Technology

Abbott launches its first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor in the U.S.

Published

4 months ago

September 5, 2024

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A man wearing Abbott’s Lingo biosensor.

Courtesy of Abbott

Abbott Laboratories announced Thursday its over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor Lingo is available in the U.S. starting at $49.

Lingo is part of an emerging class of consumer-friendly biosensors that people can use to learn how their bodies respond to food, exercise, sleep and stress. These devices, called continuous glucose monitors, are small sensors that stick through the skin to measure real-time glucose levels. Glucose is a sugar molecule that comes from food, and it’s the body’s main energy source.

Continuous glucose monitors have served as tools for patients with diabetes, but Lingo is not intended for diabetes management. Instead, it’s designed for adults who do not take insulin and want to “improve their overall health and wellness,” according to a release.

Everyone’s glucose levels fluctuate, but consistently high levels can cause more serious health problems like metabolic disease, insulin resistance and heart disease, Abbott said. The company argues Lingo can educate users about existing habits and help them learn to manage their glucose in healthier ways.

“That’s really the goal, is to not only see and understand what’s happening inside your body, but to be able to improve on that, to be able to build these healthy habits that drive those changes,” Ben Fohner, the director of Abbott’s Lingo app, told CNBC in an interview.

Abbott already offers continuous glucose monitors for diabetes patients in the U.S., so the company is looking to break into an entirely new market with Lingo. About 1 in 3 Americans have prediabetes, for instance, but these patients typically don’t qualify for prescriptions or insurance coverage for the monitors.

Now, they can pay for the sensors out of pocket without a prescription. Users can buy one sensor online for $49, two sensors for $89 or six sensors for $249, Abbott said. Each sensor is worn on the upper arm for up to 14 days.

Olivier Ropars, Abbott’s divisional vice president of Lingo, said the company decided to offer three different pricing options so curious consumers won’t feel intimidated by a lengthy commitment. A customer can opt to buy just one sensor to try for a couple of weeks.

“We want to make it as accessible and affordable as possible,” Ropars told CNBC in an interview.

Abbott’s competitor, Dexcom, is also eyeing the prediabetes market. The company released its over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor geared toward this demographic in late August. Dexcom’s device is called Stelo, and is available in the U.S. for $89 a month. Patients with Type 2 diabetes who do not take insulin can also use it, the company said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Dexcom’s Stelo in March, and it cleared two over-the-counter continuous glucose monitoring systems from Abbott in June. One of Abbott’s systems was Lingo, and the second system, called Libre Rio, is intended for patients with Type 2 diabetes who do not take insulin.

Though Type 2 patients who are not taking insulin could technically use Lingo, Ropars said Abbott’s recommendation is to primarily use Libre Rio since it is specifically designed for them. The company declined to share when Libre Rio will be available.

The Lingo app

Abbott’s Lingo app.

Courtesy of Abbott

Like many continuous glucose monitors, Lingo transmits data wirelessly to an app. When users open it, they’ll see a real-time reading of their glucose data that’s updated every minute.

Those glucose readings are plotted on a graph, which includes a shaded area to indicate a “healthy range.” Fohner said Abbott’s clinical team defines this range as 140 milligrams per deciliter to 70 milligrams per deciliter.

One of Abbott’s primary goals is to help Lingo users learn about glucose spikes, which occur when the amount of sugar present in the bloodstream rapidly increases and then decreases. Glucose spikes commonly occur after eating.

Spikes can push a user’s glucose reading above the healthy range, but they can also occur within the healthy range. Limiting spikes and improving glucose management overall can help users improve their sleep and mood, manage their weight, and be proactive about their future health, Abbott said.

To help users conceptualize the impact of their spikes, Abbott created a metric called the “Lingo Count.” It’s an algorithm that assigns a numeric value to each glucose spike, and it’s supposed to represent how significant the impact is. Over each day, users have a target Lingo Count that they want to aim to stay below.

Abbott’s Lingo app.

Courtesy of Abbott

Users can see this data represented on a second, more interactive glucose graph when they scroll down Lingo’s home page. A number will appear in the shaded area beneath a spike, which represents the Lingo Count for that spike.

“It’s unique to Lingo, but really that number is an indicator and a function of, how high did your spike go, how long did it last, and what was the impact that that spike had on your body,” Fohner said.

Users can analyze Lingo Count data and see how they are doing over time, as well as what time of day they tend to experience the most dramatic spikes. They can also participate in challenges and access educational resources to learn how to reduce those spikes.

Ropars said metabolism doesn’t change overnight, and everyone’s bodies work differently. He said Lingo can serve as a window into how and why a user’s glucose levels vary. But the real value of Lingo, Ropars said, is the support it can offer users as they try to establish healthy habits.

