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Meta announced Quest 3, a sequel to the bestselling VR headset of all time, on Wednesday.

The device, starting at $499, is more expensive than its predecessor by $200, but it includes a more powerful chip from Qualcomm, better screens and an ability called “passthrough” which is expected to be one of the key features on Apple’s competing Vision Pro headset.

Preorders open on Wednesday and it ships on Oct. 10.

The defining feature of the Quest 3 headset is the ability to quickly see the world outside the headset, which will make the device less isolating and thus more comfortable to use for long periods. When in an app on the Quest 3, double-tapping any part of the headset brings you out of a virtual world and into “passthrough” mode.

Other improvements include “pancake lenses,” a kind of optic first used on Meta’s $1,499 Quest Pro that make images sharper and allows for higher resolution.

The release of Meta’s latest VR headset comes as a battle looms with Apple in virtual reality. Many in the technology industry believe Apple’s entrance could expand the total market and create new winners, similar to how the iPhone jump-started the smartphone market.

So far Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has a head start. Its Quest 2 is by far the bestselling VR headset, with nearly 10 million units sold last year, slightly down from a pandemic peak, according to an industry estimate. Apple’s Vision Pro headset won’t go on sale until next year, and costs significantly more than Meta’s headsets, starting at $3,499.

But despite Meta’s current success in sales, it’s not clear just how many Quest 2 owners use it on a daily or weekly basis, and the killer app or must-have scenario for VR remains elusive. Meta has invested over $21 billion to date in its Reality Labs division, which develops headsets and VR software.

Passthrough

CNBC was able to try out the Quest 3 for about an hourlong demo ahead of its launch Wednesday that included game playing and being walked through a few programs that showed off the company’s hardware.

The hardware has been significantly updated, with a new headband strap and a slimmer headset shape. The headband splits the top strap into two to better distribute weight. The whole headset, though, is a hair heavier than its predecessor at 515 grams. The speakers on the device also have been improved, and provide a quality audio experience.

Meta has also updated the two necessary controllers with better haptic feedback. It uses Qualcomm‘s Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip, which is Arm-based and closer in power and energy drain to a mobile processor than a PC processor.

The extra power on the chip is used to power displays at 2,064 x 2,208 resolution per eye, higher than the Quest 2’s 1,832 x 1,920 resolution per eye. The additional pixels will make it easier to read text inside the headset. Users can expect about two hours and 12 minutes of battery life, Meta says.

During the demo, I tried out Samba de Amigo, a $30 game from Sega that is like Dance Dance Revolution or Rock Band with maracas (in real life, the Quest 3 controllers). I enjoyed it, and even sweated a little bit.

The biggest improvement to usability is that the Quest 3 emphasizes passthrough, which means the cameras outside the device can show live video on the displays inside the headset, working somewhat like a transparent pair of glasses that can also show computer windows and other graphics. The Quest 3 can also scan the room around you so apps can warn you when you’re about to bump into your surroundings.

Passthrough, while a core component of mixed-reality experiences which integrate computer graphics with the real world, for now is a nice-to-have usability feature. In practice, it means that users can stop their game or experience inside the Quest 3 without taking the headset off. During the demo, I was able to chat with Meta officials while wearing the headset, a major improvement over the last version.

Meta’s launch of the Quest 3 will be compared to Apple’s more expensive Vision Pro headset. But while Apple packed as much pricey technology into its headset as possible to enable its own passthrough mode it calls “spatial computing,” Meta is seeking to match many of its features, or at least an approximation of them, at a fraction of the price. Meta’s $1,499 Quest Pro is a lower-volume product.

But if there’s one major difference between Meta and Apple at this point, it’s that the former envisions the Quest mainly as a gaming device, while Apple frames its device as a computer. Meta says it’s lined up 500 games and apps for the headset, including a Ghostbusters title, an Assassin’s Creed game, and a Stranger Things experience developed in conjunction with Netflix.

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AMD’s Lisa Su sees 35% annual sales growth driven by ‘insatiable’ AI demand

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AMD's Lisa Su sees 35% annual sales growth driven by 'insatiable' AI demand

Lisa Su, chair and chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), during a Bloomberg Television interview in San Francisco, California, US, on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

AMD CEO Lisa Su said on Tuesday that the company’s overall revenue growth would expand to about 35% per year over the next three to five years, driven by “insatiable” demand for artificial intelligence chips.

Su said that much of that would be captured by the company’s AI data center business, which it expects to grow at about 80% per year over the same time period, on track to hit tens of billions of dollars of sales by 2027.

“This is what we see as our potential given the customer traction, both with the announced customers, as well as customers that are currently working very closely with us,” Su told analysts.

Ultimately, Su said that AMD could be able to achieve “double-digit” share in the data center AI chip market over the next three to five years.

AMD shares fell 3% in extended trading.

The AI chip market is currently dominated by Nvidia, which has over 90% of the market share, according to some estimates, and which has given the company a market cap of over $4.6 trillion, versus AMD’s roughly $387 billion valuation.

