WHAT’S INSIDE

👇️ Todays’ Feature: Welcome To The Quantum Finance Age

• Tech News: Private Credit Boom, Stargate, DMA, Musk v OpenAI, Grok, MS

• Company Watch: Oracle, Lithium Americas, CoreWeave, Databricks, Stripe

• Buzzy Tools: Latest Buzzy tech, AI and financial tools

• Deep Tech: The latest in deep tech, biotech, futurism and more

• Space Tech: Latest news in the space race and aerospace tech

• Crypto: Blockchain and crypto policy and startups or protocols to watch

TECH IN THE NEWS

Private Credit Boom — Blackstone and Apollo are rapidly selling bonds backed by private credit loans, dominating the $1.7T market as firms securitize loans to smaller companies, fueling unprecedented growth in collateralized loan obligations.

OpenAI Stargate Surge — OpenAI expands its Stargate project with Oracle and SoftBank, adding five data centers to boost capacity to 7GW, enough for 5M homes. This move strengthens its AI race position but raises energy concerns.

Google/Apple vs. DMA — Google criticizes the EU's Digital Markets Act, citing a 30% drop in direct bookings for tourism firms and stifled innovation. Apple also cites it for delaying features and security risks, arguing it clashes with its privacy standards.

Musk vs OpenAI Showdown — Elon Musk's xAI sues OpenAI for allegedly stealing trade secrets by hiring ex-xAI employees. OpenAI calls the claims harassment. This legal tussle underscores the fierce competition in the AI sector.

Bargain Bots — xAI lands a deal to supply AI chatbot Grok to the U.S. federal government for just 42 cents over 18 months, outpricing OpenAI and Anthropic. The deal includes xAI engineering support and a $200 million Pentagon contract.

Microsoft Swayed — Microsoft has cut off cloud services to Israel's Ministry of Defense after discovering its use for storing surveillance data on Palestinian phone calls. Follows employee protests and highlights scrutiny on tech surveillance.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ACORNS

Build wealth while you sleep

Acorns started a decade ago with a simple yet novel idea: automatically round-up every purchase you make, and invest the difference. Their philosophy has always been predicated on compounding as the key to growing wealth—true, and tested.

Now, they’re steadily compounding over $6 billion for everyday Americans. Acorns’ pre-built portfolios are designed to match your risk tolerance. All you do is deposit money, and forget about it. Or, let it deposit for you by rounding up your everday purchases.

This is a real screenshot of my Acorns Invest account, compounding over the last 4 years. I trust it to work for me, and don’t think twice. Acorns is my savings. They’re truly a phenomenal company, app, philosophy, product.

Download Acorns and try it for yourself, with $5 gifted in your account to get up and running.

The Quantum Finance Age

TechBuzz Editorial

The dawn of a new financial era where quantum processors, autonomous AI agents, and blockchain rails converge, reshaping Wall Street dominance and retail investing.

A Quantum Breakthrough on Wall Street

This week, HSBC stunned the financial world by announcing it had outpaced Wall Street rivals in a live trading trial using IBM’s Heron quantum processor, achieving a 34% improvement in bond pricing accuracy. It’s the clearest sign yet that quantum computing is moving from research labs into real markets, with direct implications for risk management, portfolio optimization, and fraud detection.

Finance is entering its most radical experiment yet: Quantum advantage in finance means not shaving milliseconds off trades but reshaping entire strategies — optimizing trillions in assets in ways classical systems simply can’t. From London to New York, firms are rushing to secure qubits before their competitors do.

Building the Hardware of the Future

Just last week PsiQuantum raised a massive  $1 billion led by Nvidia to build a million-qubit commercial machine by 2027, in collaboration with AI chipmakers. This is about creating a new substrate for finance itself. Wall Street’s next battle may well rest on quantum circuits and more advanced agentic intelligence.

The Rise of Agentic AI in Finance

While quantum rewrites the hardware layer, agentic AI is transforming the software of money. Robo-advisors powered by LLM systems are already managing retail portfolios, while data-focused startups like Nansen AI are rolling out mobile on-chain trading agents that analyze personal portfolios and execute trades in real time.

The scale of adoption is accelerating. The robo-advisory market is projected to grow 600% by 2029, with half of retail investors open to using AI tools for stock selection. Already, 13% of retail investors are using platforms like ChatGPT for investing — and in many cases, these AI-driven strategies have outperformed traditional funds.

For Wall Street, that means the next competitive edge lies in marrying agent intelligence with quantum insights. For retail investors, it signals a democratization of finance as consumer-grade trading copilots that can come close to holding their own against professional desks emerge. The question is for how long? 

Blockchain as the Financial Plumbing of AI

This AI-quantum fusion would be impossible without new transactional rails. Traditional payment systems can’t keep up with autonomous agents making split-second trades, and cryptography becomes even more important in the quantum finance age due to security concerns. Enter crypto and stablecoins:

Yesterday Cloudflare announced its NET Dollar stablecoin for AI micropayments, it enables agents to settle instantly without human bottlenecks. Given Cloudflare is a connective tissue through which AI accessed almost all websites, this is a big deal. 

And just last week, Google launched its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to standardize how AI agents conduct purchases and transactions. With over 60 merchants and financial institutions it includes a major partnership with PayPal to embed AP2 into consumer-facing blockchain wallets and merchant systems.

The move signals a mainstreaming of AI-native payment rails. Google brings the open protocol and AI ecosystem; PayPal brings global reach and merchant integration. Together, they may set the default standard for how AI agents handle money at scale.

What we’re seeing is the financial internet taking shape: one where agents pay each other in crypto, coordinate strategies on-chain, and operate at machine speed.

Wall Street’s New Battle Lines

Wall Street dominance has always hinged on access: faster data feeds, closer servers, better models. But the convergence of quantum computing, agentic AI, and crypto rails is rewriting the rules.

• Quantum players like HSBC and Goldman will battle to secure proprietary hardware advantage. 

• AI-native firms and startups may win on agent sophistication, potentially eroding the moat of big banks.

• Crypto and payments giants like Coinbase, Stripe, Google, and PayPal will control the backbone of agent transactions as middlemen in the economy.

The war is no longer just about speed or capital — it’s about who controls the stack: hardware, intelligence, and settlement.

What It Means for Ordinary Investors

For everyday investors, this moment is double-edged. On one hand, consumer-grade AI copilots are becoming widely accessible, letting individuals use tools that rival Wall Street’s edge of a decade ago. With a market projected to expand 6x by 2030, millions of retail investors are about to gain access to advanced robo-advisory systems.

On the other hand, the quantum-AI elite will always move faster, shaping markets in ways retail can’t keep up with. And while consumer AI agents may outperform traditional funds today, over-reliance on them could expose retail investors to hidden risks — from missing critical macro signals to herd-driven market spirals.

The likely outcome is a hybrid future where individuals rely on AI agents to negotiate with other agents, while the deep structure of markets is steered by quantum-powered giants. Retail doesn’t beat Wall Street, but it doesn’t get shut out either — it gains a new layer of participation.

Welcome To The Quantum Finance Age

TLDR: We are entering the Quantum Finance Age, where quantum computers crunch risk, AI agents act as market participants, and crypto provides the rails. The financial system is becoming more autonomous, more opaque, and potentially more efficient — yet also more prone to systemic shocks that emerge at machine speed.

For Wall Street titans, it’s a battle for dominance in a radically new terrain. For the rest of us, it’s a question of how much power our consumer-grade copilots can wield in a market increasingly designed by (and for) machines operating on a quantum scale.

COMPANIES TO WATCH

Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX — Acquiring a 45% stake in TikTok's U.S. operations valued at $14b post deal White House says. The consortium includes ByteDance retaining a 19.9% share. Aims to secure U.S. data prevent a shutdown .

Oracle — The company plans to raise $15B through bond sales to fund a pivot to focus on AI infrastructure, following a $300B deal with OpenAI. Oracle is exploring a $20B deal with Meta, indicating a shift to infrastructure-as-a-service.

Lithium Americas — The Trump administration is negotiating a 10% equity stake in the company during a $2.26B Department of Energy loan renegotiation. The Thacker Pass mine is key for GM's EV supply chain.

CoreWeave — A data center infrastructure provider, CoreWeave expanded its partnership with OpenAI by $6.5B, totaling $22.5B. This deal underscores CoreWeave's pivotal role in the AI ecosystem, enabling OpenAI's model development.

