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Walmart is selling online apparel brand Eloquii to FullBeauty Brands, marking the retailer’s third divestiture of a direct-to-consumer brand this year.
The retailer bought Eloquii in 2018 for a reported $100 million, one of numerous digital apparel brands with niche and loyal consumer bases.
The sales mark a reversal of a 2017-18 strategy led by Marc Lore, Walmart’s former head of e-commerce.

Fashions featured on Eloquii 
Source: Eloquii

Walmart is selling online apparel brand Eloquii to FullBeauty Brands, marking the retailer’s third divestiture of a direct-to-consumer brand this year.
The big-box retailer sold Bonobos to WHP Global and Express earlier this month and offloaded Moosejaw to Dick’s Sporting Goods in February. The sales are a reversal of a 2017-18 strategy led by Marc Lore, Walmart’s former head of e-commerce.

The retailer bought Eloquii in 2018 for a reported $100 million, one of numerous digital apparel brands with niche and loyal consumer bases. The goal was to build out the retailer’s online assortment with higher-margin apparel and home merchandise. The acquisitions would also bring in talent that could help Walmart accelerate its digital strategy.
“Eloquii joined Walmart’s portfolio of digitally native vertical brands to expand our Women’s assortment in sizes 14+, and offer unique and differentiated product in an underserved but growing segment” Walmart spokesperson Jaeme Laczkowski said in a statement. “Since acquiring Eloquii, Walmart.com has grown to hundreds of millions of items, and we’ve decided it’s the right time to sell Eloquii.”
FullBeauty Brands is buying Eloquii for an undisclosed sum, retaining its co-founder and brand leader Julie Carnevale. Eloquii will join a portfolio of online plus-size apparel, shoes and swimwear brands under FullBeauty Brands, which has 5 million active customers. 
“Eloquii is very data-driven, and has a great feedback loop into their business” FullBeauty Brands CEO Jim Fogarty told CNBC in an interview. “[Eloquii] is very fast to market, and we are looking to learn from that a little bit.”
Fogarty plans for Eloquii to be an anchor in what he calls FullBeauty Brands’ “digital mall.” The profitable FullBeauty Brands has annual revenue of $1 billion, a small slice of the $81 billion total addressable market for plus-size apparel. Fogarty hopes Eloquii will help it gain a foothold with more millennial and Gen Z consumers, what he called “the more TikTok, Instagram generation.”

After acquiring Eloquii, Walmart created a new brand of inclusive-sized apparel, which the retailer will continue to sell after the divestiture.
Walmart’s e-commerce goals have shifted, according to executives, from growing the number of available items to improving the financials of the digital business.
“We’re now in a phase that is less about scaling store pickup and delivery, eCommerce assortment, and eCommerce [fulfillment center] square footage, and more about execution and operating margin improvement” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said at the company’s investor day earlier this month.
While Lore left Walmart in 2021 after five years, his contributions significantly transformed the retailer’s e-commerce business, including fulfillment operations, shopper delivery options and speed. His efforts boosted the number of products sold online from 70 million to “hundreds of millions” today.
Walmart’s online sales now make up 13% of total annual sales, as of its most recent fiscal year-end, up from 5% in 2019.
To be sure, there were also a number of Lore-led businesses that were not ultimately successful, including text message concierge service JetBlack and the eventual wind down of Lore-founded e-commerce company Jet.com, which Walmart bought for $3.3 billion and which brought Lore to the retailer.
In addition to Eloquii, Bonobos and Moosejaw, Walmart has unloaded Modcloth, Bare Necessities and ShoeBuy in recent years, all Lore-led acquisitions.  More

Procter & Gamble beat quarterly earnings and revenue expectations.
The company also raised its fiscal 2023 sales guidance.

Procter & Gamble on Friday reported quarterly earnings and revenue that topped analysts’ expectations as higher prices helped offset lower demand for its products.
The company, which owns household brands like Febreze, Charmin and Tide, also raised its forecast for organic sales growth for fiscal 2023 to 6%, up from its prior range of 4% to 5%.

Shares of P&G rose 2% in premarket trading.
Here’s what the company reported for the quarter ended March 31 compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: $1.37 vs. $1.32 expected
Revenue: $20.07 billion vs. $19.32 billion expected

P&G reported fiscal third-quarter net income of $3.4 billion, or $1.37 per share, up from $3.36 billion, or $1.33 per share, a year earlier.
Net sales rose 4% to $20.07 billion. Organic sales, which strip out the effects of foreign currency, acquisitions and divestitures, increased 7% in the quarter.
But the company’s volume, which excludes price and currency changes, fell 3% as consumers opted for cheaper alternatives. Across its portfolio, P&G’s prices were up 10% year over year.

This marks the fourth consecutive quarter of shrinking volume for the consumer giant.
CFO Andre Schulten said on a press call that volume improved sequentially from the company’s fiscal second quarter. He added that quarterly volume fell just 2% from last year when excluding P&G’s business in Russia, where it scaled back operations and advertising since the Kremlin started the war in Ukraine last year.
All of P&G’s divisions reported declining volume for the quarter, except for its health and beauty units, which both saw volume increase just 1%.
However, volume actually increased in the U.S., the company’s biggest market, according to Schulten. He pointed to another bright spot in China, P&G’s second-largest market, which is finally recovering from Covid lockdowns and seeing improvements in consumer confidence.
P&G once again raised prices in the U.S. and Europe during the fiscal third quarter, Schulten said.
P&G’s fabric and home care segment, which includes brands like Tide, Swiffer and Mr. Clean, saw its volume fall 5% in the steepest drop among the company’s business units. P&G said volume declines came primarily in Europe.
The baby, feminine and family care segment reported a 4% volume decline. The division, which includes Pampers, Bounty and Charmin, also saw volume fall in Europe. The company said demand for its diapers was lower there.
P&G’s grooming business, which includes Gillette and Venus razors, reported a 1% drop in volume. The unit has typically lagged the rest of P&G’s portfolio, but performed relatively better this quarter. However, lower demand for its appliances caused the unit’s volume decline. More

Gen. Chance Saltzman of the U.S. Space Force describes what he says is a new era of space activity.
“The threats that we face to our on-orbit capabilities from our strategic competitors [have] grown substantially,” Saltzman said in a CNBC interview.
The message comes at a key moment as space rapidly commercializes and a heightened geopolitical backdrop increasingly sees threats extending beyond Earth.

US Space Force General B. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations, testifies about the Fiscal Year 2024 Budget request during a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 14, 2023. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images

When Gen. Chance Saltzman took the stage for his keynote at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, this week, his message was simple: The U.S. is in a new era of space activity.
“The threats that we face to our on-orbit capabilities from our strategic competitors [have] grown substantially,” Saltzman, the U.S. Space Force’s second-ever chief of space operations, said in a CNBC interview after the speech. “The congestion we’re seeing in space with tracked objects and the number of satellite payloads, and just the launches themselves, have grown at an exponential rate.”

“I want to make sure that we are thinking about our processes and procedures differently,” he said in an interview for CNBC’s “Manifest Space” podcast, his first broadcast interview since becoming the service’s highest-ranking military official last November.
The message comes at a key moment as space rapidly commercializes and a heightened geopolitical backdrop increasingly sees threats extending beyond Earth to a domain for which rules of engagement remain unclear. 

Follow and listen to CNBC’s “Manifest Space” podcast, hosted by Morgan Brennan, wherever you get your podcasts.

Military experts say space is likely to be the front line in any future conflicts – a battlefield that could extend to the private sector and impact civilians in real time. Look no further than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an example: Recall the unprecedented cyberattack on the European communications network of U.S. satellite operator Viasat just as Russian soldiers mobilized to cross sovereign boundaries.
Saltzman said the space-based tactics of adversaries like Russia and China run the gamut, from the communications jamming of the GPS constellation; to lasers and “dazzlers” that interfere with cameras on-orbit to prevent imagery collection; to anti-satellite missiles like the one Russia tested in late 2021.
“We’re seeing satellites that actually can grab another satellite, grapple with it and pull it out of its operational orbit. These are all capabilities they’re demonstrating on-orbit today, and so the mix of these weapons and the pace with which they’ve been developed are very concerning,” he said.

It speaks to why, despite a wave of fervent debate, the Space Force was briskly stood up in 2019 as the first new branch of the U.S. armed services in seven decades.
To respond to evolving threats and secure space assets more quickly, Saltzman is looking to further augment the service’s capabilities to make satellite constellations more resilient and acquire more launch services by tapping into a burgeoning cadre of commercial space players.
Case in point: the Space Force’s recently announced procurement strategy for more launch services. The new “dual-lane acquisition approach” is intended to create more opportunities for rocket startups to compete for national security launch contracts.
With business to be awarded next year, the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 is estimated to run into the billions of dollars and is expected to draw bids from the likes of Rocket Lab, Relativity Space and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, among others. Phase 2 awards went to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
An expanding budget helps, too. While still just a fraction of the country’s overall defense budget, the Space Force’s $30 billion request for fiscal 2024 represents a 15% increase from this year’s enacted levels.
“This is a team sport and none of us is going to be successful going in alone,” Saltzman said.

“Manifest Space,” hosted by CNBC’s Morgan Brennan, focuses on the billionaires and brains behind the ever-expanding opportunities beyond our atmosphere. Brennan holds conversations with the mega moguls, industry leaders and startups in today’s satellite, space and defense industries. In “Manifest Space,” sit back, relax and prepare for liftoff. More

BuzzFeed will lay off 15% of staff and will shut down BuzzFeed News, CEO Jonah Peretti wrote in an email to staff Thursday.
The layoffs will affect BuzzFeed’s business, content, admin and tech teams.
The BuzzFeed layoffs came the same day fellow digital media company Insider announced job cuts.

The BuzzFeed News website on a laptop computer arranged in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, U.S., on Monday, Dec. 6, 2021.
Tiffany Hagler-Geard | Bloomberg | Getty Images

BuzzFeed will lay off 15% of staff and shut down its news unit, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti wrote in an email to staff Thursday.
The layoffs will affect BuzzFeed’s business, content, administration and tech teams. The layoffs amount to about 180 people. The company’s staff totaled about 1,200 people as of its most recent securities filing.

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BuzzFeed News, part of the digital media company’s content division, had about 100 employees and lost about $10 million a year, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC last year. It stood apart from the main, viral-content-generating BuzzFeed brand with straight news and investigative reporting. BuzzFeed News won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for its reporting on China’s mass detention of Muslims. Several large shareholders had urged Peretti to shut down its news operations.
Shares of the company have fallen about 90% since its IPO in late 2021. The stock fell nearly 20% Thursday, closing at 75 cents.
The news comes during a tough period for digital media companies as publishers are cutting staff as advertisers reduce spending. These cuts have impacted companies like Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones and Vox Media. In January, Vice Media restarted its sale process at a lower valuation, CNBC previously reported. The company, which was valued at $5.7 billion in 2017, was poised to fetch a price of below $1 billion.
“There’s no free lunch anymore in the [digital media] space in the sense that the advertising market this year is not particularly strong, and everything has to be earned,” said Jonathan Miller, the CEO of Integrated Media, which specializes in digital media investments.
Miller added that going public is probably not the best strategy for digital media companies like Buzzfeed. “There’s not that many public companies in digital media. And I think investment dollars in general will be tough to come by unless you can show a real differentiated plan.”

BuzzFeed wasn’t the only digital media company to announce layoffs Thursday. Insider, which is owned by German conglomerate Axel Springer, told staff Thursday morning it was reducing its total headcount by 10%, including union and non-union staffers, according to an internal memo viewed by CNBC. Affected employees will receive a minimum of 13 weeks of base pay and medical benefits will be covered through August, the memo says.
Insider executives said layoffs have stemmed from a significant recession in advertising spending in technology and finance, as well as disruptions to distribution and revenue share.
“As you know your industry has been under significant pressure for more than a year. The economic headwinds that have hurt many of our clients and partners are also affecting us,” Insider President Barbara Peng wrote in the memo. “Unfortunately, to keep our company healthy and competitive, we need to reduce the size of our team. We have tried hard to avoid taking this step, and we are sorry about the impact it will have on many of you.”

