Wall Street Lunch: Honeywell Takes Quantum Leap As Nvidia Invests $600M (undefined:NVDA)

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Nvidia’s VC unit is investing in Honeywell’s Quantinuum. (0:15) SoFi launching AI agent ETF. (2:15) Job cuts this year already exceed 2024’s total. (3:07)

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast:

Our top story so far, Nvidia’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) venture capital unit is investing in Honeywell’s (NASDAQ:HON) Quantinuum quantum computing unit for the first time.

The investment is part of a $600 million funding round that values the unit at $10 billion. The new funding will help boost Quantinuum’s advancement of quantum computing at scale and go towards the launch of Helios, Quantinuum’s next-gen quantum computing system.

Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur said: “We have complete confidence in Quantinuum’s ability to continue to lead the quantum revolution and create long-term value for its investors and customers.”

Other quantum computing stocks, such as IonQ (IONQ), Rigetti Computing (RGTI), Arqit Quantum (ARQQ), Quantum Computing (QUBT) and D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) are higher on the back of the news.

In addition, IonQ announced results of a collaborative research program between the company, AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN), Amazon Web Services (AMZN) and Nvidia to develop and show a quantum-accelerated computational chemistry workflow.

The demonstration focused on a critical step in a Suzuki-Miyaura reaction — a class of chemical transformations used for the synthesis of small molecule drugs. The team achieved more than 20 times improvement in end-to-end time-to-solution compared to previous benchmarks.

And AI dominated active stocks, following weaker-than-expected guidance from Salesforce (CRM), Wall Street analysts said that the prospect and hope of artificial intelligence has not helped the company turn a corner. Yet.

Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne said: “While we did not see this quarter as the ‘unlock’ for the bull case, at these levels, we believe stabilization in 2H (constant currency) subs revenue is ‘good enough’ to start shifting sentiment in a more positive direction. That said, seeing is believing and while we believe the risk/reward continues to skew to the upside if thinking out 3 to 4 months, shares are likely in a holding pattern until Dreamforce in mid-Oct.”

C3.ai (AI) is slumping following shaky quarterly results, as it pulled guidance and its founder stepped away from his CEO duties.

KeyBank analyst Eric Heath said, “We significantly lower our revenue estimates for FY26/FY27 … and project large FCF losses through FY28.”

Also in the AI space, SoFi Technologies (SOFI) re-entered the exchange-traded fund market with its first launch since 2023, rolling out the SoFi Agentic AI ETF (AGIQ).

AGIQ follows the BITA US Agentic AI Select Index, which tracks U.S.-listed companies engaged in self-driving transportation, AI assistants, cybersecurity, autonomous industrial machinery and enabling technologies such as semiconductors and cloud computing.

And Apple (AAPL) is said to be developing an artificial intelligence-driven web search feature called World Knowledge Answers. It’s expected to launch in spring 2026 as part of a major Siri overhaul, intensifying its competition with OpenAI and Perplexity AI.

Bloomberg says the company has also discussed eventually adding the technology to its Safari web browser and Spotlight, which is used to search from the iPhone home screen.

Looking to the economy, jobs data came in on the soft side ahead of Friday’s payrolls report. Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported a 39% jump in layoffs in August. Total job cuts in 2025 have already exceeded all of 2024 and sit at the highest year-to-date total since 2020.

But services sector activity saw an unexpectedly strong rebound last month. The ISM Non-Manufacturing Index rose to 52 in August from 50.1 in July, exceeding the 50.9 consensus.

Wells Fargo economists say the move was driven by a jump in new orders and “in less uncertain times, jumps in orders are associated with increased demand. Today, it’s likely a better reflection of the temporary pull-forward effects around tariffs.”

And in other news of note, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is believed to be seeking to replace — for the second time — members of a key CDC panel that makes recommendations on vaccines.

The potential move comes just two weeks before a key meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is set to meet on Sept. 18 and 19.

Inside Medicine reported that seven new members of the panel have been selected, though they have yet to be formally appointed. The outlet noted that several of the potential new members have spoken out against mRNA vaccines and for ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment.