Microsoft on Wednesday announced Majorana 1, its first quantum computing chip. 

The achievement comes after the company has spent nearly two decades of research in the field. 

Technologists believe quantum computers could one day efficiently solve problems that would be taxing if not impossible for classical computers. Today’s computers use bits that can be either on or off while quantum computers employ quantum bits, or qubits, that can operate in both states simultaneously.

Google and IBM have also developed quantum processors, as have smaller companies IonQ and Rigetti Computing. Microsoft’s quantum chip employs eight topological qubits using indium arsenide, which is a semiconductor, and aluminum, which is a superconductor. A new paper in the journal Nature describes the chip in detail.

Microsoft won’t be allowing clients to use its Majorana 1 chip through the company’s Azure public cloud, as it plans to do with its custom artificial intelligence chip, Maia 100. Instead, Majorana 1 is a step toward a goal of a million qubits on a chip, following extensive physics research.

Rather than rely on Taiwan Semiconductor or another company for fabrication, Microsoft is manufacturing the components of Majorana 1 itself in the U.S. That’s possible because the work is unfolding at a small scale.

“We want to get to a few hundred qubits before we start talking about commercial reliability,” Jason Zander, a Microsoft executive vice president, told CNBC.

In the meantime, the company will engage with national laboratories and universities on research using Majorana 1. 

Despite the focus on research, investors are fascinated by quantum.

IonQ shares went up 237% in 2024, and Rigetti gained nearly 1,500%. The two generated a combined $14.8 million in third-quarter revenue. Further gains came in January, after Microsoft issued a blog post declaring that 2025 is “the year to become quantum-ready.”

Microsoft’s Azure Quantum cloud service, which lets developers experiment with programs and algorithms, offers access to chips from IonQ and Rigetti. It’s possible that a Microsoft quantum chip might become available through Azure before 2030, Zander said.

“There’s a lot of speculation that we’re decades off from this,” he said. “We believe it’s more like years.”

Rather than exist as a stand-alone category, quantum computing might end up boosting other parts of Microsoft. For example, there’s Microsoft’s AI business, which has an annualized revenue run rate that exceeds $13 billion. Quantum computers could be used to build data used to train AI models, Zander said. 

“Now you can ask it to invent some new molecule, invent some new drug, something that really would have been impossible to do before,” Zander said.

Walmart would likely see some impact from tariffs President Donald Trump is seeking to impose, especially if ones threatened against Canada and Mexico are implemented, the retailer said Thursday.

The big-box giant reported quarterly earnings and also signaled slowing profit growth. Its shares fell about 6% amid a broader market decline Thursday morning.

In an interview with CNBC, Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said that while some two-thirds of Walmart’s products are sourced from the U.S., the company was “not going to be completely immune” from trade duties.

“We’ve lived in a tariff environment for the last seven or eight years, and we’ll do what we know how to do,” he said. “We’ll work with suppliers. We’ll lean into our private brand. We’ll shift supply where necessary to try to take advantage of lower costs that we can then pass on to consumers.”

Since Walmart is not sure if the tariffs will take effect next month, the company did not factor them into its guidance, Rainey said.

While a given company must pay a tariff up front if it imports a good from an affected country, the firm is ultimately forced to decide how to mitigate on those costs — and they often get passed down to shoppers.

Rainey previously told CNBC that there would likely be cases where prices for consumers would increase as a result of tariffs, adding that they are ‘inflationary’ for customers.

U.S. companies are seeing mounting queries about how they would be impacted by the levies Trump has called for. So far, only a supplemental 10% duty on Chinese goods has gone into effect, though the president has threatened a vast new array of tariffs depending on a given country’s current trade posture with the U.S. Steel and aluminum tariffs are set to kick in next month, while Trump this week called for new tariffs on automobiles, drugs, semiconductors and lumber imported to the U.S.

CNBC has found the word ‘tariffs’ has come up on more than 190 calls held by S&P 500 companies in 2025, putting it on track to see the highest share in half a decade. However, many, like Walmart, stated they were not yet figuring the effect of them into their official forward guidance and outlooks.

“We’ve game-planned out several scenarios and steps we could take depending on what actually goes into effect,” R. Scott Herren, the chief financial officer at the tech group Cisco, said in recent comments.

