Quantum computing stocks surge after Trump signed executive orders backing the sector

While the broader market slumped Tuesday, with investor jitters on AI and tech pushing the tech-heavy Nasdaq down 2.2% and the S&P 500 down more than 1.4%, quantum computing companies saw their shares surge as of market close Tuesday. Quantinuum, formed in 2021 through a merger of Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum, led the pack, with its shares up more than 13% at market close. Another two pure-play quantum companies, Infleqtion and D-Wave, saw their shares close up 12% and 2%, respectively. Meanwhile, IBM, which operates the largest fleet of high-powered quantum systems, gained by 5%. JPMorgan analyst Brian Essex also upgraded IBM to overweight from neutral, partly because of its potential to benefit from increased interest in AI and quantum computing, helping boost the stock Tuesday. Joined at the White House by leaders of quantum computing-linked companies on Monday, Trump signed two orders that impose hard deadlines for both creating a “scientifically relevant” quantum computer and for government agencies to adopt post-quantum cryptography for sensitive data. Quantum computing, Trump said at the White House Monday, is of “enormous significance for our country’s economic growth, scientific research, and cyber security.” The orders gave a jolt to a sector that has long promised transformational breakthroughs but has struggled at times to convince investors that a commercial payoff is near. While classical supercomputers use binary code (1s and 0s) to run calculations sequentially, quantum computers rely on qubits, tiny units that can represent both 1 and 0 simultaneously through a property called superposition. Quantum computers can run calculations in parallel, making them exponentially faster for certain problems.