Good morning. Any readers subscribe to the food delivery service Blue Apron? Have things been going smoothly lately? No?
You’re not alone—and that’s not just this author’s experience talking. Several weeks ago, operations at a major supplier went haywire, leading the popular meal kit pioneer to ship boxes with multiple missing ingredients, missing meals, or nothing at all. It was neither the opportunity to “further delight customers” that Wonder CEO Marc Lore promised when his firm acquired Blue Apron for $103 million in 2023 nor the path to righting Blue Apron’s stubbornly upside-down financials.
Innovation-obsessed corporate chieftains love to talk about building the plane while they’re flying it, but Blue Apron’s recent stumbles are a stark warning about the risks of leaving the second part on autopilot. And, of course, ordering the fish.
Today’s tech news follows. Have a productive day. —Andrew Nusca
P.S. Flying the taxi while you’re building it, perhaps?
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Meta will pay up to $17 billion to settle addiction claims
Meta on Wednesday agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion over the next decade to settle a landmark child-safety lawsuit brought about by 29 state attorneys general.
The suit alleged that Meta designed Instagram with intentionally addictive features and exposed younger users to serious mental harm while misleading the public about the platform’s safety.
In addition to the payout, the social media company will make sweeping changes to its platform, including a default two-hour daily time limit on Facebook and Instagram for under-18 users, and will bring on an independent auditor.
Meta’s settlement comes in as one of the largest of its kind. The agreement means the social media giant’s payment is more than 12 times higher than the previous highest settlement in the past four years—a mark Meta itself kept up to that point with its $1.4 billion settlement in 2024.
At up to $17.1 billion, state attorneys general describe it as the largest state consumer-protection settlement outside of the tobacco settlements of the 1990s—and it is the largest settlement ever reached with a single company in the New York attorney general’s office.
Previous settlements surrounding children and teen safety include TikTok’s $400 million children’s privacy settlement in 2026, Meta’s $1.4 billion Texas biometric data privacy settlement in 2024, Google’s $1.375 billion Texas data privacy settlement in 2025, Meta’s $725 million Facebook user privacy settlement in 2023, and Google’s $391.5 million location-tracking privacy settlement in 2022. —Joshua Hong
Nvidia posts $96 billion in revenue, cruising past estimates
Nvidia logged revenue of $96.2 billion for its fiscal second quarter, the Santa Clara, Calif. chipmaker reported on Wednesday, up 18% over last quarter and crushing analyst estimates of $92.2 billion.
A year ago, Nvidia recorded $46.7 billion in quarterly revenue.
“AI has reached its inflection point. It’s doing useful work. Its tokens are productive and profitable. Now, compute is revenue,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in a statement.
Data center revenue, representing the vast majority of Nvidia’s AI business, clocked in at $89 billion, compared to analyst estimates of $85.7 billion. Last quarter, the data center segment produced $75.2 billion in revenue, up 92% from the year prior when revenue was $39.1 billion.
Within its data center business, Nvidia reported $48.7 billion in hyperscale revenue and $40.3 billion in revenue for its “AI clouds, industrial, and enterprise” segment, a designation the company adopted to make its large cloud customers distinct from its AI-native clouds, sovereign AI, and on-premises enterprise business.
Nvidia reported non-GAAP earnings of $2.22 per diluted share; analysts had expected $2.06 to $2.09. Last quarter, Nvidia earned $1.87 per share, non-GAAP. One note about that: The company began including stock-based compensation in its non-GAAP results, making direct comparisons to previous fiscal years less of an apples-to-apples distinction. —Amanda Gerut
DraftKings awards $30 million contract to co-founder
DraftKings has fallen on hard times. Under pressure from prediction markets, the betting site has seen its share price fall 44% in the past year and has endured significant layoffs.
In March, one of DraftKings’ three co-founders, Matthew Kalish, stepped down as president—but not before persuading the board to approve a series of potentially lucrative deals to benefit his new marketing company.
As set out in a recent regulatory filing, DraftKings has agreed to pay up to $30 million in a marketing agreement with media platform HardScope, Kalish’s newest endeavor to help scale creator brands. Under the terms of the arrangement, HardScope will broker deals with podcast hosts and other figures to promote DraftKings, and is entitled to keep a commission of up to 14%.
Both parties told Fortune that the arrangement was approved by DraftKings’ independent audit committee. Though the committee is independent, its members are chosen by the company’s board—on which all three DraftKings cofounders, including Kalish, have a seat.
The arrangement is noteworthy because it contemplates DraftKings making a large marketing outlay to a company insider at a time when the firm is struggling and because it appears to be the product of a board structure that gives an unusual amount of power to its CEO, co-founder Jason Robins.
The deal also raises questions about corporate oversight and could, in the near term, supply additional ammunition to short sellers that have been aggressively betting against DraftKings’ share price for the bulk of 2026. —Camila Grigera Naón
More tech
—OpenAI says it was not aware its agents were hacking Hugging Face in July.
—Meta reportedly tried to reduce headcount in a bid to be “AI native,” but reversed course after they were shown to be ineffective.
—Apple plans a press event for Sept. 9; new iPhones are expected.
—Take-Two’s Rockstar Games apologizes for a lack of communication following the leak of gameplay videos from its forthcoming Grand Theft Auto VI.
—Amazon will acquire DuckLabs, the Amsterdam firm behind the open source database DuckDB.
—The FBI says it disrupted a Chinese hacking operation allegedly responsible for break-ins at NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Senate, and other government agencies.
—Amazon says Ring’s new “TAKE” encryption method is a viable alternative to end-to-end encryption (except no one else can use it).