This week, the Federal Reserve indicated that discussion of tariffs had come up during its policy meetings, and had gone into its calculation for keeping interest rates elevated.

‘Business contacts in a number of Districts had indicated that firms would attempt to pass on to consumers higher input costs arising from potential tariffs,’ the central bank reported — something that could threaten to accelerate inflation.

And in its “upside risks to the inflation outlook,’ it cited ‘the possible effects of potential changes in trade and immigration policy.“

JetBlue Airways is talking with “multiple airlines” about a potential new partnership after federal judges struck down two previous deals, the carrier’s president said Wednesday.

“If we find a deal that’s accretive, we’ll absolutely do it,” JetBlue’s president, Marty St. George, said at a Barclays industry conference.

A federal judge in 2023 ruled the New York airline’s partnership in the Northeast with American Airlines was anticompetitive, while a different judge last year blocked JetBlue’s plan to acquire budget carrier Spirit Airlines, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year.

JetBlue representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

JetBlue, which marked its 25th year of flying this month, has been searching for partnerships and deals to grow, contending it must do so to better compete with larger carriers like Delta, American and United.

St. George said a potential tie-up would benefit the company’s loyalty program, noting that customers say the frequent flyer points on JetBlue are not as strong as those of the big three U.S. carriers.

“Given that we really don’t have full global earn and burn, I think to be able to add that to our network would be very, very helpful,” he said.

Walmart is known for its low prices and no frills approach.

So it may come as a surprise that wealthier shoppers are helping to fuel the retailer’s growth.

For more than two years, the discounter has noticed more customers with six-figure incomes shopping on its website and in its stores. Households earning more than $100,000 made up 75% of the company’s market share gains in the fiscal third quarter, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on the company’s earnings call in November.

Those newer and more frequent customers have helped support the company’s aspirations to sell more higher-margin items, such as clothing and home goods. They are driving Walmart’s e-commerce sales, which have grown by double digits for 10 consecutive quarters. And they can boost the retailer’s newer revenue streams, such as subscription-based membership program Walmart+ and its advertising business Walmart Connect.

As Walmart reports its latest earnings on Thursday, Wall Street will be watching whether those upper-income customers are sticking around, after market share gains helped the retailer’s shares soar about 83% in the last year. Yet some investors have questioned whether Walmart’s traction with affluent shoppers has staying power, especially if the sticker shock of inflation cools.

In an interview with CNBC, Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner acknowledged that the retailer has gained and then lost upper-income customers before, such as in 2008 and 2009 during the Great Recession. Affluent shoppers stretched their dollars at the big-box retailer, but then ultimately returned to competitors.

This time, Furner said the gains will last because Walmart can save shoppers both time and money with e-commerce options.

“It’s different because we deliver to you at the curb [of the store],” he said in the late January interview. “We deliver to your house. We deliver your refrigerator. That whole Supercenter, which is an amazing retail format, is available in an hour or two for a large part of the country and growing really quickly.

Walmart’s expanding digital services have helped convince higher-income shoppers to give it a shot, said Brad Thomas, a retail analyst and managing director at KeyBanc Capital Markets. Some of those newer or more frequent customers have joined Walmart+, a subscription-based membership program that includes perks like free home deliveries. Walmart+, which launched about five years ago, is Walmart’s answer to Amazon Prime.

Walmart has not disclosed the program’s membership count, but it has reported double-digit membership income growth in each of the past four quarters..

Thomas said e-commerce options wipe out a potential hurdle for affluent shoppers: a potential stigma about shopping at the big-box stores themselves.

“There’s a customer in America that doesn’t think of itself as a Walmart shopper,” he said. “They think of themselves as a Target shopper or a Publix or a Whole Foods shopper and through the app and through the delivery capabilities, they can remain a non-Walmart core shopper, but get all the benefits of getting the branded items at Walmart prices.”

As inflation forced shoppers of all incomes to hunt for deals, some wealthier consumers realized they can get the same national brands like Tide detergent or Bounty paper towels from Walmart cheaper and often faster than at Amazon because of Walmart’s nearby stores, he said.

Walmart’s website and app have increased their selection, too, as the company has bulked up its third-party marketplace. Starting this summer, the company began offering premium beauty brands through its website, including hairdryers from T3 and perfumes from Victoria’s Secret.

