| |  | Jul 29, 2025 | | | | | | Happy Tuesday! Sales of Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses tripled in the first half of 2025. Fireworks AI is in talks to raise funding at a $4 billion valuation. Nvidia orders more H20 chips from TSMC as demand from Chinese customers soars.
| | | | Sales of Meta Platforms' Ray-Ban smart glasses more than tripled in the first half of the year from the same period a year earlier, Ray-Ban parent company EssilorLuxottica said in a press release on Monday. EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said on Monday that the company expected "a very fast ramp up" in the availability and distribution of a new line of Meta smart glasses, which will be under another EssilorLuxottica brand, Oakley. The full set of Meta's Oakley smart glasses will be available later this summer. In February, EssilorLuxottica announced plans to grow its annual production capacity for smart glasses to 10 million units by the end of next year. The company did not say its previous production capacity but said at the time that it had sold 2 million pairs of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses since September 2023. Milleri also said on Monday that the company believed it would need to grow its production capacity even further "at a certain point." | | | | Fireworks AI, a three-year-old startup that rents out Nvidia chip servers to developers that use artificial intelligence models, is in talks to raise funding at a $4 billion valuation in a round led by new investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Index Ventures, The Information reported. A valuation at that level would be seven times its valuation in a funding round a year ago. The investment talks follow growth in the company's business, which aims to run and customize open-source AI models faster and more cheaply than traditional cloud providers like Amazon and Google. The Redwood City, Calif., based startup recently generated revenue at a $200 million annual pace and expects to hit $300 million by year-end. | | | | Nvidia last week ordered an additional 300,000 H20 chips from its manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, as surging demand from Chinese tech companies prompted the U.S. firm to reconsider its initial plan to sell only its current stockpile, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing two sources. Nvidia developed the H20 for the Chinese market in 2023 to comply with U.S. export restrictions. The Trump administration this month allowed Nvidia to resume sales of the H20 to China, reversing a ban that was put in place in April over national security concerns. Nvidia needs export licenses from the U.S. Commerce Department to ship the H20 chips to China. While the company was assured that approval would be granted soon, the department has not yet approved them, according to Reuters. Nvidia initially told some of its Chinese customers that it had only limited stock of the H20 due to supply chain constraints, and was yet to restart production plans, The Information reported earlier this month. CEO Jensen Huang said restarting H20 production could take about nine months. | | | | Waymo said Monday that it would begin offering robotaxi rides in Dallas next year in partnership with Avis Budget Group. Avis, a rental car and fleet management company, will be in charge of maintaining Waymo's robotaxis and the depots they're stored in. Waymo completes more than a quarter million trips across five cities. It also plans to launch in Miami and Washington, D.C. next year. | | | | Samsung will produce chips for Tesla through a multiyear deal worth $16.5 billion, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Monday. Tesla's next-generation AI6 chip will be manufactured by Samsung in the U.S., Musk said on X. Samsung said in a Monday securities filing that it had signed a deal with an unnamed large global company worth $16.5 billion that will run through 2033. Samsung shares closed up 7% on Monday. Musk said on Tesla's earnings call last week that the AI6 chip, alongside Tesla's next-generation planned Dojo 3 chip, will go in self-driving cars, data centers and Optimus humanoid robots. Samsung currently manufactures Tesla's AI4 chip, according to Musk. Rival chipmaker TSMC will manufacture the AI5 chip, which "just finished design," initially in Taiwan and then in its Arizona facility, Musk said. Samsung will then make the AI6 in its Taylor, Texas plant, according to Musk. | | | | Warner Bros. Discovery has revealed the company names and leadership structures after its planned split into two separate companies next year. WBD's current "Streaming & Studios" segment, which houses its film and TV studios and the HBO Max streaming service, will be named Warner Bros. The company's "Global Networks" unit, which includes its cable TV channels such as CNN, TNT and Discovery as well as the Discovery+ streaming service, will be named Discovery Global. Warner Bros. will be led by current WBD president and CEO David Zaslav, who will retain the same title at the new company. Its leadership ranks will include Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max, Bruce Campbell as chief operating officer, and JB Perrette, CEO and president of streaming and games. Discovery Global, meanwhile, will be led by current WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfals, who will become president and CEO of the new company. He will be joined by Gerhard Zeiler, president of Discovery's businesses in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, as well as Discovery+, and the heads of CNN and TNT Sports, among others. As part of the split, WBD said it has begun searches for both a CFO and chief people and culture officer for Warner Bros., as well as a chief communications and public affairs officer for Discovery Global. | | | | PayPal will allow U.S. merchants to start accepting crypto in the coming weeks, with the payment giant adding support for transactions in more than 100 cryptocurrencies and crypto wallets from companies including Coinbase and Metamask. When a shopper pays with crypto, the funds will be converted into fiat or into PYUSD, PayPal's stablecoin, when transferred to the merchant's account. PayPal says the ability to accept crypto payments will help merchants lower costs and settle transactions faster, particularly for cross-border payments. PayPal will charge merchants a transaction fee of 0.99% for crypto transactions, lower than the cost of a typical credit-card transaction. Since 2020, PayPal has allowed users to buy and hold cryptocurrencies in their PayPal wallets, and later expanded that ability to Venmo. Other e-commerce and payments companies have been adding the ability for merchants to accept crypto and stablecoin payments: last month, Shopify and Coinbase said that Shopify merchants could begin accepting payments in USDC. | | | | DoorDash hired longtime ad executive Lee Brown as chief revenue officer, although Brown won't oversee DoorDash's growing ad business. Instead, Brown will deal with business development and accounting management with restaurants, grocery stores and other merchants, reporting to Chief Operating Officer Prabir Adarkar. DoorDash's ad business is overseen by Toby Espinosa, who also reports to Adarkar. Brown joins from Spotify, where he had been global head of advertising for nearly six years. Before that he was at BuzzFeed for nearly five years. Earlier in his career he worked at Yahoo for more than 11 years. | | | | Citigroup tech dealmaker Phil Drury will join AI startup Poolside as the firm's first chief investment officer after 29 years at the investment bank. Drury most recently served as the head of Global Technology, Media, Communications Banking at Citigroup and had held various positions within the investment bank, including head of Americas Equity Capital Markets. He has advised on several high-profile initial public offerings including Alibaba's $21 billion debut on New York Stock Exchange in 2014 and Facebook's $16 billion IPO in 2012. Poolside is developing foundation models, a coding assistant and two coding-focused models for engineering tasks and simpler code completion. In October 2024, it was valued at a $3 billion valuation after raising $500 million from investors led by Bain Capital Ventures. A spokesperson for Citi confirmed his departure but declined to comment further. | | | | E-commerce retailer Quince is raising roughly $200 million in new funding, in a round that more than doubles the company's valuation to $4.5 billion, Bloomberg reported. The investment firm Iconiq is leading the round, the report said. A Quince spokesperson didn't immediately have a comment. The new capital would bring Quince's fundraising total to more than $500 million, according to PitchBook data. The company last raised $120 million in a round led by Notable Capital and Wellington Management in 2024. Quince has become popular on social media for its low-priced versions of luxury goods, like $50 cashmere sweaters. It sells a range of items, from apparel and accessories to furniture and diamond jewelry. The company, which launched sales in 2020, helps keep costs low by shipping many items directly to shoppers from manufacturers, a strategy also used by China-founded retailers Temu and Shein. | | | Popular articles By Theo Wayt and Rocket Drew
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