Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Acquired LIVE event at the Chase Center in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta announced the Quest 3S, the latest virtual reality headset to come out of the company’s Reality Labs division and a cheaper offering than its predecessor.
The device will go on sale on Oct. 15 and will retail starting at $299, down from the $499 starting price for 2023’s Quest 3. The device can be used to watch movies, as well as run VR fitness apps and gaming, Meta said Wednesday at its Connect event at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. The company positioned the headset as a multitasking computer, putting it in competition with Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro headset that launched in February.
Meta’s previous Quest devices are the bestselling VR headsets, with millions shipped thanks to heavy marketing and a lower price than many competitors, but those efforts have yet to spark a cultural phenomenon or a mainstream software ecosystem around VR. Including its acquisition of Oculus in 2014, Meta has poured more than $65 billion in expenses into its hardware efforts.
“I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has defended the company’s spending as a strategic initiative to prevent Apple from controlling future hardware platforms.
Although there was hope among VR developers that Apple’s entry into the market would spur a wave of new apps and users, Apple hasn’t revealed sales for its headset and reports say that sales have been in small volumes, under 1 million units, partially due to its high price.
What it does
A Meta representative said the “S” stands for “start” — as in getting started with VR.
Many of the new Meta features that the company discussed on Tuesday for its $299 Quest 3S have counterparts on Apple’s Vision Pro, including a mode that allows for the device to be used on an airplane and another that simulates a large movie theater inside the headset.
Meta highlighted improved “passthrough,” the term used to described when a VR headset uses cameras and sensors on the outside of the device to display live real-time video inside the headset. That function is intended to make users feel like they are looking through a display and allows them to interact with the real world while keeping the headset on. For the Quest 3S, Meta added a dedicated button to turn on passthrough.
The company has emphasized the ability of the Quest 3S to multitask and run apps, positioning it as a computing device, instead of a game console.
“All the things you can do with a general purpose computer, Quest is the full package,” Zuckerberg said.
In demos provided Tuesday, Meta showcased the device running as many as four apps at one time on floating screens inside the headset, including a YouTube video, a browser, Amazon Music and Meta’s app store. Meta says the headset can handle six windows. But the demo experience was not smooth. The Amazon Music app crashed, window controls would disappear and Meta’s controllers would fall asleep after a few minutes if the user wasn’t pressing buttons.
Besides the Quest 3S, Meta also announced a price cut for last’s year Quest 3, bringing the price of the 512GB version down from $650 to $500. The Quest 3 has more advanced lenses and a superior screen with a higher resolution than the Quest 3S.
Additionally, Meta said it will discontinue the Quest Pro, its $999 headset launched in 2022 that never gained much momentum.
Eventually, glasses
Meta Orion AR glasses prototype
Meta
Zuckerberg’s justification for spending so much on VR and augmented reality is his belief that the technology will eventually end up in lightweight, transparent glasses that overlay computer graphics and information onto the real world.
Investing in VR software and hardware are early steps toward those glasses, which could take as much as a decade to develop, Zuckerberg has previously said.
Zuckerberg showed off an early concept of what those glasses could look like on Wednesday. The thick, black-framed prototype, called Orion, won’t be sold to consumers, but Meta says they will be used internally as the company continues working toward the consumer glasses it hopes to one day sell.
“This is where we are going,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg said they were Meta’s first “fully-functioning” prototype of the glasses, and would be physically tethered to a small “puck.” Zuckerberg also said that it would take advantage of a wrist-based interface, which came out of stems from the company’s 2019acquisition of CTRL-Labs.
Meta’s Orion prototype comes a week after Snapannounced its fifth-generation Spectacles AR glasses. Those thick-framed glasses will only be made available to developers, who must commit to paying $99 a month for one full year if they want to build AR apps for the device.
This isn’t the first time Meta publicly revealed a prototype of a future devices or research projects to signal to investors and employees where VR and AR technology is headed. The Orion glasses are an improvement on Project Nazare, prototype smart glasses that Zuckerberg announced in 2021, when the company changed its name from Facebook.
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are powered by a Qualcomm chip. Qualcomm, Samsung and Google are working on smart glasses, according to Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Meta does sell a pair of glasses with a built-in camera in partnership with EssilorLuxottica called Ray-Ban Meta, which start at $299. While these glasses don’t have any displays, they do have tiny speakers that allow the device to play music or interact with Meta AI, the company’s voice assistant.