Shoppers can now find handbags from Chanel and Louis Vuitton, too. Last month, Walmart announced a deal with resale platform Rebag, which sells the items through Walmart’s marketplace.

Yet as Walmart tries to keep those customers, it wants to encourage them to shop in person, as well. Walmart has stepped up investments in its stores to freshen its look and counter negative perceptions that higher-income shoppers might have.

Walmart has sped up the pace of remodels for its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., with plans to revamp about 650 locations per year, an acceleration from a prior cadence of 450 to 500 per year, said Hunter Hart, senior vice president of Walmart Realty.

Remodeled stores have brighter lighting, wider aisles and mannequins, said Alvis Washington, Walmart’s vice president of retail brand experience. The stores also feature Walmart’s newer and more fashion-forward brands like Scoop and Free Assembly, and national brands that shoppers would recognize, such as Reebok.

The discounter launched a new grocery brand, BetterGoods, last year with colorful packaging and creative flavors that looks similar to merchandise that shoppers might find at Trader Joe’s or Target.

The Walmart U.S. CEO Furner said some of those changes have drawn upper-income customers to the company’s stores and app.

He said Walmart’s market share gains with affluent shoppers have come from online and in-store shopping, but added curbside pickup orders showed early signs of popularity with those customers. Even before the pandemic, Walmart saw that people who shopped with curbside pickup bought more higher-priced items, such as prime beef and seafood, Furner added.

He said that still rings true: Walmart sees more premium items in the shopping baskets of customers who buy online, get home deliveries or use curbside pickup.

Washington said Walmart treaded carefully with its store redesign, realizing it could risk its reputation for low prices and resonance with core customers, who typically have lower incomes. It promoted newer brands, but mixed in familiar staples, such as folded piles of inexpensive bath towels and denim.

“Having a great, elevated experience and great value aren’t mutually exclusive,” Walmart’s Washington said, recounting the company’s approach. “So when we looked at this, it’s like, how do we do both and make sure we can gain new customers and maintain the customers that we have?

When comparing remodeled stores to the rest of the fleet, Washington said higher comparable store sales reflect that customers like the different look. Walmart declined to provide specific numbers, saying it won’t release sales numbers until it reports fourth-quarter earnings.

Walmart’s customer mix for its U.S. e-commerce business hasn’t changed, even as it attracts higher-income shoppers, according to an analysis by market research firm Euromonitor. About 34% of Walmart’s online customers in the U.S. last year had incomes of $100,000 and above, which is roughly flat compared to two years prior.

Michelle Evans, global lead for retail and digital shopper insights at Euromonitor, said that indicates that Walmart is also gaining market share from lower- and middle-income customers.

Walmart still has a smaller share of higher-income shoppers than some key rivals: 49% and 48% of online U.S. shoppers at Target and Amazon, respectively, have incomes above $100,000.

Amazon remains a formidable competitor, especially when it comes to wealthier shoppers and general merchandise categories, Evans said. But Walmart’s biggest edge is its grocery department.

One of Walmart’s newer, higher-income shoppers is Francesca Frink. The 30-year-old lives in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, Ill. with her husband, Sam, 1-year-old son and their English setter. The Frink family’s combined annual household income is over $200,000.

Last fall, Francesca Frink signed up for Walmart+ after her mother-in-law ordered a stroller from Walmart’s website and got it dropped at her door three hours later.

Initially, she said she hesitated to order fresh foods from Walmart. She bought packaged items like pasta and flour. Yet over time, the couple began ordering a larger portion of groceries, dog treats and even clothes for their son from Walmart.

The Frinks have stopped going to their old grocery store, Kroger-owned supermarket Mariano’s. They estimate that their weekly grocery bill is about 20% cheaper.

Previously, the couple said they avoided Walmart because their nearest store is outdated. Yet Sam Frink said the game has changed with curbside pickup and home deliveries.

“You don’t have to go in,” he said. “That’s the biggest thing.”

Francesca Frink said home deliveries from Walmart, included in their Walmart+ membership, save the couple time while they juggle two careers, a toddler and a dog. Plus, she said she found that Walmart had the grocery items she wanted and even those she didn’t expect, including organic blueberries, natural peanut butter and specialty mushroom ravioli.