“A lot of our products today are geared toward helping people that are experiencing a chronic disease or sickness and trying to get back on track,” he said. “Here, this is the first time we’re doing a product that is helping people, improving their daily life, taking control of their health before they get sick”

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Technology

Tesla is offering Cybertruck discounts as EV market gets crowded

Published

4 hours ago

January 16, 2025

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Tesla is offering Cybertruck discounts as EV market gets crowded

A soldier walks next to a Tesla Cybertruck, which was donated to the National Guard, after powerful winds fueling devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area forced people to evacuate, in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles, California, U.S. Jan. 13, 2025.

Daniel Cole | Reuters

Tesla started offering discounts on new Cybertruck vehicles in its inventory this week, according to listings on the company’s website.

Discounts are as high as $1,600 off new Cybertrucks, with the reduced price depending on configuration, and up to around $2,600 for demo versions of the trucks in inventory, the listings show. Production of the angular, unpainted steel pickups has reportedly slowed in recent weeks at Tesla’s factory in Austin, Texas.

Deliveries of the unconventional pickup began reaching customers in 2023. CEO Elon Musk originally unveiled the Cybertruck in 2019 and said it would cost around $40,000, but its base price in the U.S. was closer to $80,000 over the course of 2024.

Wall Street previously viewed the Cybertruck as an important driver of growth for Tesla’s core automotive sales.

While the Cybertruck outsold the Ford Lightning F-150 last year in the U.S. and became the fifth best-selling EV domestically, according to data tracked by Cox Automotive, its high price, repeat recalls and production issues in Austin hampered growth. In November, Tesla initiated its sixth recall in a year to replace defective drive inverters.

As CNBC previously reported, Tesla’s deliveries declined slightly year-over-year in 2024, even as EV demand worldwide reached a record. A slew of new competitive models from a wide range of automakers eroded Tesla’s market share.

According to Cox data, full-year EV sales reached an estimated 1.3 million in 2024 in the U.S., an increase of 7.3% from the prior year. But Tesla’s sales for the year declined by about 37,000 vehicles.

The Tesla Model Y SUV and Model 3 sedan ranked as the top two best-selling EVs by a wide margin. But both older, more affordable Tesla models saw sales drop from the previous year. Cox estimated Tesla sold around 38,965 Cybertrucks in the U.S. last year.

In recent days, Musk apologized to customers in California for delays in delivering their Cybertrucks. He said the trucks are now being used to bring supplies and wireless internet service to people in Los Angeles impacted by devastating wildfires.

“Apologies to those expecting Cybertruck deliveries in California over the next few days,” Musk wrote on X. “We need to use those trucks as mobile base stations to provide power to Starlink Internet terminals in areas of LA without connectivity. A new truck will be delivered end of week.”

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Technology

Goldman Sachs CEO Solomon says IPO market is ‘going to pick up’ along with dealmaking

Published

4 hours ago

January 16, 2025

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Goldman Sachs CEO Solomon says IPO market is 'going to pick up' along with dealmaking

David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, speaks during the Reuters NEXT conference, in New York City, U.S., December 10, 2024.

Mike Segar | Reuters

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon says there’s an end in sight to the multi-year IPO drought.

“It’s going to pick up,” Solomon said on Wednesday, in an on-stage interview with Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins at a summit hosted by the computer networking company in Silicon Valley. “It’s been slow, it’s been turned off.”

Solomon, who flew to California for the event just after his Wall Street bank reported fourth-quarter results that blew past analysts’ estimates, said the capital markets broadly are showing signs of life ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next week.

The tech IPO market has largely been dormant since the end of 2021, when tech stocks started falling out of favor due to soaring inflation and rising interest rates. Mergers and acquisitions have been difficult in technology because of hefty regulation that’s restricted the ability for the biggest companies to grow through dealmaking.

Solomon said the mood is changing, and he expects momentum M&A as well as in IPOs.

“We have a more constructive kind of optimism, which always helps,” Solomon said. He later added that, “broadly speaking, I think it’s an improved business environment.”

Earlier in the day, Solomon said on his company’s earnings call that Trump’s election and a swing back to Republican power in Washington is already starting to make an impact in the business world. He noted on the call that “there is a significant backlog from sponsors and an overall increased appetite for dealmaking supported by an improved regulatory backdrop.”

Solomon’s comments on the call and at the Cisco event came on a day when the S&P 500 posted his biggest gain since November, helped by a tame inflation report and Goldman’s results. Goldman’s stock popped 6% on Wednesday.

While the stock market has had a strong two-year run and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hit fresh records last month, IPOs have yet to see a resurgence. Cloud software vendor ServiceTitan debuted on the Nasdaq in December, marking the first significant venture-backed IPO in the U.S. since Rubrik in April.

“The values came down after 2021, people are growing back into those values,” Solomon said at the Cisco summit.

