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This was what you call an ugly day in the markets. Tech stocks sold off across the board, thanks to rising expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates. SpaceX stock fell nearly 5%, dragging it back below Amazon in market capitalization. But SpaceX, at least, is coming off a big rally. Software stocks such as Microsoft, Salesforce and ServiceNow also tumbled between 4% and 5%—and they’ve already been under severe pressure.
Software stocks resumed their Saaspocalypse slump in early June after a late spring rally had helped them recover much of the ground they lost in the winter. At today’s close, Salesforce is down 41% for the year, while ServiceNow is off 38% and Microsoft is down 21.6%, by far the worst performance of any big tech name.
The second-worst big-tech performer, incidentally, is Meta Platforms, down 14% for the year to date, while Tesla is No. 3, down 11.9%, according to Koyfin data. Tesla is now worth 59% of SpaceX, despite having five times as much revenue in 2025. If Elon Musk decides to merge Tesla and SpaceX, figuring out a stock swap ratio is going to be fun!
The Spectacle of Snap
Here’s a question: How big a write-off will Snap have to take when it inevitably scraps its just-released augmented reality glasses? Since the social media firm unveiled the spectacles on Tuesday, the social media reaction has been, well, derisive. Snap stock, already in the toilet, has fallen further down the sewer pipes, closing Wednesday down 8% to $4.74.
There are three reasons for the scathing reaction. The glasses are (a) insanely expensive at $2,195; (b) way too heavy, weighing 132 grams or 135 gm depending on the model, compared to the Meta Ray-Bans’ 48 gm or 50 gm; and (c) incredibly ugly. Here’s a video of CEO Evan Spiegel wearing them. Enough said.
While some tech reviewers were positive, even they made clear that these aren’t mass-market devices. CNET, for instance, suggested, “Snap’s Specs could end up in art museums, theme parks and pop-up experiences where people can try them out.” Spiegel’s pitch is that the glasses will transform computing, allowing people to look up from their phones. That day may be coming, but not with these glasses.
It’s true that Snap has a jump on rivals like Meta, which is working on similar glasses (and has had a hit with its Ray-Ban smart glasses). But that won’t be worth much if, as seems likely, these glasses fall flat.
Those with a long memory will recall that Snap has gone through this kind of thing before: In 2017, it wrote off $40 million for unsold inventory related to its camera-equipped spectacles.
At that time, Spiegel suggested hardware would be important to Snap “maybe in a decade.” Well, it’s nine years on from when he made that statement, and hardware today appears to be no more important to Snap than it was then. The company remains dependent on advertising, where its business is growing much more slowly than those of rivals, both bigger (like Meta) and smaller (like Pinterest). The new glasses aren’t likely to change that situation.
In Other News
• SpaceX added Roelof Botha to its board of directors, the company said in a securities filing on Wednesday. Botha was a longtime leader at Sequoia Capital, a major SpaceX investor.
• Microsoft is considering adding Chinese AI developer DeepSeek’s V4 as a cheaper model option for powering the Copilot Cowork AI assistant, Axios reported.
• Rumble, which started in 2013 as a YouTube alternative and hosts conservative content, completed a stock-for-stock transaction Wednesday to acquire data center company Northern Data, becoming the latest company to join the mad dash to rent out Nvidia graphics processing units to AI developers.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company plans to raise prices to offset drastically higher costs of memory, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Today on The Information’s TITV
Check out today’s episode of TITV in which we unpack how Anthropic’s showdown with the government is spilling into the rest of tech.
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