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Nintendo said domestic sales of Splatoon 3 hit a record in the first three days of the game being on sale. Splatoon 3 proved to be a hit in Japan, helping keep momentum for Nintendo’s ageing Switch console.

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Nintendo is likely to release a new Switch console this year, analysts told CNBC, as the Japanese gaming giant looks to capitalize on the interest in its characters ranging from Mario to Zelda.

The Nintendo Switch first launched in March 2017 and marked a new type of hybrid console where gamers could play on their TVs but then take their controller, attach it to a tablet, and game on the go.

This approach, which combined the at-home aspects of console gaming with the portability of mobile games, proved very popular with gamers. Nintendo has sold 132.46 units of the Switch, making it the company’s second-most successful console after the handheld Nintendo DS.

Since the Switch’s launch, Nintendo’s shares are up more than 200%. The console has helped the company sustain sales momentum over the years thanks to its steady and strong stream of first-party games and popular characters.

Games involving Mario, Zelda and Pokemon are among the Switch’s best sellers.

But there are signs that sales are starting to slow and Nintendo needs something new. In its September-quarter results, Nintendo said revenue fell 4% year-on-year and profit dropped 19%.

“I think the new device will come out in 2024, probably in the second half of the year,” Serkan Toto, CEO of Tokyo-based games consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC.

“The original Switch is now almost 7 years old, sales are going down … So it’s absolutely high time for a new Nintendo system this year.”

Piers Harding-Rolls, research director of games at Ampere Analysis, expects the launch of the new Switch in the fourth quarter of this year.

For Atul Goyal, managing director at Jefferies, the timings of the launch will depend on recent sales. If the Switch remained popular in the holiday quarter then Nintendo could push a new console out to the Fall of this year, Goyal said. If Switch sales dropped in the December quarter, the new device could come as early as Spring or Summer, he added.

Nintendo has not announced its December-quarter results yet.

Launching a new console this year will also allow Nintendo to capitalize on the popularity of a number of its key characters following movie releases. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” has raked in more than $1 billion in box office sales since its April release and helped Nintendo see a bump in revenue in the June quarter of last year. In November, Nintendo said it plans to develop a live-action film of The Legend of Zelda, one of its most popular characters.

What do we know about Switch 2?

Not much at this point as the company has been tight-lipped on what’s next. Analysts are expecting what they’re dubbing the “Switch 2” to follow the hybrid approach set out by its predecessor.

“I’m expecting Nintendo’s next console to be a Switch follow-up, as the hybrid device approach has been so successful,” Harding-Rolls said, adding that there’s likely to be an upgrade in capabilities to the company’s console controllers too.

Kantan Games’ Toto said he expects the successor to be a “new device and not just an upgrade.”

“Nintendo needs to drastically improve specs after 7 years, so they will absolutely release a successor,” Toto said.

Such an appraoch, building on the success of the Switch, makes sense to many.

“An evolution, not a revolution, in the console strategy is likely. In other words, an iPhone model. With that comes the opportunity to ease the 130M+ Switch audience into a familiar but more powerful form factor, and the ability for Nintendo to sell compelling 1st (and 3rd) party games to a scaled audience,” analysts at Moffett Nathanson wrote in a note in December.

Will the ‘Switch 2’ sell well?

Harding-Rolls said the performance of the new console will be impacted by the availability of the product. But he said he can see it “achieving similar levels to the original Switch during its first Q4 sales period,” which equates to around 7 million or 8 million units sold to consumers.

Analysts at Moffett Nathanson said the Switch 2 is unlikely to “match or surpass the Switch,” arguing the current Nintendo console benefitted from people buying gaming consoles while staying at home during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Still, the analysts said “this next console can match or even exceed the early performance of the Switch but trail off as we get into year four and beyond,” as Covid-inflated comparisons of Nintendo’s fiscal year in 2021 and 2022 are “too challenging to overcome.”

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AI voice startup ElevenLabs pushes global expansion as it gears up for an IPO

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AI voice startup ElevenLabs pushes global expansion as it gears up for an IPO

Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.

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LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.

The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.

“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.

He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.

Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.

“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”

Undecided on location

Fundraising plans

ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.

Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.

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U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

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U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.

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The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday. 

“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement

The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China. 

The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.

Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.

S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.

Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.

Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.

While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.

DoorDash was the latest tech company to join during the last rebalancing in March. Cloud software vendor Workday was added in December, and that was preceded earlier in 2024 with the additions of Palantir, Dell, CrowdStrike, GoDaddy and Super Micro Computer.

Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.

New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

CNBC: Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

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