Good morning. Andrew Nusca here, back from a week in lovely Singapore. Many thanks to Alexei Oreskovic for steering the good ship Fortune Tech while I was gone.
Have you heard the latest about the Ray-Ban x Meta collab? Eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica posted its latest financial results and reported that sales of the cross-branded, AI-infused Wayfarer and Skyler smart glasses (alas, no Aviators…yet) more than tripled in the first half of the year, helping it top analyst estimates. Nice.
Both companies believe the next collab—Oakley Meta, specifically the HSTN model—will be just as successful, though I don’t think they’ll be able to get there until they inject AI into Oakley’s bestselling Holbrook frames…or the styles modeled by the drip-king 1990s Chicago Bulls. (Not to make it, uh, personal.)
As always, today’s tech news is below. —Andrew Nusca
P.S. There are just six weeks (!) until our Fortune Brainstorm Tech gathering in Deer Valley. Joining us are more brilliant CEOs than I can shake a chip at, including the chief executives of Flex, Ogilvy, Gensler, Maven Clinic, Kraken, Qualtrics, Cloudflare, Aura, Vast, Interstellar Labs, Oura, and Slate Auto. Register to participate before it’s too late.
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Samsung’s chip business scores a major Tesla deal
Samsung Electronics said Monday that it will produce AI semiconductors for Tesla in a new $16.5 billion deal.
That’s a big deal for the South Korean giant’s chip-manufacturing arm, or foundry, which has lost billions of dollars amid stiff global competition.
The new agreement involves a new chipmaking plant in Taylor, Texas—a 40-minute drive from state capital Austin—to support Tesla’s AI6 chip, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Construction on the facility is expected to end in 2026; the deal itself will last through the end of 2033.
Samsung shares jumped about 7% on the Korea Exchange. Tesla stock rose slightly on the Nasdaq.
Samsung surely hopes that a Tesla deal will help its foundry pull more customers away from category leader TSMC and ultimately turn its business right side up. (After all, in manufacturing there’s little value in unused capacity.)
Meanwhile Tesla hopes using more components made in the U.S. will help it avoid the White House’s extensive import tariffs and keep retail prices under control as it drives (sorry) toward an autonomous future. —AN
Anthropic lawsuit could result in business-ending damages
Leading AI lab Anthropic is reckoning with a class-action lawsuit that could leave the company on the hook for billions of dollars’ worth of damages.
According to court filings, the company downloaded millions of copyrighted works to train AI models and build a “central library” of digital books that would include “all the books in the world” and preserve them indefinitely.
The plaintiffs allege that millions of these works were obtained from piracy websites in direct violation of copyright law.
The judge has ruled that training AI models on lawfully acquired books qualifies as “fair use,” and that AI companies do not need a license from copyright holders to conduct such training—a decision that was viewed as a major win for the AI sector.
The still unresolved issue is how Anthropic obtained and stored the copyrighted books.
The plaintiffs are unlikely to prove direct financial harm, such as lost sales, and are likely to instead rely on statutory damages, which can range from $750 to $150,000 per work. That range depends heavily on whether the infringement is deemed willful.
If the court rules that Anthropic knowingly violated copyright law, the resulting fines could be enormous, potentially in the billions, even at the lower end of the scale.
A trial is currently scheduled for Dec. 1. —Beatrice Nolan
Coinbase reportedly in talks to acquire CoinDCX
U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is reportedly in “advanced discussions” to acquire Mumbai-based CoinDCX.
According to a report by the India newspaper Mint, the potential deal could value CoinDCX, one of the country’s largest crypto exchanges, “at less than a billion dollars”—well below its previous $2.2 billion valuation.
Coinbase already owns a stake in CoinDCX as well as its more valuable rival CoinSwitch. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Coinbase could maneuver to merge the companies.
The company declined to comment to Mint on its report.
CoinDCX was most recently in the news for a multimillion-dollar crypto heist. In June, hackers reportedly compromised an internet-connected internal account, or “hot wallet,” that the company uses to provide liquidity to customers.
Though no customer funds were lost, it took CoinDCX nearly a day to disclose it, and many customers moved to withdraw their funds. —AN
More tech
—Browse the web like…an AI agent? Microsoft’s experimental Copilot Mode anticipates your link clicks.
—Cadence Design pleads guilty. Will pay some $140 million for selling its U.S. chip design tools to a Chinese military academy.
—Tea app hacked again. A second breach of the women’s dating info app threatens to unmask more anonymous users.
—Nvidia orders more H20 from TSMC. China demand for AI chips that could outpace supply.
—Z.ai debuts open-source AI model. The Tencent-backed, Beijing-based company formerly known as Zhipu reinforces the DeepSeek revolution.
—PayPal adds crypto support. U.S. merchants can accept more than 100 cryptocurrencies if they want.
—U.S. smartphone shipments up 1%. Front-loaded inventories in light of tariff concerns; China manufacturing is rapidly migrating to India.
Endstop triggered