Databricks — Integrating OpenAI's models, including GPT-5, through a $100M multi-year deal to boost AI tool adoption. The partnership focuses on secure corporate data access, with Databricks ensuring $100M commitment.

Stripe — The payments platform is negotiating a share buyback from VCs at a $106.7B valuation. This move provides liquidity without an IPO, signaling an unlikely public offering soon. The repurchase specifics remain undisclosed.

Cohere — AI sovereignty pioneer, raised $100M and now valued at $7B. Partnered with AMD to run AI models on AMD's GPUs, positioning against OpenAI and Nvidia. Focuses on enterprise needs and hardware diversity amid AI regulatory concerns.

SignalPulse — Read the Top signals, Startups + Deals From Last Week

TECH BUZZ DIRECTORY
Featured Products*

SEO Bot — A fully autonomous "SEO Robot" with AI agents for busy founders.

Memelord — Meme Software for marketing memes, tech memes, & sales memes.

Otonomos — Incorporate your Delaware C-corp or tax advantaged foundation and get 5% OFF.

BUZZY TOOLS

Buzzy Tech Tools To Watch & Use

Google — Data Commons MCP Server o-s NL datasets; + Search Live real-time.

OpenAI — ChatGPT Pulse custom briefs from Gmail/Cal for Pro users; New alpha models for enhanced tool-augmented AI Agent workflows.

Xiaomi 17 — Pro models feature rear secondary screens, 6,300mAh+ batteries.

Scale AI — SEAL Showdown challenges LMArena in model evaluation.

Alibaba — New Qwen3 variants enhance text, vision, audio, and safety capabilities.

Neon Mobile — Pays users for call recordings, raising privacy and misuse concerns.

BUZZY TECH

The Latest Deep Technology & Trends To Watch

HSBC Quantum — IBM Heron improves bond predictions 34% over traditional.

Google Robots — Gemini 1.5 enables web searches for autonomous tasks.

MS Microfluidic — 3x better cooling enhances AI data center chip performance.

AI Advisors — 600% market growth as tools outperform human advisors.

SCIGEN — MIT's generative AI creates novel materials for quantum computing.

CRYPTO WATCH

Crypto 401(k) Guidance — US lawmakers press the SEC for clarity on cryptocurrency integration in 401(k) plans after President Trump's order. This move could unlock access to trillions in retirement funds for digital asset investments.

Ripple's XRPL Lending Leap — Set to introduce a native lending protocol in XRPL focusing on pooled lending and on-chain credit markets. Promises low-cost, compliant credit for institutions. Zero-knowledge proofs, stablecoins, & RWA plans.

Ethereum's DeFi Growth — Vitalik Buterin claims Low-risk decentralized finance (DeFi) could become a major revenue driver for Ethereum, akin to Google's search dominance.

CleanSpark Credit Boost — CleanSpark has secured a $100M credit line from Coinbase Prime, using its Bitcoin holdings as collateral. This non-dilutive financing trend helps crypto firms access capital without issuing new shares.

Shield Neo-Bank — Shield raised $5M to enhance cross-border transactions using U.S. cryptocurrencies. Founded by Emmanuel Udotong. Has processed $100M+ in payments, aiming to expand partnerships and compliance solutions.

Metaplanet's Bitcoin Boost — Metaplanet acquired 5,419 BTC for $632.5M, bringing its total to 25,555 BTC valued at $2.71B, now the fifth-largest public holder. Plans include raising $1.4B through shares for more acquisitions, expanding U.S. ops.

SPACE_RACE

Artemis II Mission_NASA schedules crewed lunar mission for early February 2025

China's Reusable Rocket_U.S. military warns tech threatens satellite dominance

Starpath Starlight Solar_Ultra-low-cost space-rated solar panels cut costs by 90%

FOR INVESTORS
Open Deals
Investors– request an intro to startups - invest@techbuzz.ai.

Before we restart our placements of raising startups, we’re sharing an open call to send in your own company. Just shoot us an email with a deck and we may feature you in this bulletin.

For detailed pitch materials, please email invest@techbuzz.ai with your deck.
🔥 — hot deal!
⏰ — leaving soon.

FOR EMPLOYERS
Job Candidates

Employers– request an intro to candidates - jobs@techbuzz.ai