backing

NEW YORK — A few weeks before his stunning loss to Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic mayoral primary, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo put forth a political calculus long accepted as fact in New York: “Being a Democrat,” he said, “it’s synonymous that you support Israel.”

Mamdani, who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor, could be on the cusp of shattering that convention.

An unstinting supporter of Palestinian rights, the 34-year-old democratic socialist has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, backed the movement to boycott the country’s goods and pledged to have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if he sets foot in New York.

In a city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, where mayors have long been expected to make the long pilgrimage to the Jewish state, Mamdani identifies proudly as an “anti-Zionist.”

While he says he supports Israel’s right to exist, he describes any state or social hierarchy that favors Jews over others as incompatible with his belief in universal human rights.

City officials, Mamdani often points out, have no say in American foreign policy. And he has consistently and emphatically rejected claims that his criticism of Israel amounts to antisemitism, promising to work closely with those whom he doesn’t agree with if elected.

But as Cuomo and others have framed the race as a referendum on Israel, political observers say a Mamdani victory could reverberate far beyond New York, offering permission for Democrats to speak out on an issue long seen as a third rail of politics.

“This race is a proxy for where the party goes from here in terms of support for Israel — and that’s causing a lot of consternation,” said Basil Smikle, a former chief executive of the state’s Democratic Party. “We’re treading in territory that we’ve not really dealt with before.”

The ‘most important’ issue in the race

From the beginning, Cuomo has staked much of his political comeback on painting himself as a defender of Jewish security, both in New York and the Middle East.

Shortly before launching his campaign, he announced that he had joined Netanyahu’s legal defense team to defend the prime minister against war crimes charges brought by the International Criminal Court. He cast antisemitism as the “most important” issue facing the city and himself as a “hyper aggressive supporter of Israel.”

Mamdani’s own views, he said, presented an “existential” threat to New Yorkers.

Other candidates quickly rushed to burnish their own pro-Israel credentials, including Mayor Eric Adams, who announced he would run on an “EndAntisemitism” ballot line.

As they competed for support among Brooklyn’s prominent rabbis and other Jewish voters, each equated protests for Palestinian rights with support for terrorism and backed a contentious definition of antisemitism that includes certain criticism of Israel.

Days before dropping out last month, Adams shared a smiling photo with Netanyahu.

The strategy appeared willfully ignorant of polls showing growing public disapproval in the U.S. of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, according to Alyssa Cass, a longtime Democratic strategist.

She said a handful of deep-pocketed campaign donors and some city news outlets “created an impression that you could not ever question Israel, and that impression was completely divorced from reality.”

“The unique dynamics in New York were masking a broader, larger migration in public opinion that had been brewing for some time,” Cass added. “They didn’t realize that the ground beneath them had shifted.”

Shifting political winds

Still, with less than two weeks to go before the election, Cuomo has only leaned into the issue, claiming at Wednesday’s debate that Mamdani had “stoked the flames of hatred against the Jewish people.”

The broadsides have won support from the Anti-Defamation League and pro-Israel donors, like the hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman. But there is little indication that the strategy is working among ordinary New Yorkers.

In a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in early October, 41% of likely voters in New York City said Mamdani’s views on Israel aligned closest with their own, compared to 26% for Cuomo.

A Fox News poll conducted in mid-October found that 50% of registered voters in New York said they identified more with the Palestinians in the Middle East conflict, compared to 44% who identified more with the Israelis.

Those numbers have alarmed some Jewish leaders, who have laid at least some of the blame at Mamdani’s feet. In an open letter circulated this week, 650 rabbis warned that his candidacy has contributed to “rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization.”

Amy Spitalnick, the chief executive of the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, cautioned against drawing a direct link between Mamdani’s popularity and his pro-Palestinian stance.

She noted that most Jewish voters remain strong supporters of Israel, lamenting the fact that neither Mamdani nor Cuomo had articulated “the liberal nuanced perspective that most New York Jews hold.”

“Mamdani’s views on Israel matter, but it’s not the issue on which the majority of New Yorkers are voting,” she added. “If he wins, it’s because he ran a compelling campaign on making this city more affordable.”

Weaponization and authenticity

In debates and interviews, where Mamdani often faces a barrage of questions about his views on the Israel-Hamas war, he is quick to shift the focus to his platform, which includes freezing the rent for regulated apartments, making buses free and lowering the cost of child care.

“I have denounced Hamas again and again,” an exasperated Mamdani said during a debate last week. “It will never be enough for Andrew Cuomo.”

