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D-Wave is about to make waves. The quantum computing firm announced on Wednesday that, for the first time, it was able to “successfully simulate the properties of magnetic materials” using its Advantage2 annealing quantum computer, which “allows us to invent and evaluate new materials without needing to build them in the lab,” D-Wave CEO Dr. Alan Baratz tells Fast Company. In effect, this means that D-Wave has achieved “quantum supremacy” on a useful problem, something it says nobody else has yet been able to accomplish, and which is detailed in a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Science. “This is a really important moment in time for the entire qu…

Shares in major quantum computer companies were on the rise again in premarket trading on Tuesday, highlighting what has been a volatile couple of weeks for a nascent industry that continues to captivate. Here’s what’s driving the latest news: D-Wave announces Advantage2 By far, Palo Alto-based D-Wave Quantum Inc (NYSE: QBTS) is seeing the biggest boost in premarket trading, with its stock up more than 12% as of this writing. This boost follows a 7% increase in D-Wave shares on Monday. Investors are likely excited by news on Tuesday morning in which D-Wave announced the general availability of its sixth-generation Advantage2 quantum computing system, which the…

U.S. quantum computing firm D-Wave Quantum has struck a deal with a company called Swiss Quantum Technology (SQT) to bring D-Wave’s Advantage2 quantum computer to Europe. The deal, which amounts to €10 million ($11.63 million), will see D-Wave’s quantum computer deployed in Italy, where it will play a role in supporting the Italians’ efforts toward large-scale digital transformation, D-Wave announced on Wednesday. It will be part of a joint effort—collectively called the “Q-Alliance”—between D-Wave and IonQ, another American quantum computing company. In its announcement Wednesday, D-Wave said little about what SQT does, and scant information about the compan…

Neko Health is taking its body-scanning technology to America. The Swedish diagnostic health clinic, cofounded by Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek (also the cofounder and CEO of Spotify), said on Wednesday that it will launch a location in New York City, its first in the United States, in the spring of this year. The three-year-old startup, which offers comprehensive body scans to monitor risk factors for a range of health conditions from pre-diabetes to cancer, already has a presence in London, Manchester, and Stockholm. “For the first time, technology is enabling a fundamentally new healthcare experience centered on prevention,” Nilsonne, who is the company’s …

Anyone well-versed in internet lore will be familiar with the image of a slightly deflated child’s ball pit on a hotel convention room floor. DashCon (originally called Tumblr-Con, although not officially affiliated with Tumblr) was a fan convention held in Schaumburg, Illinois, back in 2014. It was originally intended to bring the Tumblr community together and scheduled to feature vendors and special guests from fandoms like Doctor Who and Sherlock. After a string of disasters, the weekend culminated in the 17-year-old organizer, Nessie O’Neil, going around with a paper bag asking attendees for donations to make up the roughly $17,000 needed to keep the conventi…

Boom Supersonic wants to build the world’s first commercial supersonic airliner. Founded in 2014, the company set out to make air travel dramatically faster — up to twice the speed of today’s passenger jets — while also aiming for a smaller environmental footprint. For years, Boom has focused on developing the high-performance engine technology needed to sustain supersonic flight. Though the company has not yet debuted its revolutionary jet, last year it identified a new and potentially lucrative application for its novel technology: generating electricity for the data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom. Many of these data centers want the kind of f…

Across the country, data center demand and construction have been skyrocketing throughout 2025. And so has local opposition to those projects. From Indiana (where a developer withdrew its application to build a data center on more than 700 acres of farmland after local opposition) to Georgia (where now at least eight municipalities have passed moratoriums on data center development), residents and politicians are pushing back against the water- and energy-hungry sites. Between late March through June of this year alone, 20 data center projects, representing about $98 billion in investments, were blocked or delayed in the United States, according to a new rep…

If a single type of building could define our present time, it would undoubtedly be the data center. Underpinning the increasingly online way we work, shop, and entertain ourselves, data centers provide the computing power and storage to handle all the Zoom calls, Amazon purchases, and Netflix streams a person can cram into their day. And now as compute-hungry artificial intelligence dominates the future of nearly every sector of the economy—and possibly society as a whole—the data center will become even more ubiquitous. A headlong data center building boom is already underway. One report finds that average monthly spending on data centers has increased 400% in the l…

When Amazon proposed building its Project Blue data center in Tucson, Arizona, the company faced intense pushback. Residents raised concerns about the enormous amounts of water and electricity that the data center would need, two major ways such projects impact the environment, especially in a desert city. Ultimately, Tucson’s town council rejected the proposal (though its developer hasn’t given up). But the story highlights both the growing environmental impacts of data centers, and how location matters to that impact. A study published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability makes that connection even clearer. Led by researchers at Cornell University, t…

When fewer people belong to unions and unions have less power, the impact goes beyond wages and job security. Those changes can hurt public health and make people more unhappy. We’re economists who research labor and health issues. Those are two of the main findings of studies that we have conducted. More unionization, more happiness In the first study on this topic that we published in 2023, we found that increasing levels of union membership tends to make working-class people happier. We zeroed in on a question in the General Social Survey, which the University of Chicago makes available. It asks respondents to choose whether they are “very happy,” “somew…

Growing up in rural Northern California and later serving in the military, stationed in Mississippi, I experienced firsthand the stark disparities in access to quality goods. Even finding fresh, local produce often meant bypassing the grocery store for a farm stand because the desired options simply weren’t stocked. In many communities I lived in and visited, the available choices were severely limited, creating a significant market gap that persists today. This isn’t just a social issue I observed; it’s a massive missed revenue opportunity for retailers who are overly focused on saturated urban markets while overlooking the immense potential waiting in rural and Middle A…

As the founder, chair, and CEO of the Exceptional Women Alliance, I am privileged to work alongside extraordinary women leaders who reshape industries and redefine what leadership looks like. Within this sisterhood, we challenge, support, and elevate one another, sharing not just professional expertise but a commitment to lead with impact. Nicole Brownell is one of those leaders. She is a COO and growth strategist whose work sits at the intersection of digital transformation, product innovation, and behavioral intelligence. She has guided companies through scaling, designed GTM strategies that combine creativity with analytics, and she focuses on using data to deepen …

In Denmark, a grocery store chain used a black star. In Canada, it was a maple leaf. President Donald The President’s trade war inspired new country-of-origin “Made In” labels this year as shoppers outside the U.S. looked to avoid buying American-made goods and shop local instead. In the U.S., though, the “Made in USA” brand is losing its domestic appeal. Country-of-origin labeling is designed to be a stamp of authenticity and quality. Countries police their own rules to ensure products labeled “made” or “assembled” in their country really were made or assembled there and that they meet national standards. When the Copenhagen-based think tank 21st Century int…

Accenture announced on Wednesday that David Droga, CEO of its technology-focused creative group Accenture Song, will step down from his role in September. Droga will transition from his day-to-day leadership role into a broader strategic role as vice chair of Accenture. As part of the transition, Ndidi Oteh, who currently serves as the Americas lead for Accenture Song, will become the CEO of Accenture Song, the company said. He will also join Accenture’s Global Management Committee. Meanwhile, Nick Law, current creative chairperson for Accenture Song, is set to become the creative strategy and experience lead. ‘Once-in-a-generation creative leader’ An awa…

Protein is everywhere these days. The cultural obsession with the macronutrient has become unavoidable; from constant protein-adjacent Instagram ads to protein-focused recipes and protein-filled Chipotle bowls, Starbucks drinks, and Pepsi products. All of these products are starting to sound like part of some big, loud, fitness influencer chorus. But there’s one brand that’s managed to break through the noise—often, by saying nothing at all. Early this month, the protein bar company David debuted a print campaign in the New York City subway system featuring plain images of its bars, with no text or embellishments, surrounded by a sea of blank white space. It’s the en…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos brings together an incongruous mix of celebrities (this year included Matt Damon, David Beckham, and Katy Perry, who was accompanying ex-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau), world leaders (President Donald The President), and nonprofit le…

It appears that day trading could get easier. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, known as FINRA, on Tuesday announced it had approved amendments that will replace the current day trading and pattern day trading rules, “including the minimum equity of $25,000 for pattern day traders.” The proposed change, if approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), would mean traders would no longer need to maintain a minimum $25,000 balance in a margin account to execute four or more day trades within a five-business-day period, CNBC reported. Here’s a quick breakdown of what that means. What is day trading? Day trading, as defined by FINRA’s…

Daylight savings time (DST) is just around the corner. This Sunday, March 8, the clocks will spring forward again, and with the change comes the ongoing conversation about, well—why are we doing this, anyway? According to an AP-NORC poll, only 12% of Americans favor DST, while 47% oppose it and 40% are neutral. In Canada’s British Columbia (BC) province, the government has finally decided to take matters into its own hands, and come this Sunday, daylight saving time (DST) will be permanent year-round. “This decision isn’t just about clocks. It’s about making life easier for families, reducing disruptions for businesses and supporting a stable, thriving economy,” B…

Yes, it’s that time of year again, when most of the U.S. “gains” an extra hour of sleep as we “fall back” from daylight savings to shorter days, colder nights, and standard time. This Sunday, November 2, at 2 a.m local time, we will turn back our clocks to 1 a.m—and that will last until March 8, 2026 (when we will once again usher in daylight saving time). Although getting an extra hour of sleep sounds like a win, here’s what really happens to your health when the clocks change. Darker nights disrupt the body’s natural clock Darker evenings actually disrupt our body’s natural circadian rhythm, our mood, and our metabolism, according to Dr. Zaid Fadul, CEO …

As clocks march ahead and daylight saving time begins, there can be anxiety around losing an hour of sleep and how to adjust to this change. Usually, an hour seems like an insignificant amount of time, but even this minimal loss can cause problems. There can be significant health repercussions of this forcible shift in the body clock. Springing forward is usually harder than falling backward. Why? The natural internal body clock rhythm in people tends to be slightly longer than 24 hours, which means that every day we tend to delay our sleep schedules. Thus, “springing forward” goes against the body’s natural rhythm. It is similar to a mild case of jet lag caus…