Trump Trade: Quantum computing firms to be awarded $2B by U.S.

Catch up on the top industries and stocks that were impacted, or were predicted to be impacted, by the comments, actions and policies of President Donald Trump with this daily recap compiled by The Fly.

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QUANTUM COMPUTING: The Trump administration is awarding $2B in grants to nine quantum-computing companies, including U.S. government equity stakes, The Wall Street Journal’s Amrith Ramkumar and Heather Somerville report. IBM (IBM) will receive $1B of the package, with GlobalFoundries (GFS) getting $375M, to boost the nascent quantum-computing industry, according to the report. D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), Rigetti Computing (RGTI), and Infleqtion (INFQ) are also expected to be awarded funds. Under the terms of the deals, which still need to be finalized, the government will receive a minority equity stake in each quantum company.

CLIMATE SUPER POLLUTANTS: President Trump will announce Thursday that his administration is easing restrictions on the potent planet-warming chemicals used in air-conditioners and refrigerators — restrictions put in place because of a bipartisan law Trump signed during his first term in office, The New York Times’ Lisa Friedman reports. The move would slow plans to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, synthetic substances sometimes referred to as “super pollutants” because of their enormous effect in driving climate change, the author notes. Shares of Chemours (CC) traded down following the news.

ENRICHED URANIUM: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has issued a directive that the country’s near-weapons-grade uranium should not be sent abroad, two senior Iranian sources told Reuters. The hardening of Tehran’s stance on one of the main U.S. demands at peace talks could further frustrate U.S. President Donald Trump and complicate talks on ending the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, the report said.

U.S.-CHINA TENSIONS: Nvidia (NVDA) has become caught between escalating U.S.-China technology tensions after President Donald Trump approved limited sales of its advanced H200 AI chips to China, only for Beijing to discourage domestic companies from buying them in favor of homegrown alternatives from firms like Huawei and Cambricon, underscoring China’s push for technological self-reliance and the deepening geopolitical divide over AI infrastructure, The New York Times’ Meaghan Tobin and Tripp Mickle report.

Q1 STOCK TRADES: President Donald Trump’s spate of Q1 stock trades, which total at least $220M, including corporations that he targeted and criticized publicly, including Netflix (NFLX), JPMorgan (JPM), and Disney (DIS), The Independent’s Josh Marcus reports. Trump, whose trades in such companies were valued at around $9M, demanded in February that Netflix fire board member and former Obama administration official Susan Rice, and has long targeted Disney, with administration regulators carrying out a review of the media giant’s broadcast licenses over alleged diversity concerns, the author notes. Additionally, he sued JPMorgan in January, alleging he had been wrongly “debanked” in the wake of his supporters storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The president purchased at least $250,000 in Netflix stock days before the Susan Rice comments, made up to $6M worth of trades in Disney shares in early 2026, and made 11 transactions in JPMorgan’s stock during the period, the author says.

MODEL REVIEW PLANS: The White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director held a briefing earlier this week or companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Reflection AI over a planned executive order on artificial intelligence that would empower government agencies to review advanced large language models before they are officially released, The Information’s Leo Schwartz and Stephanie Palazzolo report, citing people familiar with the matter. President Trump may sign the order, which aims to establish a voluntary framework for developers of Frontier models to tell the government ahead of time about new AI launches, as soon as Thursday, the authors say. Representatives of cloud providers, semiconductor firms, cybersecurity companies, and banks also were present at the briefing, the authors note. Publicly traded companies in the cybersecurity space include Check Point (CHKP), CrowdStrike (CRWD), CyberArk (CYBR), F5 (FFIV), Fortinet (FTNT), Gen Digital (GEN), Okta (OKTA), Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and Qualys (QLYS). Publicly traded companies in the semiconductor space include AMD (AMD), Intel (INTC), Marvell (MRVL), Microchip (MCHP), Micron (MU), Nvidia (NVDA), Qualcomm (QCOM) and Texas Instruments (TXN).