AMD is holding its first financial analyst day since 2022, as the company has found itself at the center of a boom in data center spending for AI.

While companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in total on graphics processing unit (GPU) chips to build and power artificial intelligence applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, they are also looking for alternatives to increase capacity and control costs. AMD is the only other major developer of GPUs aside from Nvidia.

In October, AMD announced a partnership with OpenAI in which it would sell the AI startup billions of dollars in its Instinct AI chips over multiple years, starting with enough chips in 2026 to use 1 gigawatt of power.

As part of the deal, OpenAI could end up taking a 10% stake in the chipmaker. Su also highlighted long-term deals with Oracle and Meta on Tuesday.

AMD shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025.

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OpenAI is also helping AMD set up its next-generation systems based around its Instinct MI400X AI chips, which ship next year.

AMD has said that its chips will be able to be assembled into a “rack-scale” system where 72 of its chips work together as one, which is essential for running the largest AI models.

If AMD succeeds at its rack, it will catch up with Nvidia’s AI chips, which have been offered in rack-scale systems for three product generations.

Su said that the company now sees the total market for AI data center parts and systems hitting $1 trillion per year in 2030, representing 40% annual growth per year. AMD reported $5 billion in AI chip sales in its fiscal 2024.

That’s up from the company’s previous forecast of a $500 billion market in 2028 for AI chips. But the updated AMD figure also includes central processors (CPU), an important kind of chip that sits at the heart of a computer, but isn’t a pure AI accelerator like the GPUs made by Nvidia and AMD.

AMD’s Epyc CPUs are still the company’s most important product by sales. It primarily competes with Intel and some smaller Arm-based processors in the CPU market. AMD also makes chips for game consoles, networking parts, and other devices.

On Tuesday, although AMD focused much of its focus on its growing AI business, it told shareholders that its older businesses were growing too.

“The other message that we want to leave you with today is every other part of our business is firing on all cylinders, and that’s actually a very nice place to be,” Su said.

AMD delivers third quarter beat and forecast raise

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CoreWeave CEO responds to data center delays as stock plunges. Core Scientific shares fall

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CoreWeave CEO responds to data center delays as stock plunges. Core Scientific shares fall

CoreWeave CEO responds to data center delay as stock falls

CoreWeave shares sank 13% on Tuesday after CEO Mike Intrator addressed delays at a third-party data center developer that hit full-year guidance in its latest earnings report.

“Quite frankly, every single part of this quarter went exactly as we planned, except for one delay at a singular data center,” Intrator told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday.

He then clarified that a “singular data center provider” is more accurate.

“Some people might think it’s one complex, but when I go over the numbers, we’re talking about multiple places,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said. “And it just so happens that the places are all connected to an outfit called Core Scientific that you tried to buy.”

Cramer noted delays at complexes in Texas, Oklahoma and North Carolina.

Intrator said the companies have been working together on infrastructure for a long time a would continue work to bring it online. He did not directly confirm that Core Scientific is the third-party provider.

CoreWeave tried to acquire Core Scientific for $9 billion earlier this year. Core Scientific shareholders voted against the proposed deal. Core Scientific shares sank 7% Tuesday.

During CoreWeave’s quarterly earnings call on Monday, JPMorgan Securities analyst Mark Murphy asked if the delay was related to Core Scientific, but Intrator declined to name the company. At another point in the call, the CEO suggested that just one data center, not multiple sites, were affected.

“There was a problem at one data center that’s impacting us, but there are 41 data centers in our portfolio,” Intrator said.

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At a different point in the call, CoreWeave’s CFO Nitin Agrawal said the delays stem from “a single provider, data center provider partner.”

When reached for comment about how many sites were affected, CoreWeave did not provide a number and pointed to Intrator’s statements on the earnings call and during his “Squawk on the Street” interview.

CoreWeave, which provides infrastructure for artificial intelligence companies, reported third-quarter results on Monday that showed $1.36 billion in revenue for the period, up 134% from $583.9 million a year ago. But CoreWeave now sees 2025 revenue coming in between $5.05 billion and $5.15 billion, below the average analyst estimate of $5.29 billion.

Intrator told CNBC on Tuesday that CoreWeave has teams of employees working with contractors and Core Scientific at those sites “every single day” to get things back on track.

“It became apparent to us in Q3 that there were delays at the facility,” Intrator said. “CoreWeave responded by deploying our own boots on the ground to ensure that everything was being done in order to move those facilities along as quickly as possible.”

Intrator told analysts on Monday that the delays would not affect its backlog or get the full value from contracts.

Core Scientific did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CoreWeave has been on a deal-making blitz as big tech companies and AI startups race to build out their computing infrastructure.

The company announced in September that it agreed to provide Meta with $14.2 billion of AI cloud infrastructure, just days after expanding its contract with OpenAI to $22.4 billion.

CoreWeave slides after earnings: Here's what to know

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Analysts call this lagging portfolio stock a buy — plus, what’s behind Nvidia’s decline

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Analysts call this lagging portfolio stock a buy — plus, what's behind Nvidia's decline

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