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.
Qwen3 is Alibaba’s debut into so-called “hybrid reasoning models,” which it says combines traditional LLM capabilities with “advanced, dynamic reasoning.”
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Alibaba released the next generation of its open-sourced large language models, Qwen3, on Tuesday — and experts are calling it yet another breakthrough in China’s booming open-source artificial intelligence space.
In a blog post, the Chinese tech giant said Qwen3 promises improvements in reasoning, instruction following, tool usage and multilingual tasks, rivaling other top-tier models such as DeepSeek’s R1 in several industry benchmarks.
The LLM series includes eight variations that span a range of architectures and sizes, offering developers flexibility when using Qwen to build AI applications for edge devices like mobile phones.
Qwen3 is also Alibaba’s debut into so-called “hybrid reasoning models,” which it says combines traditional LLM capabilities with “advanced, dynamic reasoning.”
According to Alibaba, such models can seamlessly transition between a “thinking mode” for complex tasks such as coding and a “non-thinking mode” for faster, general-purpose responses.
“Notably, the Qwen3-235B-A22B MoE model significantly lowers deployment costs compared to other state-of-the-art models, reinforcing Alibaba’s commitment to accessible, high-performance AI,” Alibaba said.
The new models are already freely available for individual users on platforms like Hugging Face and GitHub, as well as Alibaba Cloud’s web interface. Qwen3 is also being used to power Alibaba’s AI assistant, Quark.
China’s AI advancement
AI analysts told CNBC that the Qwen3 represents a serious challenge to Alibaba’s counterparts in China, as well as industry leaders in the U.S.
In a statement to CNBC, Wei Sun, principal analyst of artificial intelligence at Counterpoint Research, said the Qwen3 series is a “significant breakthrough—not just for its best-in-class performance” but also for several features that point to the “application potential of the models.”
Those features include Qwen3’s hybrid thinking mode, its multilingual support covering 119 languages and dialects and its open-source availability, Sun added.
Open-source software generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution. At the start of this year, DeepSeek’s open-sourced R1 model rocked the AI world and quickly became a catalyst for China’s AI space and open-source model adoption.
“Alibaba’s release of the Qwen 3 series further underscores the strong capabilities of Chinese labs to develop highly competitive, innovative, and open-source models, despite mounting pressure from tightened U.S. export controls,” said Ray Wang, a Washington-based analyst focusing on U.S.-China economic and technology competition.
According to Alibaba, Qwen has already become one of the world’s most widely adopted open-source AI model series, attracting over 300 million downloads worldwide and more than 100,000 derivative models on Hugging Face.
Wang said that this adoption could continue with Qwen3, adding that its performance claims may make it the best open-source model globally — though still behind the world’s most cutting-edge models like OpenAI’s o3 and o4-mini.
Chinese competitors like Baidu have also rushed to release new AI models after the emergence of DeepSeek, including making plans to shift toward a more open-source business model.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported in February that DeepSeek is accelerating the launch of its successor to its R1, citing anonymous sources.
“In the broader context of the U.S.-China AI race, the gap between American and Chinese labs has narrowed—likely to a few months, and some might argue, even to just weeks,” Wang said.
“With the latest release of Qwen 3 and the upcoming launch of DeepSeek’s R2, this gap is unlikely to widen—and may even continue to shrink.”
Uber on Monday informed employees, including some who had been previously approved for remote work, that it will require them to come to the office three days a week, CNBC has learned.
“Even as the external environment remains dynamic, we’re on solid footing, with a clear strategy and big plans,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees in the memo, which was viewed by CNBC. “As we head into this next chapter, I want to emphasize that ‘good’ is not going to be good enough — we need to be great.”
Khosrowshahi goes on to say employees need to push themselves so the company “can move faster and take smarter risks” and outlined several changes to Uber’s work policy.
Uber in 2022 established Tuesdays and Thursdays as “anchor days” where most employees must spend at least half of their work time in the company’s office. Starting in June, employees will be required in the office Tuesday through Thursday, according to the memo.
