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Infleqtion, the company poised to merge with Churchill Capital, announced it’s collaborating with NASA. NASA! Not the gift shop, but the actual agency that sends things into space. Apparently, they’re launching a mission involving a “Quantum Gravity Gradiometer Pathfinder.” I had to read that sentence three times. It sounds like a rejected James Bond villain’s invention. The mission, in layman’s terms, will use a quantum sensor to measure the Earth’s gravitational field. Which, I suppose, is good. I’m just picturing a very sensitive scale hovering over the planet.

Datadog, a sentinel watching over the digital realm, saw its shares bloom, a 14% increase fueled by the promise of growth. A single, bright flower pushing through the frost. But S&P Global, burdened by expectations unmet, fell, a reminder that even the most established trees can shed their leaves.

By the close of trading, the stock price registered an increase exceeding fourteen percent. This, of course, is merely a numerical fluctuation, a ripple in the vast, opaque ocean of capital. To ascribe lasting significance to such a movement would be… premature.

The stock market, being the stock market, noticed. A couple of companies went up. Then, predictably, wobbled. That’s when you look, if you’re the looking type. Cameco and Centrus Energy. Two names. Two bets on the future, or at least the next decade. Worth a glance, maybe.

The question of another split hangs in the air, a minor irritation. Management, one assumes, has more pressing concerns than catering to the whims of those who believe a larger number of shares equates to greater wealth. Still, it is worth examining the history. Nvidia has split its stock six times since its inception, a habit not entirely unlike a nervous tick. Microsoft, with nine splits, appears positively frantic. A company’s past behavior, however, is seldom a reliable predictor of its future composure.

Sixty-nine million shares changed hands, a considerable sum, yet merely a ripple in the vast ocean of commerce. One recalls the company’s genesis in the year 1972, a time of boundless optimism, and the subsequent five-fold increase in its value. But such growth, like all earthly things, is subject to the laws of entropy. The market, ever fickle, offers no guarantees, only the illusion of control.

Artificial intelligence. A phrase bandied about with the recklessness of a gambler discarding rubles. It’s still in its infancy, you understand, though the hype suggests a fully grown, demanding adolescent. The hyperscalers—those digital behemoths—are throwing money at it with the enthusiasm of a nouveau riche attempting to impress a countess. Hundreds of billions, they say. And where does all this capital ultimately land? Precisely. At TSM’s doorstep.

Last week, Anthropic unveiled a new plugin for its Claude Cowork platform, capable of performing legal tasks with unsettling efficiency.² This, naturally, has caused a frisson of panic amongst the scribes and parchment-pushers. Then, on February 5th, Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.6 – its latest iteration. This model, we are told, excels at coding, ‘agentic tasks’ (whatever those are – sounds suspiciously like golems), and the creation of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. In short, it threatens to automate the very things that keep middle management employed. A dangerous precedent, indeed.

The company tallied nearly $3.92 billion in revenue for the last quarter, a nine percent increase. Not bad, not bad at all. One might even call it a respectable haul. Net income, calculated by methods that would likely confound a tax inspector, grew by twelve percent, reaching $1.3 billion, or $4.30 per share. A tidy sum, certainly.