The state of BuzzFeed

Peretti said HuffPost and BuzzFeed’s flagship site will open a number of roles for BuzzFeed News editors and reporters. The company will also reduce budgets, open roles and most other discretionary expenditures.
“We’ve faced more challenges than I can count in the past few years: a pandemic, a fading SPAC market that yielded less capital, a tech recession, a tough economy, a declining stock market, a decelerating digital advertising market and ongoing audience and platform shifts,” Peretti wrote.
Peretti admitted fault for not managing these changes better and being “slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media.”
Peretti also wrote that revenue chief Edgar Hernandez and operating chief Christian Baesler decided to exit the company.
BuzzFeed cut nearly 12% of its workforce, or around 180 staffers, back in December 2022. The company said the layoffs came in response to challenging economic conditions and its acquisition of Complex Networks. BuzzFeed reduced its footprint in New York last year and will reduce its real estate in Los Angeles from four buildings down to one.
The digital media company scaled back its news operation in an attempt to make BuzzFeed News profitable, resulting in the departure of several editors. The company went public via a special purpose acquisition vehicle last year, which sent shares down nearly 40% in its first week of trading.
One shareholder told CNBC last year that shutting down the newsroom could amount to $300 million of market capitalization to the stock.
Peretti also wrote that the company is proposing headcount reductions in some international markets.
–CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo contributed to this article.
Read the full note from Jonah Peretti below:
Hi all, 
I am writing to announce some difficult news. We are reducing our workforce by approximately 15% today across our Business, Content, Tech and Admin teams, and beginning the process of closing BuzzFeed News. Additionally, we are proposing headcount reductions in some international markets.
Impacted employees (other than those in BuzzFeed News) will receive an email from HR shortly. If you are receiving this note from me, you are not impacted by today’s changes. For BuzzFeed News, we have begun discussions with the News Guild about these actions.
As part of today’s changes, both our CRO Edgar Hernandez and COO Christian Baesler have made the decision to exit the company. I’m grateful to both of them for their passion and dedication to Complex and to BuzzFeed, Inc. Christian will be with us through the end of April, and Edgar through the end of May to help with the transition.
Marcela Martin, our President, will take on responsibility for all revenue functions effective immediately. In the US, Andrew Guendjoian is our new Head of Sales, and Ken Blom will continue in his role as Head of Revenue Operations. Globally, International Sales will move under Rich Reid, Head of International and Head of Studio, also reporting to Marcela. 
I have great confidence in this revenue leadership team, and the early plans I’ve seen from them to accelerate performance from our Business Org. We will share more on their plans in the Business All Hands next week (and we are extending an invite company-wide). 
The changes the Business Organization is making today are focused on reducing layers in their organization, increasing speed and effectiveness of pitches, streamlining our product mix, doubling down on creators, and beginning to bring AI enhancements to every aspect of our sales process.
While layoffs are occurring across nearly every division, we’ve determined that the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News as a standalone organization. As a result, we will engage with the News Guild about our cost reduction plans and what this will mean for the affected union members. 
HuffPost and BuzzFeed Dot Com have signaled that they will open a number of select roles for members of BuzzFeed News. These roles will be aligned with those divisions’ business goals and match the skills and strengths of many of BuzzFeed News’s editors and reporters. We raised this idea with the News Guild this morning and look forward to discussing it further. Moving forward, we will have a single news brand in HuffPost, which is profitable, with a loyal direct front page audience.
I want to explain a little more about why we’ve come to these deeply painful decisions. We’ve faced more challenges than I can count in the past few years: a pandemic, a fading SPAC market that yielded less capital, a tech recession, a tough economy, a declining stock market, a decelerating digital advertising market and ongoing audience and platform shifts. Dealing with all of these obstacles at once is part of why we’ve needed to make the difficult decisions to eliminate more jobs and reduce spending. 
But I also want to be clear: I could have managed these changes better as the CEO of this company and our leadership team could have performed better despite these circumstances. Our job is to adapt, change, improve, and perform despite the challenges in the world. We can and will do better. 
In particular, the integration process of BuzzFeed and Complex, and the unification of our two business organizations, should have been executed faster and better. The macro environment is tough, but we had the potential to generate much more revenue than we delivered over the past 12 months. 
Additionally, I made the decision to overinvest in BuzzFeed News because I love their work and mission so much. This made me slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media. 
More broadly, I regret that I didn’t hold the company to higher standards for profitability, to give us the buffer needed to manage through economic and industry downturns and avoid painful days like today. Our mission, our impact on culture, and our audience is what matters most, but we need a stronger business to protect and sustain this important work. 
Please know that we exhausted many other cost saving measures to preserve as many jobs as possible. We are reducing budgets, open roles, travel and entertainment, and most other discretionary, non-revenue generating expenditures. Just as we reduced our footprint in NYC last year, we will be reducing our real estate in Los Angeles — from four buildings down to one, which saves millions in costs as well as mirrors our current hybrid state of work.
I’ve learned from these mistakes, and the team moving forward has learned from them as well. We know that the changes and improvements we are making today are necessary steps to building a better future. 
Over the next couple of months, we will work together to run a more agile and focused business organization with the capacity to bring in more revenue. We will concentrate our news efforts in HuffPost, a brand that is profitable with a highly engaged, loyal audience that is less dependent on social platforms. We will empower our editorial teams at all of our brands to do the very best creative work and build an interface where that work can be packaged and brought to advertisers more effectively. And we will bring more innovation to clients in the form of creators, AI, and cultural moments that can only happen across BuzzFeed, Complex, HuffPost, Tasty and First We Feast. 
It might not feel this way today, but I am confident the future of digital media is ours for the taking. Our industry is hurting and ready to be reborn. We are taking great pains today, and will begin to fight our way to a bright future. 
On Monday we’ll begin to have conversations with each division about the way forward. And in the meantime, I hope you can take time for yourselves this weekend.
Thank you for supporting one another on a difficult day.
Jonah More