That includes some employees who were previously approved to work remotely. The company said it had already informed impacted remote employees.
“After a thorough review of our existing remote approvals, we’re asking many remote employees to come into an office,” Khosrowshahi wrote. “In addition, we’ll hire new remote roles only very sparingly.”
The company also changed its one-month paid sabbatical program, according to the memo. Previously, employees were eligible for the sabbatical after five years at the company. That’s now been raised to eight years, according to the memo.
“This program was created when Uber was a much younger company, and when reaching 5 years of tenure was a rare feat,” Khosrowshahi wrote. “Back then, we were in the office five (sometimes more!) days of a week and hadn’t instituted our Work from Anywhere benefit.”
Khosrowshahi said the changes will help Uber move faster.
“Our collective view as a leadership team is that while remote work has some benefits, being in the office fuels collaboration, sparks creativity, and increases velocity,” Khosrowshahi wrote.
The changes come as more companies in the tech industry cut costs to appease investors after over-hiring during the Covid-19 pandemic. Google recently began demanding that employees who were previously-approved for remote work also return to the office if they want to keep their jobs, CNBC reported last week.
Last year, Khosrowshahi blamed remote work for the loss of its most loyal customers, who would take ride-sharing as their commute to work.
“Going forward, we’re further raising this bar,” Khosrowshahi’s Monday memo said. “After a thorough review of our existing remote approvals, we’re asking many remote employees to come into an office. In addition, we’ll hire new remote roles only very sparingly.”
Uber’s leadership team will monitor attendance “at both team and individual levels to ensure expectations are being met,” Khosrowshahi wrote.
Following the memo, Uber employees immediately swarmed the company’s internal question-and-answer forum, according to correspondence viewed by CNBC. Khosrowshahi said he and Nikki Krishnamurthy, the company’schief people officer, will hold an all-hands meeting on Tuesday to discuss the changes.
Many employees asked leadership to reconsider the sabbatical change, arguing that the company should honor the original eligibility policy.
“This isn’t ‘doing the right thing’ for your employees,” one employee commented.
Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is on the launch pad carrying Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet network satellites, which are expected to eventually rival Elon Musk’s Starlink system, at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 9, 2025.
Steve Nesius | Reuters
Amazon on Monday launched the first batch of its Kuiper internet satellites into space after an earlier attempt was scrubbed due to inclement weather.
A United Launch Alliance rocket carrying 27 Kuiper satellites lifted off from a launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida shortly after 7 p.m. eastern, according to a livestream.
“We had a nice smooth countdown, beautiful weather, beautiful liftoff, and Atlas V is on its way to orbit to take those 27 Kuiper satellites, put them on their way and really start this new era in internet connectivity,” Caleb Weiss, a systems engineer at ULA, said on the livestream following the launch.
The satellites are expected to separate from the rocket roughly 280 miles above Earth’s surface, at which point Amazon will look to confirm the satellites can independently maneuver and communicate with its employees on the ground.
Six years ago Amazon unveiled its plans to build a constellation of internet-beaming satellites in low Earth orbit, called Project Kuiper. The service will compete directly with Elon Musk’s Starlink, which currently dominates the market and has 8,000 satellites in orbit.
The first Kuiper mission kicks off what will need to become a steady cadence of launches in order for Amazon to meet a deadline set by the Federal Communications Commission. The agency expects the company to have half of its total constellation, or 1,618 satellites, up in the air by July 2026.
Amazon has booked more than 80 launches to deploy dozens of satellites at a time. In addition to ULA, its launch partners include Musk’s SpaceX (parent company of Starlink), European company Arianespace and Jeff Bezos’ space exploration startup Blue Origin.
Amazon is spending as much as $10 billion to build the Kuiper network. It hopes to begin commercial service for consumers, enterprises and government later this year.
In his shareholder letter earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Kuiper will require upfront investment at first, but eventually the company expects it to be “a meaningful operating income and ROIC business for us.” ROIC stands for return on invested capital.
Investors will be listening for any commentary around further capex spend on Kuiper when Amazon reports first-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday.