What's up: Tesla profit sinks; Intel prepares cuts; Apple, Meta fined.

Good morning, CIOs. New Mexico, home to some of the nation’s top defense research facilities, is aiming to become a hub for quantum computing. 

It's not the only region eyeing a place on the quantum national stage. Chicago is building an industrial park dedicated to quantum computing. Also, Nvidia last month tapped Boston as home for its new quantum computing research center. And of course, there is Silicon Valley.

New Mexico makes a special case, thanks in part to its legacy in critical scientific research.

“New Mexico pioneered applied physics for the first time with the Manhattan Project, and we’re in a great place to do it again with this quantum revolution under way,” Alex Greenberg, an economic development adviser to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, tells the Journal's Belle Lin.

A coalition of organizations, including the governor’s office, universities, Sandia National Laboratories and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is involved in the effort to make the region a quantum hotbed.

A centerpiece of this effort is New Mexico’s Quantum Moonshot program, an initiative dedicated to developing quantum technologies that have both civilian and military applications.

“Lots of basic technology is developed in New Mexico, but the state has not capitalized on that and benefited from that,” said University of New Mexico professor Ivan Deutsch, who led the development of the university’s Quantum New Mexico Institute last year. “We don’t want to repeat that with quantum.” Read the story.

Tesla profit sinks. Tesla’s net income slid 71% in the first quarter, as the company struggled to overcome competitive pressure overseas and a reputational hit from CEO Elon Musk’s polarizing role in the Trump administration. Tesla has faced protests across the U.S. and Europe.

SAP posts higher revenue. The German business-software company said its operating profit grew to nearly 2.46 billion euros in the quarter from 1.53 billion euros a year earlier, generating a 27.2% operating margin. SAP gained more than $15 billion in market value Wednesday after shares in Frankfurt climbed 10%.

SAP is relatively insulated from tariffs since it generates revenue from cloud and software services, but finance chief Dominik Asam told the Journal that no company goes through a trade war unscathed. “It would be naive to believe that this would not affect us at all,” he said.

Apple, Meta fined by EU. The European Commission on Wednesday slapped Apple with a 500 million euro fine, ordering the company to remove what it said were restrictions on app developers’ ability to inform users about alternative ways to buy digital products outside the company’s App Store.

It fined Meta €200 million and said it is still evaluating whether an option Meta has for several months given European users to see “less-personalized ads” without paying a subscription fee complies with an earlier order.

The actions against both companies come under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, a law passed in 2022 that seeks to make it easier for smaller companies to compete with global tech behemoths.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to resign as Oklo chairman. The nuclear-energy startup said the move will make it easier for the company to collaborate with OpenAI on future deals. Oklo is aiming to develop a small modular reactor to produce nuclear energy and meet the growing demand for energy from artificial intelligence.

• Super Investor Sam Altman’s Interests Collide in a Nuclear Merger
• Nuclear Power Is Back. And This Time, AI Can Help Manage the Reactors.

At least one company offered free deployment of AI agents within the government to make it easier for federal agencies to work together.

Intel looking to cut staff in bid to streamline. Bloomberg is reporting that the chipmaker plans to cut more than 20% of its staff this week in what would be Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan's first major restructuring move since taking the corner office last month. Intel reports first-quarter results on Thursday.

President Trump said he is not planning to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and he signaled that tariffs on China could be lowered. (WSJ)

From industrial giants like GE Aerospace to luxury brands like LVMH and Hermès to the telecom outfit Verizon, companies say they are making plans to pass along at least some of the cost of tariffs to consumers. (WSJ)

A trio of federal judges excoriated the Trump administration Tuesday over its immigration crackdown and threw up new legal roadblocks to the White House’s no-holds-barred approach. (WSJ)

The Health and Human Services Department and Food and Drug Administration unveiled measures Tuesday to eliminate petroleum-based synthetic dyes in food, including Red 40, Yellow 5 and 6, Green 3, and Blue 1 and 2. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.