Inside a secretive set of buildings in Santa Barbara, California, scientists at Alphabet are working on one of the company’s most ambitious bets yet. They’re attempting to develop the world’s most advanced quantum computers.
“In the future, quantum and AI, they could really complement each other back and forth,” said Julian Kelly, director of hardware at Google Quantum AI.
Google has been viewed by many as late to the generative AI boom, because OpenAI broke into the mainstream first with ChatGPT in late 2022.
Late last year, Google made clear that it wouldn’t be caught on the backfoot again. The company unveiled a breakthrough quantum computing chip called Willow, which it says can solve a benchmark problem unimaginably faster than what’s possible with a classical computer, and demonstrated that adding more quantum bits to the chip reduced errors exponentially.
“That’s a milestone for the field,” said John Preskill, director of the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter. “We’ve been wanting to see that for quite a while.”
Willow may now give Google a chance to take the lead in the next technological era. It also could be a way to turn research into a commercial opportunity, especially as AI hits a data wall. Leading AI models are running out of high-quality data to train on after already scraping much of the data on the internet.
“One of the potential applications that you can think of for a quantum computer is generating new and novel data,” said Kelly.
He uses the example of AlphaFold, an AI model developed by Google DeepMind that helps scientists study protein structures. Its creators won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
“[AlphaFold] trains on data that’s informed by quantum mechanics, but that’s actually not that common,” said Kelly. “So a thing that a quantum computer could do is generate data that AI could then be trained on in order to give it a little more information about how quantum mechanics works.”
Kelly has said that he believes Google is only about five years away from a breakout, practical application that can only be solved on a quantum computer. But for Google to win the next big platform shift, it would have to turn a breakthrough into a business.
Signage at eBay headquarters in San Jose, California, U.S.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares of eBay popped 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after the online marketplace posted stronger-than-expected results for the second quarter, and offered an upbeat forecast for the current period.
Here’s how the company did in the second quarter compared to analyst estimates compiled by LSEG.
Earnings per share: $1.37 adjusted vs. $1.30 expected
Revenue: $2.73 billion vs. $2.64 billion expected
GMV, or the dollar value of items sold, grew 6% year over year to $19.5 billion. That topped analysts’ projected $18.9 billion, per StreetAccount estimates.
For the third quarter, eBay said revenue will land between $2.69 billion and $2.74 billion, above Wall Street expectations for $2.66 billion. The company also guided for adjusted earnings per share of $1.29 to $1.34. Analysts anticipated $1.31 per share.
EBay said third-quarter GMV would be in the range of $19.2 billion and $19.6 billion, which was higher than consensus estimates of $18.8 billion.
GMV guidance “contemplates potential disruptions from impending tariffs and the potential elimination of remaining de minimis exemptions,” eBay said.
Earlier on Wednesday, President Donald Trumpsigned an executive order ending the loophole for low-value packages shipped from all countries, effective Aug. 29. The provision enabled shipments valued below $800 to enter the U.S. duty free.
EBay CEO Jamie Iannone said in an interview following the earnings report that the company is “well suited” to navigate any further uncertainty generated by Trump’s tariff policies or changes to de minimis.
“When we look at what happened, for example, when de minimis was eliminated in China, it did have a deceleration in direct shipments, but a lot of the sellers started making their products available to buyers in other countries like the U.K. and Germany,” Iannone said.
He added that the company “forward deployed” about 75% of its inventory from China into the U.S. before the changes to de minimis policies.
“We feel comfortable with the guidance that we put out there,” Iannone said.
EBay faces robust competition from online retail rivals Amazon, Walmart and Etsy, along with upstarts like low-cost e-commerce platforms Temu and Shein. To keep buyers and sellers returning to its site, the company has embraced “enthusiast” shoppers and “focus categories,” such as collectible sneakers and trading cards, used luxury goods and auto parts.
