Many AI companies struggle with customers understanding how the product won’t take away their ability to think for themselves. A few took the opportunity of the Super Bowl to change the narrative. There’s no greater opportunity to reach 123 million live viewers at once and get massive press buzz, even if it cost $7 million for a 30-second spot.
While many tech evangelists proclaim that artificial intelligence is the future, the majority of the public remains skeptical. According to a recent Pew Research Study, 52 percent of Americans are “more concerned than excited about the growth of AI.” Only 10 percent are more excited than concerned about the possibilities.
When Chat GPT came out, people were amazed at how it could write essays or create scripts based on the dialogue from their favorite shows. That’s changing, as more stories about AI replacing jobs and the need for regulation arise.
“There was a feeling of wonder and awe,” said advertising agency Walrus co-founder and chief creative officer Deacon Webster. “And then there was a negative feeling like, ‘Oh my God, none of us knowledge workers are going to have jobs.'”
There many winners and losers among the messages attempted by brands in the big Super Bowl advertising bets. AI was chasing an image revamp. Sunday was the first step in accomplishing that.
“Super Bowl is the last big sort of mass gathering,” Webster said. “It allows you to kind of get out there and put some brand messaging in front of tons and tons of people. I think no matter how much one-to-one advertising is out there, there’s something about sort of a shared experience.”
In Microsoft’s Super Bowl ad, a group of people overcome challenges ranging from opening their own business to getting a college degree. It’s not just thanks to their grit and ingenuity. It’s also thanks to the assistance of Copilot, Microsoft’s “everyday AI companion.”
“There’s a little bit of skepticism, hesitation in terms of how someone can go about using something so new, but not knowing that it’s actually a really accessible, relevant and simple tool to use,” said Divya Kumar, Microsoft‘s GM of search and AI marketing. “AI search has been around in the market for 20-something years. So we want to bridge that gap between the early adopters and mainstream consumers.”
“It’s really giving companies a chance , especially with the advertising, to pitch their angle of how is this going to be a positive thing for people for humanity and to be able to see it in the light that it creates a positive impact,” said Gaurav Misra, CEO of AI-powered video creation software Captions.
Creations makes videos in real-time, which brings up concerns over how the technology could be abused to manipulate content and create misinformation. It can also help people connect, as a recent New York Times article about how people fell in love using Captions AI translation software pointed out. That story helped the company explain the benefits of its product.
“You can speak in English, and it’ll make it look like you’re speaking French or German or something else, right?” Misra said. “It’s the type of thing that just wouldn’t have been possible before, and opens up new sort of possibilities of what people can do with it, and how people can communicate across different languages and cultures.”
There’s no bigger stage to get your humanizing message across than the Super Bowl, Microsoft’s Kumar said. The company also timed the ad campaign to a full user interface redesign of Copilot, which made it easier to see the prompts and gave more visual examples. It used real-life examples from customers to create the ad.
“It’s also a good learning experience because this is a great way for us to reach out to an audience that otherwise might not be fully in the know what Copilot can do, and then also learn from that experience in the upcoming marketing beats that we want to do,” she said.
David Jones, The Brandtech Group founder and CEO, what America watched Sunday was the first attempt to have people understand that AI will change every aspect of our lives by doing everything better, faster and cheaper.
“What we saw in the Super Bowl are the embryonic early steps in this, but pretty soon it will be as pervasive as mobile or the internet or electricity,” said Jones, whose firm focuses on digital and generative AI marketing companies. “Nobody asks today ‘how will the internet be sold to us’ or ‘how will mobile be sold to us.’ They are at the heart of everything we do. (Generative) AI will be the same, but on steroids.”
An icon of ASML is displayed on a smartphone, with an ASML chip visible in the background.
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ASML reported second-quarter earnings that beat estimates with the its key net bookings figure ahead of consensus.
However, the chip equipment giant missed analyst expectations for revenue guidance in the current quarter and warned of the possibility of no growth ahead.
Here’s how ASML did versus LSEG consensus estimates for the second quarter:
Net sales: 7.7 billion euros ($8.95 billion) versus 7.52 billion euros expected
Net profit: 2.29 billion euros vs 2.04 billion euros expected
In its own previous forecast issued in April, ASML had said it expected second-quarter net sales of between 7.2 billion euros and 7.7 billion euros. In a pre-recorded interview posted on ASML’s website, the company’s Chief Financial Officer Roger Dassen said the beat was due to revenue from upgrading currently deployed machines as well as tariffs having a “less negative” impact than anticipated.
Analysts anticipated net bookings — a key indicator of order demand — would come in at 4.19 billion euros over the April-June stretch. ASML reported net bookings of 5.5 billion euros.
ASML is one of the most important semiconductor supply chain companies in the world. It makes extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, which are required to manufacture the most advanced chips in the world, such as those designed by Apple and Nvidia.
Like many companies in the semiconductor industry, ASML has been grappling with uncertainty created by U.S. tariff policy.
The company forecast third-quarter revenue of between 7.4 billion euros and 7.9 billion euros, which was shy of market expectations of 8.3 billion euros.
ASML said it expects full-year 2025 net sales to grow 15%, narrowing its guidance from a previously announced forecasts of between 30 billion euros to 35 billion euros.
However, the Dutch tech giant was less certain about the outlook for 2026.
“Looking at 2026, we see that our AI customers’ fundamentals remain strong,” ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet said in a statement.
“At the same time, we continue to see increasing uncertainty driven by macro-economic and geopolitical developments. Therefore, while we still prepare for growth in 2026, we cannot confirm it at this stage.”
The Veldhoven, Netherlands-headquartered company has released its next generation EUV tools known as High NA, which stands for high numerical aperture. These machines, which are larger than a double-decker bus and can cost more than $400 million each, are key to ASML’s future growth plans.
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The logo for the Food and Drug Administration is seen ahead of a news conference on removing synthetic dyes from America’s food supply, at the Health and Human Services Headquarters in Washington, DC on April 22, 2025.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday published a warning letter addressed to the wrist wearable company Whoop, alleging it is marketing a new blood pressure feature without proper approvals.
The letter centers around Whoop’s Blood Pressure Insights (BPI) feature, which the company introduced alongside its latest hardware launch in May.
Whoop said its BPI feature uses blood pressure information to offer performance and wellness insights that inform consumers and improve athletic performance.
But the FDA said Tuesday that Whoop’s BPI feature is intended to diagnose, cure, treat or prevent disease — a key distinction that would reclassify the wellness tracker as a “medical device” that has to undergo a rigorous testing and approval processes.
“Providing blood pressure estimation is not a low-risk function,” the FDA said in the letter. “An erroneously low or high blood pressure reading can have significant consequences for the user.”
A Whoop spokesperson said the company’s system offers only a single daily estimated range and midpoint, which distinguishes it from medical blood pressure devices used for diagnosis or management of high blood pressure.
Whoop users who purchase the $359 “Whoop Life” subscription tier can use the BPI feature to get daily insights about their blood pressure, including estimated systolic and diastolic ranges, according to the company.
Whoop also requires users to log three traditional cuff-readings to act as a baseline in order to unlock the BPI feature.
Additionally, the spokesperson said the BPI data is not unlike other wellness metrics that the company deals with. Just as heart rate variability and respiratory rate can have medical uses, the spokesperson said, they are permitted in a wellness context too.
“We believe the agency is overstepping its authority in this case by attempting to regulate a non-medical wellness feature as a medical device,” the Whoop spokesperson said.
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High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is the number one risk factor for heart attacks, strokes and other types of cardiovascular disease, according to Dr. Ian Kronish, an internist and co-director of Columbia University’s Hypertension Center.
Kronish told CNBC that wearables like Whoop are a big emerging topic of conversation among hypertension experts, in part because there’s “concern that these devices are not yet proven to be accurate.”
If patients don’t get accurate blood pressure readings, they can’t make informed decisions about the care they need.
At the same time, Kronish said wearables like Whoop present a “big opportunity” for patients to take more control over their health, and that many professionals are excited to work with these tools.
Understandably, it can be confusing for consumers to navigate. Kronish encouraged patients to talk with their doctor about how they should use wearables like Whoop.
“It’s really great to hear that the FDA is getting more involved around informing consumers,” Kronish said.
FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seen in Silver Spring, Maryland November 4, 2009.
Jason Reed | Reuters
Whoop is not the only wearable manufacturer that’s exploring blood pressure monitoring.
Omron and Garmin both offer medical blood pressure monitoring with on-demand readings that fall under FDA regulation. Samsung also offers blood-pressure-reading technology, but it is not available in the U.S. market.
Apple has also been teasing a blood pressure sensor for its watches, but has not been able to deliver. In 2024, the tech giant received FDA approval for its sleep apnea detection feature.
Whoop has previously received FDA clearance for its ECG feature, which is used to record and analyze a heart’s electrical activity to detect potential irregularities in rhythm. But when it comes to blood pressure, Whoop believes the FDA’s perspective is antiquated.
“We do not believe blood pressure should be considered any more or less sensitive than other physiological metrics like heart rate and respiratory rate,” a spokesperson said. “It appears that the FDA’s concerns may stem from outdated assumptions about blood pressure being strictly a clinical domain and inherently associated with a medical diagnosis.”
The FDA said Whoop could be subject to regulatory actions like seizure, injunction, and civil money penalties if it fails to address the violations that the agency identified in its letter.
Whoop has 15 business days to respond with steps the company has taken to address the violations, as well as how it will prevent similar issues from happening again.
“Even accounting for BPI’s disclaimers, they do not change this conclusion, because they are insufficient to outweigh the fact that the product is, by design, intended to provide a blood pressure estimation that is inherently associated with the diagnosis of a disease or condition,” the FDA said.
United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the first two demonstration satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband internet constellation stands ready for launch on pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on October 5, 2023 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States.
Paul Hennessey | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
As Amazon chases SpaceX in the internet satellite market, the e-commerce and computing giant is now counting on Elon Musk’s rival company to get its next batch of devices into space.
On Wednesday, weather permitting, 24 Kuiper satellites will hitch a ride on one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets from a launchpad on Florida’s Space Coast. A 27-minute launch window for the mission, dubbed “KF-01,” opens at 2:18 a.m. ET.
The launch will be livestreamed on X, the social media platform also owned by Musk.
The mission marks an unusual alliance. SpaceX’s Starlink is currently the dominant provider of low earth orbit satellite internet, with a constellation of roughly 8,000 satellites and about 5 million customers worldwide.
Amazon launched Project Kuiper in 2019 with an aim to provide broadband internet from a constellation of more than 3,000 satellites. The company is working under a tight deadline imposed by the Federal Communications Commission that requires it to have about 1,600 satellites in orbit by the end of July 2026.
Amazon’s first two Kuiper launches came in April and June, sending 27 satellites each time aboard rockets supplied by United Launch Alliance.
Assuming Wednesday’s launch is a success, Amazon will have a total of 78 satellites in orbit. In order to meet the FCC’s tight deadline, Amazon needs to rapidly manufacture and deploy satellites, securing a hefty amount of capacity from rocket providers. Kuiper has booked up to 83 launches, including three rides with SpaceX.
Space has emerged as a battleground between Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, two of the world’s richest men. Aside from Kuiper, Bezos also competes with Musk via his rocket company Blue Origin.
Blue Origin in January sent up its massive New Glenn rocket for the first time, which is intended to rival SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rockets. While Blue Origin currently trails SpaceX, Bezos last year predicted his latest venture will one day be bigger than Amazon, which he started in 1994.
Kuiper has become one of Amazon’s biggest bets, with more than $10 billion earmarked for the project. The company may need to spend as much as $23 billion to build its full constellation, analysts at Bank of America wrote in a note to clients last week. That figure doesn’t include the cost of building terminals, which consumers will use to connect to the service.
The analysts estimate Amazon is spending $150 million per launch this year, while satellite production costs are projected to total $1.1 billion by the fourth quarter.
Amazon is going after a market that’s expected to grow to at least $40 billion by 2030, the analysts wrote, citing estimates by Boston Consulting Group. The firm estimated that Amazon could generate $7.1 billion in sales from Kuiper by 2032 if it claims 30% of the market.
“With Starlink’s solid early growth, our estimates could be conservative,” the analysts wrote.