By Mackenzie Tatananni

Artificial intelligence stocks are in the spotlight following President Trump's announcement of an AI infrastructure initiative, but another sector also stands to benefit as the technology spreads.

Shares of companies such as the chip maker Nvidia, the poster child of the AI revolution, gained Tuesday and Wednesday as President Trump unveiled Project Stargate, a $500 billion initiative to fund the construction of AI infrastructure in the U.S.

The project will be funded by private-sector contributions. OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank are expected to invest billions into the initiative over the next four years.

That wasn't the only positive development for AI. In the first hours of his presidency, Trump rescinded Executive Order 14110, a Biden-era mandate that required AI developers to share safety-test results with the government.

While Trump hasn't alluded to any plans for quantum computing, it is clear that he is embracing AI, and the two technologies are often seen as synergistic.

Quantum computing stocks popped on Tuesday, maintaining most of their gains in Wednesday trading. Rigetti Computing closed up 42% on Tuesday, while D-Wave Quantum rose 19% and Quantum Computing, and IonQ both gained about 17%.

D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz, for one, anticipates that quantum will drive further developments in AI.

"As AI adoption increases, computational demands and energy costs will continue to rise," Baratz told Barron's earlier this month. "We believe quantum computing is emerging as an essential tool for addressing these challenges."

Established tech companies are also on the hunt for ways to fuse the technologies. Google's Quantum AI team is tasked with creating "a reliable quantum computer that can expand human knowledge for the benefit of all people."

On Wednesday, Quantinuum, a privately held quantum-computing company, published a blog post titled "Quantum Computers Will Make AI Better."

The company described large language models like ChatGPT as "computational behemoths" and claimed quantum "offers a more sustainable, efficient, and high-performance solution -- one that will fundamentally reshape AI."

"While it is still very early days, we have good indications that running AI on quantum hardware will be more energy efficient," the company wrote.

Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com

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January 22, 2025 15:39 ET (20:39 GMT)

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