Still, Francesca Frink said she still faces some apprehension from friends and family about buying groceries from Walmart.

But she said they’ve been surprised when they’ve tried and liked food items from Walmart.

In her day job, Euromonitor’s Evans tracked Walmart’s digital gains with higher-income shoppers. Yet she also saw it firsthand in her household.

Her husband signed the family up for Walmart+. During the holiday season, he told her all of his Christmas purchases would be coming from the discounter.

“He made a comment that all the gifts were coming from Walmart, and obviously that comes with a certain impression,” she said.

So she was surprised when she opened his gift and discovered it was a Michael Kors tote.

In an attempt to court younger audiences, Disney’s ESPN is planning to add some user-generated content to its yet-to-be-named flagship streaming service, which will debut later this year.

While the details are still unclear, ESPN will allow subscribers to post their own content at some point in the application’s evolution, according to people familiar with the matter. The technology likely won’t be available at launch, which the company hopes will occur before the National Football League season begins in September. An ESPN spokesperson declined to comment.

Disney executives have also considered adding user-generated content to Disney+ and discuss YouTube’s influence on streaming on a near daily basis, CNBC reported last year.

Alphabet’s YouTube, which leans heavily on creator-led content, is the most popular streaming service with an 11.1% share of total TV usage in the U.S., according to Nielsen.

ESPN executives are targeting a price of either $25 per month or $30 per month for the ESPN streaming service, which will include all of ESPN’s linear programming plus other digital add-ons, the people said.

The company plans to announce a name for the service, a price and a launch date in the coming months, the people said.

Media and professional sports league executives are focusing on how to capture the attention of younger viewers that are opting to watch YouTube or TikTok over live games. ESPN spends tens of billions of dollars each year on the media rights for live sports.

Airbus could prioritize deliveries to its non-U.S. customers if tariffs disrupt the European plane maker’s imports stateside, CEO Guillaume Faury said Thursday.

“We have a large demand from the rest of the world, so [if] we face very significant difficulties to deliver to the U.S., we can also adapt by bringing forward deliveries to other customers which are very eager to get planes,” Faury told CNBC’s Charlotte Reed, in an interview discussing the company’s full-year results.

“Those tariffs are looming, and we don’t know what they will be, [and], if and when we would have tariffs come in, what they would impact. So we stand ready to adapt accordingly,” Faury said, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging tariff threats which have already been ramped up against China.

Faury nevertheless stressed that Airbus had made moves in recent years to not only buy more from the U.S. and sell a significant number of aircraft and helicopters in the U.S., but also to base part of its production locally.

That includes a large output site in Mobile, Alabama, with two final assembly lines for the company’s A220 and A320 family jets, with another U.S. line under construction to build A320 and A321s for the domestic market.

A host of large U.S. carriers are Airbus customers, including American Airlines, Delta, United and JetBlue.

“So we have a lot of potential flexibilities,” Faury said regarding the potential imposition of duties, whose details remain uncertain.

“Bottom lime, we believe in this industry — that is very much a North Atlantic ecosystem with a lot of interdependencies — tariffs would hurt both sides. So I hope, I believe, we will not be significantly impacted by tariffs,” Faury said.

The European plane maker’s target for around 820 aircraft deliveries in 2025 was issued “in spite of those uncertainties, to clarify what we think we can deliver this year absent tariffs,” Faury said.

Airbus, meanwhile, remains stymied by a host of supply chain issues which are limiting its ability to ramp up production and work through its order backlog of more than 8,000 jets, Faury told CNBC.

His comments come after the company earlier on Thursday reported a 6% rise in annual revenue, but an 8% fall in adjusted operating profit to 5.35 billion euros ($5.59 billion) across 2024.

Profit at the company’s defense and space unit swung to a loss of 656 million euros for the full year.

Faury told CNBC that space was the “area where we are suffering,” amid competition from players such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and past investment in technologies that had proven difficult.

“We underestimated the risk compared to the reality,” Faury said, adding that the company was restructuring the unit and working to solve existing issues.

Despite challenges, Airbus’s annual results served to highlight its strength over its crisis-hit U.S. rival Boeing, which reported an annual loss of $11.83 billion for 2024.