AT&T shares declined after the company’s revenue came up short of Wall Street’s expectations.
The carrier’s quarterly revenue rose to $30.14 billion, falling just shy of the $30.27 billion expected by analysts.
Rivals Verizon and T-Mobile set to report next week. 

An attendee makes a phone call by the AT&T Inc. stand on day two of the Mobile World Congress at the Fira de Barcelona venue in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023.
Angel Garcia | Bloomberg | Getty Images

AT&T shares fell Thursday after the telecommunications giant reported first-quarter results that saw subscriber growth but a miss on revenue.
The stock closed down more than 10%, at $17.65.

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The company added 424,000 postpaid phone plans, which represents the amount of businesses and individual consumers that pay their bills at the end of each month. 
That matched Wall Street expectations but it marked a dip compared to AT&T’s previous numbers, especially earlier in the pandemic. In the year earlier period, AT&T added 691,000 postpaid phone subscribers. 
Investors look to postpaid phone numbers to measure the overall well-being of wireless companies’ profit centers. The early pandemic put an increased focus on the importance of a reliable cell connection, and analysts have been looking for slowdown indicators. 
During the company’s previous earnings call, AT&T executives said they expect wireless industry growth to return to “normalized” levels this year. 
Here’s how AT&T performed in the first quarter compared with what Wall Street anticipated, based on an average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: 60 cents adjusted vs 59 cents expected
Revenue: $30.14 billion vs $30.27 billion expected

For the quarter ended March 31, AT&T reported net income of $4.18 billion, or 57 cents a share, compared with $4.76 billion, or 65 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company posted adjusted per-share earnings of 60 cents for the period. The company’s quarterly revenue rose 1.4% to $30.14 billion from a year earlier.
The carrier’s operations produced $1 billion in free cash flow, which was below analyst estimates. 
On its earnings call Thursday, AT&T executives said the decline was “consistent with [its] expectations” due to the timing of capital investments and device payments. Executives said the company “remains confident” it will meet its forecast to generate around $16 billion in free cash flow this year. 
After selling off DirecTV in 2021, AT&T has increasingly focused on its growing its wireless and home internet services.
“We believe our results demonstrate that the customer-centric strategy we launched almost three years ago continues to deliver the right mix of quality subscriber and profit growth that will prove sustainable over the longer term,” CEO John Stankey said in the company’s earnings call.
Competitors Verizon and T-Mobile are set to report results next week.  More

Sales of previously owned homes declined 2.4% in March compared with February, according to the National Association of Realtors.
The weakness is likely due to a sharp jump in mortgage interest rates.
“Home sales are trying to recover and are highly sensitive to changes in mortgage rates,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors.

Homes in Centreville, Maryland, US, on Tuesday, April 4, 2023. 
Nathan Howard | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Sales of previously owned homes declined 2.4% in March compared with February, according to a monthly report from the National Association of Realtors.
At a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate, that amounts to 4.4 million units. Sales were 22% lower than March of last year.

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The weakness is likely due to a sharp jump in mortgage interest rates. With home prices still historically high, today’s buyers are increasingly sensitive to even daily moves in mortgage rates. The March sales were likely based on contracts signed in January and February, when rates were volatile.
The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage started January around 6.45%, and briefly dropped below 6% by the end of the month, according to Mortgage News Daily. But things turned around sharply in March, with the rate jumping straight back up to 6.45% in the first week of March and then continuing higher to end the month at 6.85%.
“Home sales are trying to recover and are highly sensitive to changes in mortgage rates,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the NAR. “Yet, at the same time, multiple offers on starter homes are quite common, implying more supply is needed to fully satisfy demand. It’s a unique housing market.”
Supply did increase slightly, but it is still historically low. At the end of March, there were 980,000 homes for sale, an increase of 1% from February and 5.4% from March 2022. At the current sales pace, that represents just a 2.6-month supply. A six-month supply is considered a balanced market between buyer and seller.
Inventory is now 41% lower than pre-Covid pandemic levels in 2019. New listings were down 17% from March 2022. The reason supply is higher is simply because homes are staying on the market longer, an average 29 days compared with 17 days a year ago.

