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Sep 18, 2025
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Happy Thursday! Google and the Department of Justice file competing proposals in an antitrust search case. Meta Platforms introduces new smart glasses with a display. Huawei unveils a three-year roadmap for its AI chips to challenge Nvidia's dominance.
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Meta Platforms introduced a version of its Ray-Ban smart glasses with a display and a wristband for controlling the device at its developer conference Connect on Wednesday. The company also unveiled a new generation of its Ray-Ban smart glasses with several improvements but no display, as well as another version of its Oakley-branded smart glasses that wraps around the face and has one camera on the nose bridge. “Our goal is to build great looking glasses that deliver personal superintelligence and a feeling of presence using realistic holograms,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a keynote speech at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. “These ideas combined will be called the metaverse.” The glasses with the display come with a wristband controller that interprets hand motions so that people
wearing it can complete tasks like sending text messages. However, a live demonstration of the controller went awry on Wednesday, with Zuckerberg failing to make a video call with Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth. The glasses with a display will cost $799, and the new Oakley-branded glasses will cost $499. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses have been a bright spot for its augmented and virtual reality arm, Reality Labs. In July, the company attributed revenue growth in the division to increased sales of the glasses. Still, the unit’s operating losses have ballooned in recent years, from $4.5 billion in 2019 to $17.7 billion in 2024.
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China’s tech giant Huawei Technologies unveiled on Thursday a three-year roadmap for its artificial intelligence chips designed to challenge Nvidia’s stranglehold on the market. The roadmap is the latest example of China’s effort to reduce its dependence on American semiconductor technology. The Shenzhen-based company plans to release four new generations of its Ascend AI chips through 2028, starting with two variants of the Ascend 950 series in 2026, followed by the Ascend 960 in 2027 and the Ascend 970 in 2028. The company also said it will launch computing clusters capable of linking up more AI chips efficiently. The announcement is highly unusual for Huawei, which has been extremely secretive about its semiconductor development since U.S. sanctions severed the company from global supply chains in 2019. The
rare public disclosure signals Huawei’s confidence in Chinese chipmaking capabilities and the urgency of China’s push to achieve self-reliance in key AI chip supply.. Eric Xu, Huawei’s deputy chairman, said at Huawei’s annual Connect conference that the new Ascend 950 series in 2026 will feature Huawei’s own high-bandwidth memory, addressing a critical bottleneck that previously forced the company to rely on South Korean and U.S. suppliers. The announcement confirmed The Information’s report last year that Huawei is leading a group of Chinese chip firms to produce high-bandwidth memory chips in 2026.
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Cloud security startup Netskope has priced its planned initial public offering at $19 per share, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plans. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup earlier this week lifted its price range to $17 to $19 per share from $15 to $17, The Information previously reported. It is offering 47.8 million shares in the IPO, meaning it is raising $908.2 million. The pricing hasn’t previously been reported. Netskope, founded in 2012, develops cloud security software that helps
businesses protect websites and data from cybersecurity attacks.
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A group of California-based nonprofits sent a letter to the state’s attorney general Rob Bonta on Wednesday asking him to reject OpenAI’s recent proposal to give the nonprofit that governs OpenAI a stake worth $100 billion in the for-profit arm of the ChatGPT maker. “The proposed $100 billion stake likely undervalues the removal of the capped-profit structure, given OpenAI’s valuation surge from $86 billion to over $500 billion,” the letter said. “Only a transparent process will ensure charitable assets are not undersold.” OpenAI is seeking to convert its for-profit arm into a more traditional corporation, replacing investors’ current capped-profit shares with equity stakes. The letter raised concerns about the charity’s ability to control the activities of its for-profit entity, especially if OpenAI’s planned corporate restructuring would reduce the nonprofit’s influence. As evidence of these concerns, the letter pointed to recent child safety incidents involving ChatGPT and OpenAI’s lobbying efforts against state AI regulation. It demanded that the charity’s assets that are not used to govern the business be redirected to independent entities that won’t have potential conflicts of interest with the business. Signatories to the letter included Encode, LatinoProsperity, TechEquity and the San Francisco Foundation, which have criticized OpenAI’s planned restructuring for the possibility that it could
short-change the charity.
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Tesla has settled two lawsuits over crashes involving its Autopilot driver assistance software that were due to go to trial in California next month. The settlements come weeks after Tesla was found partially liable in a similar lawsuit over another crash in Florida. The lawsuits Tesla settled this month both involve separate fatal crashes that occurred in California in 2019 when drivers were using Autopilot software, according to Reuters, which cited court filings in Los Angeles and Alameda counties. Financial details of the
settlements were not disclosed. In August, a Florida jury found Tesla partially to blame for a fatal crash involving Autopilot and ordered the company to pay $243 million in damages. Tesla is appealing the Florida verdict. The heightened scrutiny of Tesla’s driving software comes as the company looks to build a robotaxi business. It has launched ride-hailing services in Austin and San Francisco but has backup humans inside its vehicles in both cities.
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