quantum ionq 2bsullivan fastcompany Today, Maryland-based quantum computing company IonQ is going public via a SPAC in a deal that’s expected to raise $650 million. Its $2 billion valuation and big-name investors indicate that quantum computing may be helpful to businesses sooner than expected.

The company’s main product is a 22-qubit quantum computer, to which it sells access through the Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Qubits are the far more versatile analogs of the binary bits used in classical computers.

IonQ says its hardware is based on 25 years of research by Chris Monroe and Jungsang Kim, professors at Maryland and Duke universities, respectively. The two licensed their research from the universities and founded a company based on it in 2015, with the stated goal of bringing quantum computing out of the lab and into businesses.

IonQ Founders Jungsang Kim (left) and Chris Monroe. [Photo: IonQ]
Many in the tech industry hope that quantum computers will deliver the next big leaps forward in compute power now that prying incremental gains from traditional silicon chips has grown progressively harder. While chip makers try to squeeze more transistors onto silicon for ever-smaller capacity increases, quantum proponents say adding a single qubit to a quantum machine can double its power.
But quantum computing remains a nascent technology; most experts don’t expect it to outperform today’s supercomputers for at least another five years. So it’s natural to wonder how IonQ is making money now, and why new investors should have confidence that the company’s earnings will keep growing after Friday’s IPO.

IonQ CEO Peter Chapman tells me that anybody can access IonQ’s 22-qubit quantum computers today. “You can use those devices, they’re relatively cheap, for two bucks you can run your quantum version of Hello World,” he says, referencing a short program developers use to test out new programming languages. IonQ doesn’t disclose its revenues, but has said publicly that it’s “eight figures,” with a run rate in the tens of millions per year.

stimulus mailed march 26 If you’ve been waiting for your third Economic Impact Payment to arrive via the U.S. Postal Service, there’s a chance it could already be in the mail.

The Internal Revenue Service said last week it would deliver the second large batch of stimulus checks—about 37 million of them. Although many were delivered via direct deposit, the batch also included about 15 million paper checks and 5 million debit cards.

It appears as though some mailed payments went out on Friday, March 26. That’s according to a number of social media users who were able to obtain an update from the IRS using the Get My Payment tool. If you have access to that tool—and you’re expecting a check by mail—it’s worth checking it for an update. If you’re among the 20 million people whose mailed payment is part of the second batch, there’s a chance it will show up this week, but the IRS says it will take a few weeks to deliver all of them.

Here are a few other things to know:

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Nonfilers are still waiting: In its recent update, the IRS said the payments that went out with the latest batch included people who filed a tax return in 2019 or 2020. It also included people who didn’t file a return but were able to register with the IRS’s “nonfilers” tool. Nonfilers who didn’t use that tool are going to have to wait longer. Sadly, this includes many recipients of federal benefits such as Social Security. (We’ve reached out to the IRS for an update on when payments for these individuals will be sent out.)
It could be a paper check or a card: If you’re expecting a mailed payment, the IRS isn’t really saying whether you’ll receive it by paper or a debit card (EIP Card). Importantly, if you received a previous stimulus check by debit card, the IRS will not simply replenish it with $1,400. You’ll either get a new card or you’ll get a payer check. (Needless to say, don’t throw away any envelopes from the IRS.)
Lost payments are traceable: If you received a paper check or debit card but lost it, all hope is not lost. For paper checks, you can request a payment trace from the IRS. For debit cards, you can request a replacement from MetaBank, the issuing bank.
The American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law on March 11, authorized checks of up to $1,400 for individuals and $2,800 for couples. As of last week, the IRS said it has issued 127 million payments totaling $325 billion. Unfortunately, it hasn’t provided a timeline for when subsequent batches of payments will be sent out. We’ll keep you posted with updates.

plaid settlement We’re talking about the fintech—not a shirt pattern—and the Silicon Valley company recently settled a class action suit accusing it of collecting excessive data from users. As a result, it will pay $58 million to all those consumers who have linked a bank account to any of Plaid’s 5,500-plus client apps, which include popular services like American Express, Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase, and Betterment.

Plaid, a middleman connecting bank accounts to other fintech services, says it’s been used by tens of millions in North America.

According to the settlement website, Plaid allegedly obtained “more financial data than was needed” and set up log-in pages that deceptively mimicked those of the user’s own bank account, but fed the credentials directly to itself. For its part, Plaid has denied any wrongdoing and argued it was transparent about its practices.

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It agreed to the $58 million deal in August, which also required it to change some business practices. Its lead counsel said the lawsuit’s claims “go back to the earliest days of the company—as such, the underlying claims and challenged conduct do not reflect today’s Plaid.”

For those wondering if they’re eligible for a claim, the settlement website offers a searchable list of Plaid’s clients (which also include Acorns, Chime, SoFi, and Upstart, to name a few more). Full terms and filing deadlines are found here.

If you want to cash in, you must do so in the next three months—although given the size of the potential claimant pool, you could expect another Equifax-like frenzy in which your payout becomes a couple of dollars, if anything.