Research Feed: Steve McDowell
Carrier Satellite JV: SpaceX Panic Disguised as a Partnership
The carriers saw it coming and panicked, but even with SpaceX’s massive lead, satellite technology hits a brick wall of pure physics.
Microsoft’s Majorana 2 Topological Quantum Chip
Microsoft unveiled Majorana 2 at its recent Build developer conference in San Francisco, introducing its second-generation topological quantum chip and announcing the general availability of Microsoft Discovery, an agentic AI platform for scientific research and development.
Majorana 2 delivers qubits that are 1,000 times more reliable than those in its predecessor, Majorana 1, with a mean qubit lifetime of 20 seconds and peak instances approaching 1 minute.
Quantinuum’s $1.68 Billion IPO & the Race to Quantum Commercialization
Quantinuum opened trading on the Nasdaq last week (symbol: QNT), raising $1.68 billion in the largest traditional IPO to date for a pure-play quantum computing company.
Priced at $60 per share, above the marketed range of $53 to $55, and oversubscribed by a double-digit multiple before trading began, the debut caps a multi-year run of technical milestones, high-profile partnerships, and deepening enterprise engagement.
Qualcomm’s Dragonwing IQ10 Robotics Reference Design
At the recent Computex 2026, Qualcomm introduced the Dragonwing IQ10 Robotics Reference Design (RRD), the company’s most concrete commitment to the physical AI market to date. The new platform consolidates compute, sensor interfaces, deterministic I/O, networking, and a layered software stack into a single enclosed reference design for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), industrial robotics, and humanoid platforms.
Microsoft: Project Solara & the Agentic Operating Plane for the Non-NVIDIA World
At its recent Build 2026 event, Microsoft introduced Project Solara, a chip-to-cloud platform built specifically for devices whose primary interface is an AI agent. Solara
Cisco’s Full-Stack Play for Agentic Enterprise AI
At Cisco Live 2026 in Las Vegas, Cisco unveiled Cisco Cloud Control, a unified management plane designed for human operators and AI agents to jointly run and defend enterprise infrastructure. The platform anchors Cisco’s AgenticOps operating model, unifying networking, security, compute, observability, and collaboration under a single login and a shared data layer.
Computex 2026: AI Infrastructure, the PC Wars, and the New Connectivity Arms Race
Computex has historically been a client- and consumer-focused event, but those markets now take a back seat to enterprise infrastructure and the components that define an AI factory. The key messages were all AI, all the time.
The keynotes were entirely semiconductor-first, with talks by three chip CEOs: Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm, Lip-Bu Tan of Intel, and Matt Murphy of Marvell. Each painted a slightly different picture about where the AI buildout is headed.
NVIDIA Is Rewiring the Data Center with Light
NVIDIA is actively working to replace electrons with photons across the entire connectivity stack, from co-packaged optics at the switch level to optical fiber cabling throughout the rack and facility.
IBM’s Big Quantum Month: A $10 Billion Bet, a National Fab, and a 2029 Deadline
A version of this post previously appeared in a LinkedIn newsletter IBM revealed that it will invest more than $10 billion in quantum computing over
Ericsson Cradlepoint W2255: Wireless WAN Steps Into the Enterprise
If you’re planning a multi‑year WAN refresh, the W2255 forces its way into the RFP conversation
IBM & Red Hat: Project Lightwell, Protecting Open Source Software
IBM and Red Hat announced Project Lightwell, a $5 billion initiative to establish a trusted enterprise clearinghouse for open-source software security. The project deploys more than 20,000 engineers, augmented by AI, to identify, triage, validate, and remediate vulnerabilities across open-source supply chains at a scale that exceeds what most enterprises can achieve independently.
IBM: Anderon Quantum Foundry and the Industrialization of Quantum Hardware
IBM and the U.S. Department of Commerce announced a Letter of Intent to establish Anderon, a standalone company that will operate the United States’ first pure-play quantum chip foundry.
The initiative has a combined commitment of $2 billion, including $1 billion in proposed CHIPS Act R&D incentives from the Department of Commerce and $1 billion in cash from IBM, supplemented by IBM’s intellectual property, fabrication assets, and an existing skilled workforce.