Some companies have said they’re ready. Chipmaker Cerebras filed to go public in September, but the process was slowed down due to a review by the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS. In November, online lender Klarna said it had confidentially filed IPO paperwork with the SEC.

Though he’s bullish about what’s coming, Solomon said that there are structural reasons not to go public. He said 25 years ago there were roughly 13,000 public companies in the U.S., and today that number has come down to 3,800. There are higher standards around disclosure for being public, and there’s now tons of private capital available “at scale.”

“It’s not fun being a public company,” Solomon acknowledged. “Who would want to be a public company?”

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Technology

How VPNs might allow Americans to continue using TikTok

Published

7 hours ago

January 15, 2025

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How VPNs might allow Americans to continue using TikTok

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

If TikTok does indeed go dark on Sunday for Americans, there may be a tool for them to continue accessing the popular social app: VPNs.

The Chinese-owned app is set to be removed from mobile app stores and the web for U.S. users on Sunday as a result of a law signed by President Joe Biden in April 2024 requiring that the app be sold to a qualified buyer before the deadline.

Barring a last-minute sale or reprieve from the Supreme Court, the app will almost certainly vanish from the app stores for iPhones and Android phones. It won’t be removed from people’s phones, but the app could stop working.

TikTok plans to shut its service for Americans on Sunday, meaning that even those who already have the app downloaded won’t be able to continue using it, according to reports this week from Reuters and The Information. Apple and Google didn’t comment on their plans for taking down the apps from their app stores on Sunday.

“Basically, an app or a website can check where users came from,” said Justas Palekas, a head of product at IProyal.com, a proxy service. “Based on that, then they can impose restrictions based on their location.”

Masking your physical internet access point

That may stop most users, but for the particularly driven Americans, using VPNs might allow them to continue using the app.

VPNs and a related business-to-business technology called proxies work by tunneling a user’s internet traffic through a server in another country, making it look like they are accessing the internet from a location different than the one they are physically in.

This works because every time a computer connects to the internet, it is identified through an IP number, which is a 12-digit number that is different for every single computer. The first six digits of the number identifies the network, which also includes information about the physical region the request came from.

In China, people have used VPNs for years to get around the country’s firewall, which blocks U.S. websites such as Google and Facebook. VPNs saw big spikes in traffic when India banned TikTok in 2020, and people often use VPNs to watch sporting events from countries where official broadcasts aren’t available.

As of 2022, the VPN market was worth nearly $38 billion, according to the VPN Trust Initiative, a lobbying group.

“We consistently see significant spikes in VPN demand when access to online platforms is restricted, and this situation is no different,” said Lauren Hendry Parsons, privacy advocate at ExpressVPN, a VPN provider that costs $5 per month to use.

“We’re not here to endorse TikTok, but the looming U.S. ban highlights why VPNs matter— millions rely on them for secure, private, and unrestricted access to the internet,” ProtonVPN posted on social media earlier this week. ProtonVPN offers its service for $10 a month.

The price of VPNs

Both ExpressVPN and ProtonVPN allow users to set their internet-access location.

Most VPN services charge a monthly fee to pay for their servers and traffic, but some use a business model where they collect user data or traffic trends, such as when Meta offered a free VPN so it could keep an eye on which competitors’ apps were growing quickly.

A key tradeoff for those who use VPN is speed due to requests having to flow through a middleman computer to mask a users’ physical location.

And although VPNs have worked in the past when governments have banned apps, that doesn’t ensure that VPNs will work if TikTok goes dark. It won’t be clear if ExpressVPN would be able to access TikTok until after the ban takes place, Parsons told CNBC in an email. It’s also possible that TikTok may be able to determine Americans who try to use VPNs to access the app.

(L-R) Sarah Baus of Charleston, S.C., holds a sign that reads “Keep TikTok” as she and other content creators Sallye Miley of Jackson, Mississippi, and Callie Goodwin of Columbia, S.C., stand outside the U.S. Supreme Court Building as the court hears oral arguments on whether to overturn or delay a law that could lead to a ban of TikTok in the U.S., on January 10, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

VPNs and proxies to evade regional restrictions have been part of the internet’s landscape for decades, but their use is increasing as governments seek to ban certain services or apps.

Apps are removed by government request all the time. Nearly 1500 apps were removed in regions due to government takedown demands in 2023, according to Apple, with over 1,000 of them in China. Most of them are fringe apps that break laws such as those against gambling, or Chinese video game rules, but increasingly, countries are banning apps for national security or economic development reasons.

Now, the U.S. is poised to ban one of the most popular apps in the country — with 115 million users, it was the second most downloaded app of 2024 across both iOS and Android, according to an estimate provided to CNBC from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm.

“As we witness increasing attempts to fragment and censor the internet, the role of VPNs in upholding internet freedom is becoming increasingly critical,” Parsons said.

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