At Wednesday’s debate, Mamdani again spoke of his proposal to increase funding for hate crime prevention and his recent outreach to Jewish voters about their fears of antisemitism.

“They deserve a leader who takes it seriously, who roots it out of these five boroughs, not one who weaponizes it as a means by which to score political points on a debate stage,” he added.

But despite months of vitriolic backlash, Mamdani has stood firm on his core criticism of Israel. In his statement marking the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, he condemned both Hamas’ “horrific war crimes” and Israel’s occupation, apartheid and “genocidal war” in Gaza.

Whether or not those views are shared by the broader electorate, the consistency of the message has served as “proxy for authenticity” in the minds of voters, according to Peter Feld, a progressive political consultant.

And it has offered a sharp contrast with not only Cuomo, but other pro-Israel Democrats in New York, including Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Both have spent weeks rebuffing questions about whether they will endorse Mamdani, indicating they were still meeting and speaking with the Democratic nominee.

“The allies divided up Europe in fewer meetings,” scoffed Cass. “At this point, they’re ignoring the majoritarian view of their voters, and there’s no way around that.”

In recent weeks, Feld said he had spoken to several potential candidates weighing primary challenges to other pro-Israel Democratic incumbents.

“Mamdani changed how candidates and donors think about what is politically possible,” Feld said. “We’ve seen that siding with Palestine over Israel doesn’t make you radioactive. It shows voters that you’ll stick to your principles.”

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.

Quantum computing is becoming a popular investment theme in the market, but there’s just one problem: It’s still a few years away from commercial relevance. This makes it nearly impossible to predict which company will be a major winner in this field. Adding to the difficulty of quantum computing investing is that the technology is incredibly complicated and can be difficult to understand. However, not investing in quantum computing could be a massive mistake for your portfolio’s future returns.

So, what should investors do? One advantage investors can get in this investment sector is looking at which competitors have strong backers. Amazon (AMZN -0.61%) is one tech giant that is investing in this space and is backing one of the leading pure plays: IonQ (IONQ -3.92%). This gives IonQ a vote of confidence from one of the biggest companies in the world, making IonQ an intriguing stock to invest in.

Amazon owns a small amount of IonQ

We know that Amazon is investing in IonQ from its Form 13F, which informs investors what other stock holdings Amazon has because its investment portfolio is greater than $100 million. As of its last report filed for Q2 holdings, Amazon holds nine stocks, with IonQ being one of them.

Amazon holds just over 850,000 shares of IonQ. While that may sound like a lot, that’s only about 0.3% of IonQ’s total shares outstanding. So, Amazon isn’t a controlling party in IonQ; it’s just an investor like you and me (although it has a lot more capital than you and me).

Just because Amazon doesn’t own 10% or so of the company doesn’t mean this isn’t an insignificant investment. Amazon clearly likes what it saw, and with Amazon having more technical prowess than the average investor, I think this makes IonQ an intriguing quantum computing investment.

One thing that sets IonQ apart from its competitors is the path it’s taking. While most quantum computing players are using superconducting technology, which requires cooling a particle to nearly absolute zero, IonQ uses a trapped-ion approach, which can be performed at room temperature. Furthermore, the trapped-ion technique is inherently more accurate than superconducting, which is a trade-off for slower processing speeds.

Because the biggest hurdle in quantum computing technology is accuracy, I think IonQ is one of the more compelling investment options right now, as it is the leader in this category, holding two world records.

This makes IonQ my top option in the quantum computing investment world. But is the stock worth buying right now?

An investment in IonQ will be volatile

IonQ has had an incredible run over the past few months as quantum computing investing has risen in popularity. The stock is up around 90% since the start of September, which is a massive movement considering that we’re still years away from viable quantum computing technology.

Most companies in this realm point toward 2030 as the turning point for quantum computing adoption, and IonQ is no different. Earlier this year, IonQ’s CEO Peter Chapman gave investors the projection that the company will be profitable with sales approaching $1 billion by 2030. That’s still five years away, which is a long time to wait and hold the stock to see if IonQ is an eventual winner in the quantum computing arms race.

With how much attention quantum computing has gotten in recent weeks, it’s impossible to tell where the stocks involved in this sector will head. It’s possible that there is a quantum computing investing mania ongoing, and the stocks continue to rise at an irrational pace.

It’s also possible that the stock could be ripe for a sell-off, especially after the past few weeks of strong gains. However, as long-term investors, we need to avoid that noise. If you’re buying IonQ stock now, you need to have the mindset of buying and holding through at least 2030, regardless of what the roller coaster ride of the stock market is like.

