Xreal Air 2 in action. Xreal’s augmented reality glasses is compatible with gaming consoles and can allow users to play games on a large virtual screen
Xreal
Chinese augmented reality (AR) firm Xreal on Tuesday launched its next-generation glasses, as interest continues to rise in the technology that many tech giants like Apple and Meta see as the next big consumer product after the smartphone.
The Xreal Air 2 and Xreal Air 2 Pro are lightweight glasses, rather than bulky headsets, as the company bets on this kind of device appealing to a wider array of consumers looking for an easy-to-wear product.
“The Air 2 was designed primarily with a focus on improving the comfort while people are using it,” Peng Jin, co-founder of Xreal, told CNBC in an interview on Tuesday.
AR refers to technology where digital experiences are imposed over the real world. Xreal glasses allow users to have large-screen experiences of apps, such as streaming services or gaming. Xreal’s AR glasses can connect to smartphones, game consoles and other devices, allowing a user to open an app and see what they’re viewing on a virtual screen up to 330-inches.
Xreal is launching the glasses in the U.S., U.K. and in some markets in Europe. The Xreal Air 2 starts at $399 while the Pro versions starts at $449. The gear will be available for order in November.
The company said it has managed to use smaller displays inside the device, resulting in AR glasses that are 10% lighter than the previous generation. Xreal also said it has improved the headset speakers to prevent as much sound from escaping.
The first generation of the Xreal Air was released last year.
Tech giants bet on augmented reality
The market for augmented and virtual reality headsets is in its infancy with just 8.5 million headsets expected to be shipped this year, as the market faces a lull due to a drop in consumer spending led by the tough global economic environment, according to International Data Corporation.
The market is seen rebounding in 2024 and growing 46.8% year-on-year, IDC said, likely thanks to the expected introduction of new hardware.
The highly-anticipated Apple Vision Pro will launch next year, alongside new hardware from Facebook-parent Meta — the biggest AR and VR headset maker by market share.
These technology giants see headsets as the potential next big platform for computing. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has staked a large part of the company’s future betting these technologies take off.
Discussing competition in the market, Xreal suggested Apple is marketing the Vision Pro to existing users of Apple products and trying to bring the Apple services from the iPhone or Mac to mixed reality — another term that refers to the combination of virtual and augmented reality.
Jin said that Meta is meanwhile trying to bring its social network to virtual reality, which “has proven to be extremely challenging.” He pointed to technological challenges and Meta’s struggles with commercializing its VR apps.
The Xreal Air 2 glasses start at $399 and will be launched in the U.S., U.K. and selected European markets.
Xreal
Jin said Xreal’s strength is in its lack of legacy, suggesting that Apple would not make a headset that necessarily connects to rival systems and that Meta’s headsets would likely be linked to the company’s social networks.
“For us, we have that flexibility. We have that freedom of not having to work with any existing legacy … so we are cross platform, we don’t mind starting at a very basic experience, and letting people learn about us, accept us into their everyday life, so we can grow from there,” Jin said.
He added that, ultimately, when big companies are involved in a technology, “it’s always good for everybody,” by bringing in more capital, talent and business opportunities.
Xreal aims for fast growth
Still, Xreal is a small player in the market, commanding just a 2% market share, according to IDC — behind giants Meta, Sony with its PlayStation VR and TikTok parent ByteDance.
Jin said the goal is to hit 1 million unit sales annually, which he said he hopes can happen in the next two-to-three years time.
Xreal numbers some big investors, including Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and electric vehicle firm Nio. Jin said Xreal has been “talking with investors very actively” about raising more money and is in “deep discussions” with some investment firms. He declined to provide further details.
FILE PHOTO: Ariel Cohen during a panel at DLD Munich Conference 2020, Europe’s big innovation conference, Alte Kongresshalle, Munich.
Picture Alliance for DLD | Hubert Burda Media | AP
Navan, a developer of corporate travel and expense software, expects its market cap to be as high as $6.5 billion in its IPO, according to an updated regulatory filing on Friday.
The company said it anticipates selling shares at $24 to $26 each. Its valuation in that range would be about $3 billion less than where private investors valued Navan in 2022, when the company announced a $300 million funding round.
CoreWeave, Circle and Figma have led a resurgence in tech IPOs in 2025 after a drought that lasted about three years. Navan filed its original prospectus on Sept. 19, with plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “NAVN.”
Last week, the U.S. government entered a shutdown that has substantially reduced operations inside of agencies including the SEC. In August, the agency said its electronic filing system, EDGAR, “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”
Cerebras, which makes artificial intelligence chips, withdrew its registration for an IPO days after the shutdown began.
Navan CEO Ariel Cohen and technology chief Ilan Twig started the company under the name TripActions in 2015. It’s based in Palo Alto, California, and had around 3,400 employees at the end of July.
For the July quarter, Navan recorded a $38.6 million net loss on $172 million in revenue, which was up about 29% year over year. Competitors include Expensify, Oracle and SAP. Expensify stock closed at $1.64on Friday, down from its $27 IPO price in 2021.
Navan ranked 39th on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list, after also appearing in 2024.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, speaking with CNBC’s Jim Cramer during a CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer event at the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 7th, 2025.
Kevin Stankiewicz | CNBC
Shares of Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla each dropped around 5% on Friday, as tech’s megacaps lost $770 billion in market cap, following President Donald Trump’s threats for increased tariffs on Chinese goods.
With tech’s trillion-dollar companies occupying an increasingly large slice of the U.S. market, their declines send the Nasdaq down 3.6% and the S&P 500 down 2.7%. For both indexes, it was the worst day since April, when Trump said he would slap “reciprocal” duties on U.S. trading partners.
After market close on Friday, Trump declared in a social media post that the U.S. would impose a 100% tariff on China and on Nov. 1 it would apply export controls “on any and all critical software.”
Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla all slipped about 2% in extended trading following the post.
The president’s latest threats are disrupting, at least briefly, what had been a sustained rally in tech, built on hundreds of billions of dollars in planned spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure.
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In late September, Nvidia, which makes graphics processing units for training AI models, became the first company to reach a market cap of $4.5 trillion. Nvidia alone saw its market capitalization decline by nearly $229 billion on Friday.
OpenAI counts on Nvidia’s GPUs from a series of cloud suppliers, including Microsoft. OpenAI is only seeing rising demand.
In September it introduced the Sora 2 video creation app, and this week the company said the ChatGPT assistant now boasts over 800 million weekly users. But Microsoft must buy infrastructure to operate its cloud data centers. Microsoft’s market cap dropped by $85 billion on Friday.
The sell-off wiped out Amazon’s gains for the year. That stock is now down 2% so far in 2025. It competes with Microsoft to rent out GPUs from its cloud data centers, but it doesn’t have major business with OpenAI. The online retailer is now worth $121 billion less than it was on Thursday.
“There continues to be a lot of noise about the impact that tariffs will have on retail prices and consumption,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told analysts in July. “Much of it thus far has been wrong and misreported. As we said before, it’s impossible to know what will happen.”
Tesla, which introduced lower-priced vehicles on Tuesday, saw its market capitalization sink by $71 billion.
The automaker reports third-quarter results on Oct. 22, with Microsoft earnings scheduled for the following week. Nvidia reports in November.
Google parent Alphabet and Facebook owner Meta fell 2% and almost 4%, respectively.
Govini, a defense tech software startup taking on the likes of Palantir, has blown past $100 million in annual recurring revenue, the company announced Friday.
“We’re growing faster than 100% in a three-year CAGR, and I expect that next year we’ll continue to do the same,” CEO Tara Murphy Dougherty told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in an interview. With how “big this market is, we can keep growing for a long, long time, and that’s really exciting.”
CAGR stands for compound annual growth rate, a measurement of the rate of return.
The Arlington, Virginia-based company also announced a $150 million growth investment from Bain Capital. It plans to use the money to expand its team and product offering to satisfy growing security demands.
In recent years, venture capitalists have poured more money into defense tech startups like Govini to satisfy heightened national security concerns and modernize the military as global conflict ensues.
The group, which includes unicorns like Palmer Luckey’s Anduril, Shield AI and artificial intelligence beneficiary Palantir, is taking on legacy giants such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, that have long leaned on contracts from the Pentagon.
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Dougherty, who previously worked at Palantir, said she hopes the company can seize a “vertical slice” of the defense technology space.
The 14-year-old Govini has already secured a string of big wins in recent years, including an over $900-million U.S. government contract and deals with the Department of War.
Govini is known for its flagship AI software Ark, which it says can help modernize the military’s defense tech supply chain by better managing product lifecycles as military needs grow more sophisticated.
“If the United States can get this acquisition system right, it can actually be a decisive advantage for us,” Dougherty said.
Looking ahead, Dougherty told CNBC that she anticipates some setbacks from the government shutdown.
Navy customers could be particularly hard hit, and that could put the U.S. at a major disadvantage.
While the U.S. is maintaining its AI dominance, China is outpacing its shipbuilding capacity and that needs to be taken “very seriously,” she added.