For example, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses can now detect when a user is looking at a sign in Spanish and, if asked, can translate in the user’s ear, a new improvement, Meta said. The camera can scan QR codes, and it can also extract information like book titles out of photos it takes. Plus, they’re stylish and look like a pair of typical sunglasses.
“One of the most important things about this is they’re just good-looking glasses,” Zuckerberg said.
Another new capability for the glasses is the ability to remember facts like where the user parked.
Li-Chen Miller, the vice president of product in charge of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, told CNBC that when she travels, she uses the glasses to take photos of her hotel room door, and later, she asks Meta AI to recall the number.
Zuckerberg is excited about the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which have sold more than 730,000 units in their first three quarters, according to market researcher IDC. In July, he told investors that they were “a bigger hit sooner than expected.”
Last week, EssilorLuxottica and Meta announced that they had extended their partnership to develop more smart glasses.
AI that speaks
Zuckerberg also introduced improvements to its Meta AI chatbot that will allow people to interact with it using their voice instead of written text.
Users will now be able to have natural voice conversations with Meta AI, which is accessed through Meta apps like Messenger and Instagram. Users will be able to perform actions using their voice, such as telling Meta AI to take a photo by talking to their smartphone.
For Meta AI’s new feature, the company is using computer-generated voices from celebrities including Awkwafina, Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key and Kristen Bell.
The new Siri-like Meta AI voice feature will be available over the next month for U.S., Canadian, Australian and New Zealand users of WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.
The feature comes one day after rival OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, announced an advanced voice feature for people who pay its premium service.
The company said that the new chatbot features are based on Meta’s AI model, Llama. The company also announced a newer version of Llama, called Llama 3.2. This updated model can understand both images and text, an upgrade from its predecessors which generated responses to people’s written prompts.
CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, speaks during the launch of the supercomputer Gefion, where the new AI supercomputer has been established in collaboration with EIFO and NVIDIA at Vilhelm Lauritzen Terminal in Kastrup, Denmark October 23, 2024.
Ritzau Scanpix | Mads Claus Rasmussen | Via Reuters
Nvidia is replacing rival chipmaker Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a shakeup to the blue-chip index that reflects the boom in artificial intelligence and a major shift in the semiconductor industry.
Intel shares were down 1% in extended trading on Friday. Nvidia shares rose 1%.
Nvidia shares have climbed over 170% so far in 2024 after jumping roughly 240% last year, as investors have rushed to get a piece of the AI chipmaker. Nvidia’s market cap has swelled to $3.3 trillion, second only to Apple among publicly traded companies.
Companies including Microsoft,Meta, Google and Amazon are purchasing Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), such as the H100, in massive quantities to build clusters of computers for their AI work. Nvidia’s revenue has more than doubled in each of the past five quarters, and has at least tripled in three of them. The company has sginaled that demand for its next-generation AI GPU called Blackwell is “insane.”
With the addition of Nvidia, four of the six trillion-dollar tech companies are now in the index. The two not in the Dow are Alphabet and Meta.
While Nvidia has been soaring, Intel has been slumping. Long the dominant maker of PC chips, Intel has lost market share to Advanced Micro Devices and has made very little headway in AI. Intel shares have fallen by more than half this year as the company struggles with manufacturing challenges and new competition for its central processors.
Intel said in a filing this week that the board’s audit and finance committee approved cost and capital reduction activities, including lowering head count by 16,500 employees and reducing its real estate footprint. The job cuts were originally announced in August.
The Dow contains 30 components and is weighted by the share price of the individual stocks instead of total market value. Nvidia put itself in better position to join the index in May, when the company announced a 10-for-1 stock split. While doing nothing to its market cap, the move slashed the price of each share by 90%, allowing the company to become a part of the Dow without having too heavy a weighting.
The switch is the first change to the index since February, when Amazon replaced Walgreens Boots Alliance. Over the years, the Dow has been playing catchup in gaining exposure to the largest technology companies. The stocks in the index are chosen by a committee from S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Charles Liang, chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer Inc., during the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. The trade show runs through June 7.
Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Super Micro investors continued to rush the exits on Friday, pushing the stock down another 9% and bringing this week’s selloff to 44%, after the data center company lost its second auditor in less than two years.