If you’re confident in IonQ, buying today makes sense, but your measure of success cannot be the stock price; it must be the company’s announcements. If IonQ wins the quantum computing arms race, the stock will be a winner over the long term, but keep in mind that it will be incredibly volatile along the way.

Serve Robotics (SERV -0.55%) develops autonomous last-mile logistics solutions. It has a major deal with Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER) that will see thousands of its latest robots deployed into the Uber Eats food delivery network. But this is more than just a commercial partnership, because Uber is also one of Serve’s largest shareholders.

Uber acquired a company called Postmates in 2020, and in 2021, it spun Postmates’ robotics division out into a new company that became Serve Robotics. Serve is still relatively small with a market capitalization of just $890 million, but at the time of this writing, its stock has soared by 67% over the past year alone.

Serve has identified an enormous addressable market for its delivery robots, so should investors join Uber and buy the stock?

Image source: Getty Images.

A potential $450 billion opportunity

Existing last-mile logistics networks are quite inefficient, because they rely on cars with human drivers to deliver relatively small commercial loads from restaurants and retail stores. Serve is betting those workloads will increasingly shift to autonomous robots and drones, creating a potential $450 billion opportunity by 2030.

Serve’s latest Gen 3 robots have achieved Level 4 autonomy, meaning they can safely operate on sidewalks in designated areas without any human intervention. This makes them ideal for transporting small food orders, which is why 2,500 restaurants in five U.S. cities have used them to make 100,000 deliveries since 2022.

The Gen 3 robots use Nvidia‘s Jetson Orin platform, which includes all of the computing hardware and artificial intelligence (AI) software they need to operate autonomously. Having such a powerful technology partner will help Serve scale as quickly as possible, which is key to bringing costs down to management’s target of just $1 per delivery. At that point, using robots will be substantially cheaper than using human drivers.

Serve has a contract with Uber Eats to deploy 2,000 robots across Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago before the end of 2025. The company rolled out its 1,000th robot on Oct. 6, meaning its capacity will double in just the next few months.

But it won’t stop there, because last week Serve announced a new multiyear deal with DoorDash, which operates the largest food delivery network in the U.S. The two companies are yet to provide firm numbers, so it’s unclear how many more robots Serve will have to deploy.

Scaling a robotics business is not cheap

Despite its status as a publicly traded company, Serve is still very much a start-up. Its revenue tends to be quite lumpy, which is typical when a product is in the early stages of commercialization. The company brought in just $642,000 in revenue during the second quarter of 2025 (ended June 30), which is a tiny amount relative to its $890 million market cap.

But Serve’s business could scale extremely quickly. Management thinks the company will generate up to $80 million in annual revenue once all 2,000 Gen 3 robots are up and running, which bodes well for 2026. Wall Street predicts Serve will generate $3.6 million in total revenue this year (according to Yahoo! Finance), so $80 million would be a monumental jump.

But so far, the road to commercialization has been paved with substantial losses. Serve lost $33.7 million on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis during the first half of 2025, so it’s on track to exceed its 2024 loss of $39.2 million by a very wide margin. The company spent $16 million on research and development alone during the first half of this year, so based on its minuscule revenues, its losses are no surprise.

Serve had $183 million in cash on hand as of June 30, and it raised a further $100 million from investors in October, so it has enough cushion to sustain its losses for the next few years (assuming they don’t materially increase). However, if the company doesn’t chart a pathway to profitability by then, it might have to raise even more money, which will dilute existing shareholders.

As a result, there is a lot riding on the successful commercialization of Serve’s 2,000 Gen 3 robots.

Serve stock trades at a sky-high valuation, but is it a buy?

Serve stock is extremely expensive right now. Its price-to-sales (P/S) ratio is a mind-boggling 486, making it substantially more expensive than any other major AI stock. Palantir Technologies, which also trades at a sky-high valuation, looks cheap by comparison because its P/S ratio is 128. For some further perspective, Nvidia stock has a P/S ratio of just 27.

SERV PS Ratio data by YCharts

With that said, if we assume Serve will generate around $80 million in revenue next year, its forward P/S ratio is just 11. In other words, it almost looks like a bargain.

But investors can’t always rely on management’s guidance, especially in this case because it assumes a perfectly smooth transition to commercialization for the Gen 3 robot. As with any new product, there will probably be bumps in the road, and we simply don’t know if it will scale successfully.

As a result, investors might be better off waiting a few more quarters to see if the rollout of the robots actually translates into as much tangible revenue as management expects. If it doesn’t, Serve stock could suffer a sharp correction because of its current valuation.