The company in May named Peggy Alford, a former PayPal executive, as its new CFO, succeeding Steve Priest. EBay also announced a broader leadership restructuring that involved bringing its technology teams closer together, Iannone said.
The company has also implemented more artificial intelligence tools to help consumers find products on its site, including a shopping agent, which launched earlier this year.
“We’re already seeing really tangible benefits from generative AI on our P&L, and we think we’re only scratching the surface in terms of how to leverage our data,” Iannone said.
As of Wednesday’s close, eBay shares were up 25% for the year, while the Nasdaq has gained about 9%.
Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, appears at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco on May 9, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Figma, the developer of design software that was supposed to get acquired by Adobe, priced its IPO on Wednesday at $33 per share, above its expected range.
The company’s stock will debut on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “FIG” on Thursday. The offering raised $1.2 billion, with most of the proceeds going to existing stockholders.
Figma is aiming to take advantage of a public market that has slowly reopened for tech IPOs. Stablecoin issuer Circle and artificial intelligence infrastructure provider CoreWeave have soared since their debuts earlier this year, while other companies including online banking firm Chime, and health-tech companies Hinge Health and Omada Health have also made it to market.
The offering values Figma at $19.3 billion. The company had agreed to be acquired by Adobe for $20 billion, but that deal fell apart in 2023 following objections from regulators. Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion termination fee.
On Monday, Figma said its expected price range was $30 to $32 per share.
Figma was founded in 2012 by CEO Dylan Field and Evan Wallace. The company is based in San Francisco, with offices in France, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the U.K.
Figma said in its updated prospectus that revenue for the quarter ended June rose to between $247 million and $250 million from $177.2 million a year earlier, representing growth of 40% at the middle of the range. As far as profits, the expected range for the quarter goes from an operating loss of up to $500,000 to an operating profit of $2.5 million, Figma said. That compared to a loss of $894.3 million a year earlier, due mostly to costs related to stock-based compensation.
For the March quarter, revenue rose 46% to $228.2 million, and net income tripled to $44.9 million.
Field is the company’s biggest investor, with 56.6 million shares ahead of the offering, along with voting control over another 26.7 million shares. Index Ventures is the leading institutional stakeholder, with 65.9 million shares, or 17 % of shares outstanding before the IPO. Greylock is second at 16%, followed by Kleiner Perkins at 14% and Sequoia Capital at 8.7%.
All of the top investors are selling a portion of their stake in the IPO.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella speaks in front of the OpenAI logo at the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle, Washington, on May 19, 2025.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
The $4 trillion club has a second member, at least based on after-hours trading.
Following a better-than-expected earnings report on Wednesday, Microsoft shares jumped 8%, lifting the software giant’s market cap to about $4.1 trillion. Should the rally stick on Thursday, Microsoft would join chipmaker Nvidia, which hit $4 trillion for the first time earlier this month.
Microsoft reported 18% revenue growth, its fastest rate of expansion in over three years, driven by its Azure cloud computing business. Microsoft disclosed Azure revenue in dollars for the first time, and said sales from Azure and other cloud services exceeded $75 billion in fiscal 2025, up 34% from the prior year.
As of the close on Wednesday, Microsoft shares were up 22% for the year, topping the S&P 500’s 8% gain. Microsoft hit a record close of $513.71 on July 25. The stock is above $553 in extended trading.
Nvidia and Microsoft, two of the biggest beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence boom, have zoomed past Apple on the market cap leaderboard. Apple is third at about $3.2 trillion, with its stock having fallen 17% this year as investors worry that the iPhone maker is getting left behind in AI. Apple reports quarterly results after the bell on Thursday.
Among tech’s megacaps, Nvidia has been the best performer in 2025, up 33%. The chipmaker’s graphics processing units (GPUs) are the backbone of the large language models being developed by Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Meta and others, and they’re filling up data centers being built by those same companies.
Nvidia is scheduled to report results in late August.