Welcome to Markets Desk, here's what's moving the needle this hour.
Rigetti Computing is making noise in the quantum space after launching its most powerful system to date, the one hundred eight qubit Cepheus processor, and landing one hundred million dollars in federal funding as part of a two billion dollar government quantum initiative. That kind of institutional backing tends to separate speculative momentum from something with longer legs, and investors are paying attention.
Shifting to software, Atlassian has nearly doubled since hitting a low of fifty seven dollars back in April, and the argument for further upside rests on its deeply embedded collaboration tools and a customer base that doesn't churn easily. When a stock recovers that sharply from a trough, the question becomes whether fundamentals justify the move — in Atlassian's case, there's a reasonable case they do.
And in the ongoing tension between Silicon Valley and Washington, a sharp piece out this morning revisits a pointed irony — the same tech elite now lobbying hardest against California's proposed billionaire tax built their fortunes on decades of government contracts, Pentagon research dollars, and publicly funded infrastructure. The debate over who owes what to the public commons is only getting louder.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
