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U.S. government backs quantum firms with funding and equity stakes. (0:14) Walmart issues cautious guidance as higher gas prices pressure consumers. (1:10) OpenAI could launch history’s biggest IPO, raising $60B. (1:59)

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast:

Our top story so far, the U.S. government is stepping directly into the quantum race, committing billions in incentives — and taking equity stakes in the companies it’s backing.

The Department of Commerce signed nine letters of intent to provide more than $2B in funding under the CHIPS and Science Act.

IBM (IBM) said it signed a letter of intent to launch Anderson, a standalone quantum chip manufacturing company that would operate what it described as America’s first pure-play quantum foundry.

Separately, GlobalFoundries (GFS) said it received a letter of intent for $375M to accelerate the build-out of its new quantum unit, Quantum Technology Solutions.

In addition to funding, the government will take minority, non-controlling stakes in seven quantum computing firms:

Atom Computing — $100M

Diraq — up to $38M

D-Wave (QBTS) — $100M

Infleqtion — $100M

PsiQuantum — $100M

Quantinuum — $100M

Rigetti (RGTI) — up to $100M

IBM, D-Wave, Rigetti, GlobalFoundries and Infleqtion are all rallying.

Among active stocks, Walmart (WMT) is under pressure after it issued cautious guidance amid the high-gas-price environment.

For Q2, Walmart forecast EPS of $0.70 to $0.74, below the $0.75 consensus. The full year was also shy, with a range of $2.75 to $2.85 vs. expectations for $2.92.

Ralph Lauren (RL) is jumping after the apparel giant posted a stronger-than-expected Q4 earnings report and issued strong guidance.

CEO Patrice Louvet note a “healthy quality of sales” with balanced contributions across lifestyle categories, geographies and channels.

And Equity Residential (NYSE: EQR) and AvalonBay Communities (NYSE: AVB) agreed to combine in an all-stock merger of equals. The combination would creating a major U.S. rental housing company with about $52B in equity market value, $69B in enterprise value and more than 180,000 apartment units.

And in other news of note, OpenAI (OPENAI) could pull off the biggest IPO ever, according to Deutsche Bank.

The maker of ChatGPT could reportedly file its prospectus as soon as Friday.

Analyst Adrian Cox wrote that OpenAI may seek to raise roughly $60B at a valuation exceeding $1T. If completed, the offering would surpass Saudi Aramco’s 2019 IPO, which raised $25.6B.

OpenAI was valued at about $852B following a March funding round and is reportedly generating $30B in annualized revenue, though it remains unprofitable. A $1T valuation would make OpenAI the world’s 14th-largest company by market cap — ahead of Eli Lilly (LLY) and just behind Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B).

And speaking of IPOs, SpaceX's (SPCX) self-assessed total addressable market of $28.5T would, if realized, approach the entire output of the U.S. economy.

In its S-1 filed yesterday, the company said it has "identified the largest actionable total addressable market in human history," largely driven by AI software and the smallest contribution from actual space operations.

The $28.5T forecast – which excludes China and Russia – compares with U.S. Q1 2026 nominal GDP of nearly $32T, with the estimate for the market of AI enterprise applications of $22.7T about 70% of total U.S. economic output.

The market could grow even more next year if, as Wedbush predicts, SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA) merge into one company in 2027.