The company’s shares fell as low as $26.23, wiping out all of the gains for 2024. Shares had peaked at $118.81 in March, at which point they were up more than fourfold for the year. Earlier that month, S&P Dow Jones added the stock to the S&P 500, and Wall Street was rallying around the company’s growth, driven by sales of servers packed with Nvidia’sartificial intelligence processors.
Super Micro’s spectacular collapse since March has wiped out roughly $55 billion in market cap and left the company at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq. On Wednesday, as the stock was in the midst of its second-worst day ever, Super Micro said it will provide a “business update” regarding its latest quarter on Tuesday, which is Election Day in the U.S.
The company’s recent challenges date back to August, when Super Micro said it would not file its annual report on time with the SEC. Noted short seller Hindenburg Research then disclosed a short position in the company and wrote in a report that it identified “fresh evidence of accounting manipulation.” The Wall Street Journal later reported that the Department of Justice was in the early stages of a probe into the company.
Super Micro disclosed on Wednesday that Ernst & Young had resigned as its accounting firm just 17 months after taking over from Deloitte & Touche. The auditor said it was “unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management.”
A Super Micro spokesperson told CNBC that the company “disagrees with E&Y’s decision to resign, and we are working diligently to select new auditors.” Super Micro does not expect matters raised by Ernst & Young to “result in any restatements of its quarterly financial results for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, or for prior fiscal years,” the representative said.
Analysts at Argus Research on Thursday downgraded the stock in the intermediate term to a hold, citing the Hindenburg note, reports of the Justice Department investigation and the departure of Super Micro’s accounting firm, which the analysts called a “serious matter.” Argus’ fears go beyond accounting irregularities, with the firm suggesting that the company may be doing business with problematic entities.
“The DoJ’s concerns, in our view, may be mainly about related-party transactions and about SMCI products ending up in the hands of sanctioned Russian companies,” the analysts wrote.
In September, the month after announcing its filing delay, Super Micro said it had received a notification from the Nasdaq indicating that its late status meant the company wasn’t in compliance with the exchange’s listing rules. Super Micro said the Nasdaq’s rules allowed the company 60 days to file its report or submit a plan to regain compliance. Based on that timeframe, the deadline would be mid-November.
Though Super Micro hasn’t filed financials with the SEC since May, the company said in an August earnings presentation that revenue more than doubled for a third straight quarter. Analysts expect that, for the fiscal first quarter ended September, revenue jumped more than 200% to $6.45 billion, according to LSEG. That’s up from $2.1 billion a year earlier and $1.9 billion in the same fiscal quarter of 2023.
Peopl walk outside Steve Jobs Theater at the Apple Park campus before Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” event in Cupertino, California, on Sept. 9, 2024.
Nic Coury | AFP | Getty Images
Apple will buy Pixelmator, the creator of image editing apps for Apple’s iPhone and Mac platforms, Pixelmator announced Friday in a blog post.
Pixelmator, a Lithuanian company, was founded in 2007, and in recent years has been best known for Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro, which compete with Adobe Photoshop. It also makes Photomator, a photo editing app.
Apple has highlighted Pixelmator apps over the years in its keynote product launches. In 2018, Apple named Pixelmator Pro its Mac App of the year, citing the company’s enthusiastic embrace of Apple’s machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, such as removing distracting objects from photos or making automated color adjustments.
“We’ve been inspired by Apple since day one, crafting our products with the same razor-sharp focus on design, ease of use, and performance,” Pixelmator said in its blog post.
Apple does not acquire as many large companies as its Silicon Valley rivals. It prefers to make smaller acquisitions of companies with products or people that it can use to create Apple features. Neither Pixelmator nor Apple provided a price for the transaction.
Pixelmator said in its blog post that there “will be no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time.”
Earlier this week, Apple released the first version of Apple Intelligence, a suite of features that includes photo editing abilities such as Clean Up, which can remove people or objects from photos using AI.
Apple has acquired other popular apps that received accolades at the company’s product launches and awards ceremonies.
In 2020, Apple bought Dark Sky, a weather app that eventually became integrated into Apple’s default weather app. In 2017, it bought Workflow, an automation and macro app that eventually became Shortcuts, the iPhone’s scripting app, as well as the groundwork for a more capable Siri assistant.