That tight supply is keeping home prices from cooling quite as much as some had predicted. The median price of an existing home sold in March was $375,700, down 0.9% year over year. That is, however, the weakest read since January 2012. Regionally, prices rose everywhere but in the West, where homes are most expensive.
That median price also indicates that more homes are selling on the lower end of the market. Sales of homes priced over $1 million were down 29% from March 2022, but sales of homes priced between $250,000 and $500,000 declined by a smaller 14%.
“Affordability is not only an issue for first-time homebuyers, but also for many repeat buyers who still need to take on a mortgage,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist for Realtor.com, noting that a recent survey by the home listing site showed that 82% of potential sellers needing to sell and buy felt “locked in” by their existing low mortgage rate.
“This suggests that both existing home supply and demand will be sensitive to mortgage rate changes,” added Hale.
Cash continues to be king in the market, with all-cash transactions making up 27% of March sales, down slightly from 28% in February, but still higher than historical norms. Investors made up 17% of buyers, lower than the 25% share seen last summer. First-time buyers made up 28% of sales, down from 30% the year before. Historically that share is closer to 40%.
“High home prices and higher mortgage rates are clearly presenting challenges,” Yun said on the first-time buyer share.
Correction: Sales of homes priced between $250,000 and $500,000 declined by 14%. An earlier version misstated the range. More

Moderna and IBM are teaming up to use generative artificial intelligence and quantum computing to advance mRNA technology, the development at the core of the company’s Covid vaccine. 
The companies said they signed an agreement that would allow Moderna to access IBM’s quantum computing systems and generative AI model.
The agreement comes as Moderna navigates its post-pandemic boom driven by its mRNA Covid vaccine. 

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Moderna and IBM are teaming up to use generative artificial intelligence and quantum computing to advance mRNA technology, the development at the core of the company’s blockbuster Covid vaccine, the companies announced Thursday. 
“We are excited to partner with IBM to develop novel AI models to advance mRNA science, prepare ourselves for the era of quantum computing, and ready our business for these game-changing technologies,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.

Moderna shares dipped slightly Thursday, while IBM’s stock was about flat.
The companies said they signed an agreement for Moderna to access IBM’s quantum computing systems. Those systems could help accelerate Moderna’s discovery and creation of new messenger RNA vaccines and therapies, according to Dr. Dario Gil, director of IBM research. 
IBM will also provide experts who can help Moderna scientists explore the use of quantum technologies, the companies added. Unlike traditional computers, which store information as either zeroes or ones, quantum computing hinges on quantum physics. That allows those systems to solve problems too complex for today’s computers.
Under the deal, Moderna’s scientists will also have access to IBM’s generative AI model known as MoLFormer. Generative AI describes algorithms that can be used to create new content based on the data they have been trained on.
The companies said Moderna will use IBM’s model to understand “the characteristics of potential mRNA medicines” and design a new class of vaccines and therapies.

The agreement comes as Moderna navigates its post-pandemic boom driven by its mRNA Covid vaccine. 
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company became a household name for its messenger RNA technology, which teaches human cells to produce a protein that initiates an immune response against a certain disease. 
Moderna is trying to harness that technology to target other diseases as the world emerges from the pandemic and demand for blockbuster Covid vaccines and treatments slows. 
The company is already working to develop a vaccine targeting respiratory syncytial virus and a shot that can target different types of cancer when combined with Merck’s immunotherapy Keytruda. 
The new agreement also comes as IBM ramps up its investment in AI with new partnerships. Earlier this year, the Armonk, New York-based company announced a deal with NASA to help build AI foundation models to advance climate science. 
Those efforts fall in line with a recent boom in AI, largely driven by the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The AI-powered chatbot answers questions in clear, concise prose, and immediately caused a sensation after its launch. 
ChatGPT kicked off an AI arms race and prompted questions about the full extent of artificial intelligence’s capabilities and risks. More

Drive through any city in South-East Asia and Japan’s commercial presence is visible everywhere: vehicles made by Toyota, Honda and Nissan clog the roads, the result of decades of market dominance in the region. If Fast Retailing, the parent company behind Uniqlo, a clothing retailer, has its way, the drivers of those vehicles will soon be wearing Japanese clothes, too.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More