Hello there.

Happy Friday! A week of SpaceX on the books! How’re we doin’? Oh, well… introducing: The Next Thing!

In this issue:

If you missed (or voluntarily sat out of) the SpaceX IPO, maybe quantum’s more your speed. Bonus points if you can actually explain what that means. Let’s look into it!

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So quantum computing might actually (maybe) sorta be becoming a real thing. Amazon's AI boss Peter DeSantis just dropped a timeline that got the market moving. He said we could see the first actually useful quantum computers within five to seven years.

But before we all start panic-buying quantum stocks, quick reality check. A quantum computer isn’t a faster MacBook. It’s more like a specialist. It won’t help you stream Netflix faster. It might help drug companies design new medicines or help materials companies discover better batteries. Think super-nerdy science problems that normal computers struggle with. DeSantis made it clear that quantum is going to crush specific problems that today's computers literally cannot solve, not shake up retail computing itself.

They also might pose a huge problem for cryptocurrencies, but that sounds like a 2027 problem to us… We’ll deal with that later (hopefully 😬).

Anyway, that timeline puts Amazon right in the middle of what other tech giants are saying. But, timelines in tech are… aspirational. Remember self-driving cars in 2018? Exactly.

Second, the real winners might not be the tiny, hype-y quantum startups. It could be the big cloud giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google that can afford to burn billions on R&D without blinking.

As it stands, Google thinks five years. Microsoft says 2029. Nvidia's CEO said 15 years and then walked it back when quantum stocks tanked on the news. So basically, nobody knows for sure, but Amazon just gave the industry a credible target to aim for.

Tech employees sitting on stock from companies that haven't gone public yet might be about to get really, really generous. With a wave of IPOs potentially coming, there's buzz about a charitable windfall heading our way.

Here's how it works: when your company goes public, that stock you've been holding suddenly becomes real money. And if you donate appreciated stock (stock that went up in value) to charity instead of selling it, you skip paying capital gains taxes AND get a tax deduction. It's literally a win-win-win.

Some platforms like Daffy are already positioning themselves to accept private stock donations from employees at companies doing tender offers or secondary sales. That means you don't even have to wait for an IPO to start giving.

Donor-advised funds that accept private stock donations are about to get flooded with assets. These funds let people donate stock before it's even publicly traded, lock in the tax break immediately, then decide later where the money actually goes. Hey, tax planning isn't sexy, but neither is giving the government more money than you have to.

At a meta level, when a bunch of tech companies go public at once, it usually means the market thinks we're in a good spot. Companies don't IPO when things are sketchy. They do it when they think investors are ready to throw money at new opportunities. So if you keep seeing headlines about IPO waves and charitable windfalls, that's actually a decent signal that the tech sector is feeling pretty confident about itself.

In this episode of TWiT, the hosts unpack a week where governments step deeper into AI oversight, Apple attempts to regain momentum in the AI race, and the biggest tech companies confront growing questions about power, accountability, and sustainability.

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That’s all for today. Write us and let us know your thoughts on the market, the newsletter, or the weather—we’d just love to hear from you.

Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake