.S. business driving results and securing the “lion’s share” of new customers in the quarter. “Despite recent uncertainty introduced from tariff announcements, Palantir continues to see underlying momentum in the business, landing a record number of $1M deals,” analysts at D.A. Davidson said. The company now expects full-year revenue to be between $3.89 billion and $3.90 billion, up from its earlier forecast of sales between $3.74 billion and $3.76 billion. At least 9 brokerages raised their price target for Palantir after earnings, bringing the PT median to $96.46. Palantir’s 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratio is 202.07, compared with Snowflake’s 131, Salesforce’s 23.48 and Datadog’s 54.81. Harshita Mary Varghese, Reuters
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E-Commerce
When then-former president Donald Trump introduced a line of NFTs in December 2022, he was widely mocked for it. The digital trading cards alternately depicted Trump as a muscle-bound superhero, a cowboy, and an astronautlike some antiquated fever dream of inspirational masculinity. Coming so soon after a stinging midterm election, in which nearly as many Trump-backed candidates in competitive races lost as those who won, it seemed like a desperate, cringy cash grab from a political supernova, mid-explosion. All the ridicule around Trumps stratospheric self-image, however, turned out to be a blip. Crucially, the NFTs sold out in less than 24 hours, raising an estimated $4.4 million, and like seemingly every obstacle in Trumps charmed political career, he incurred no lasting damage from the episode. Now that Trump has resumed his presidency, his White House has apparently internalized this lesson. Its official X account now regularly blasts out similarly cringy portraiture, culminating over the weekend in AI-assisted images of Trump as the next pope and a shredded Sith Lord from Star Wars. Government channels are reaching uncharted levels of embarrassment, having ratcheted up the 4chan factor both to emphasize Trumps world-beating dominance and communicate official policy. And they may just be getting warmed up. Ever since the inauguration in January, the White Houses X account has served up a cosmic gumbo of horn-tooting and antagonistic trolling. Reflecting the presidents relentless command of the attention economy, it often retweets various characters from the Trump Cinematic UniverseJD Vance, Elon Musk, and Kristi Noem, for instancein between provocative posts designed to reach maximum eyeballs. The account codified its house style for the latter early on with an exhibition of mirthful hostility. Viral entries in this genre included an ASMR video about deportations, a Valentines Day card about deportations, and a Studio Ghiblistyle AI rendering of, well, more deportations. Last weekend, however, the account went into overdrive. Beyond the AI rendering of Pope Trump, in the wake of Pope Franciss recent death, and the May the Fourthtimed image of the president wielding a red lightsaber, there were similar posts celebrating the ostensible defunding of PBS and NPR, several posts mocking the groundswell of support for mistakenly imprisoned immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, some celebrating Trumps attacks on DEI, and a 46-hour video entitled Lo-Fi MAGA Video to Relax/Study To, slowly listing Trumps accomplishments next to a cartoon-Trump writing from the Resolute Desk. (The use of the word study in that title suggests which age group this account is tweeting for.) While the tweet depicting Trump as Pope Franciss successor had the furthest reach, with 103 million views, and proved the most contentious, with Catholics responding in an uproar, the Star Wars post might be the most mortifying of the bunch. Why is Trump more yoked than a Wrestlemania contestant, for instance? And why is his lightsaber incorrectly the color of the bad guys in the Star Wars universe? (Or correctly colored, as Luke Skywalker himself joked.) Theres a world of difference between Candidate Trump selling worthless digital trinkets cosplaying various boyhood fantasies, and the White House tweeting such pap from the perch of the presidency. Now that these dispatches come from the communications apparatus of the U.S. government, theyre more than just embarrassing or cringe. Considering that, as some are pointing out online, all White House tweets are preserved in the Library of Congress, these goofy-cruel schoolyard taunts will now have a permanent echo in American history. Coming right on the heels of the Bidens administrations blissfully boring institutional tone, the Trump 2 White Houses X account is giving rocket-ship-level whiplash. Social channels during Bidens term were so comparatively tame, it was kind of a big, boundary-pushing deal in 2022 when some of Bidens staffers and a Democratic Senator posted Dark Brandon memes, depicting Biden as a supernatural mastermind equipped with fiery eye-lasers. It was an even bigger deal when Biden himself posted the meme in a playful tweet following last years Super Bowl. What is happening on the official White House X account these days, however, would seem like an escalation even if it came straight after Trumps first term. Between 2017 and 2020, the presidents Twitter account was a constant source of brazen, combative, and often inflammatory posts, while the official accounts generally maintained a more traditional posture. With sanitized summaries of all the unfurling chaos, the official White House account acted as a normalizing Zamboni, cleaning up after Trumps headline-generating posts, to preserve the thin veneer of politics as usual. Now, the administrations official communications channels are in sync with Trumps belligerent, reality-defiant brand, but with the juvenile posting sensibility of X owner Musk to boot. Any given day on X might find the White Houses account framing Trumps personal beliefs as those of the U.S. governmentand woe betide those who share any opposing views. This unified front suggests a deep erosion within the U.S. government of any remaining distance between Trump and Not Trump. Its a show of supremacy so clear, one couldnt even miss it from a galaxy far, far away. It seems to be gaining a following, too. On Monday morning, Semafor released a report that the White Houses X account had< href="https://www.semafor.com/newsletter/05/04/2025/semafor-media-never-go-back"> garnered two billion impressions in Trumps first 100 days. For an administration that so clearly thrives on generating attention of any kind, it seems like a big win. The billions of impressions the White Houses Trump-y posts keep racking up only underscores how all of this will look in posterity, though. Theres a good reason the Library of Congress has no wood engravings of a buff Abe Lincoln freeing Americas slaves with a turbo-musketand its not because AI didnt exist back then.
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E-Commerce
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