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Jun 24, 2026
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Supported by
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Happy Wednesday! OpenAI touts progress in its ad business at the Cannes Lions festival. Meta Platforms unveils new smart glasses. Alibaba Group sues the Pentagon.
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OpenAI’s ad chief Dave Dugan said at Cannes this week that around 20% of ChatGPT queries have a “direct commercial intent,” demonstrating that a user is looking to buy a specific product. A greater proportion of queries, he said, extend beyond requests for specific products and signal that the user could be interested in purchasing something down the line. Dugan made the comments as part of the AI giant’s pitch to advertisers that its chatbot offers a unique way to reach users as they research or consider buying a certain product. Dugan and OpenAI chief revenue officer Denise Dresser are among the ad and technology executives attending the annual Cannes Lions festival being held this week, as OpenAI aims to continue to scale its ad business after launching it in February. Initially, OpenAI charged advertisers based on how many views their ads got, but has quickly expanded to add cost-per-click ads as well as ad campaigns aimed at getting users to take a specific action like making a purchase or downloading an app. The majority of ad campaigns now bill advertisers based on clicks, and ads for travel, retail, health and beauty and financial services products have been performing best thus far, Dugan said. During its presentation, OpenAI also touted how brands can use Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent, to create apps that can create ad campaigns.
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Meta Platforms unveiled a new line of smart glasses on Tuesday, pricing one of the devices $80 below its previous entry-level model despite adding no new major capabilities—a move that underscores the company’s desire to expand market share ahead of expected rival entries from Apple and Google. “This is the first set of Meta Glasses that we’ve designed from the ground up to be great-looking, comfortable glasses, accessible to a lot more people,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Threads post, adding that one of the pairs, called Meta Starfire, was custom-designed by reality TV star Kylie Jenner. The new Meta Glasses, made in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, are priced at $299, $80 less than the starting price of the second-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses, while the Kylie Jenner edition costs $399, according to Meta’s online store. This is the first smart glasses line Meta has positioned entirely under its own “Meta Glasses” branding, rather than using the Ray-Ban or Oakley co-branding that has defined its earlier products. The new glasses include a built-in camera and integrated speakers, and run on Meta’s latest AI model, Muse Spark, but do not come with augmented reality features like the glasses Snap unveiled last week. Wearers can use Meta’s AI assistant to take photos and videos, answer questions about what they’re seeing in real time, and handle everyday tasks such as livestreaming to social media, making phone calls, and playing music. The company plans to release four new lines of glasses this year as part of a broader strategy to increase appeal and drive sales. As part of this effort, one of the glasses lines code-named “Modelo,” was expected to debut this month, as previously reported by The Information.
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Alibaba Group has sued the U.S. Department of Defense, seeking to be removed from the Pentagon’s blacklist of Chinese companies with alleged military ties. In a federal complaint filed in California, Alibaba said the Pentagon’s label has “no basis in fact or law” and was imposed “without notice or a fair hearing.” The Chinese tech giant said the accusation could damage its reputation, increase its borrowing costs and restrict its ability to hire lobbyists and other representatives to speak on its behalf. “Alibaba is not affiliated with the Chinese government or military,” the company said in the lawsuit. Earlier this month, the Pentagon designated Alibaba and dozens of other Chinese companies as “Chinese military companies” operating in the U.S. The Pentagon said Alibaba is a “military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base” because the firm is affiliated with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Alibaba noted that the Pentagon briefly added Alibaba to the blacklist in February but removed it in less than an hour. This time, the U.S. department is making the same accusation again without providing a substantive explanation, Alibaba said. The Pentagon has previously added to its blacklist many other Chinese tech companies including search giant Baidu, electric vehicle makers BYD and Nio, robotics company Unitree and chip makers Yangtze Memory Technologies and ChangXin Memory Technologies. Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi was added to the same Pentagon blacklist in 2021, but it was removed months later after Xiaomi successfully sued the department.
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Meta Platforms is building a prediction market app that could rival offerings from Polymarket and Kalshi, The New York Times reported. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has instructed a small team to develop the app, internally known as Arena, through which users could potentially wager on events using either a points system or real money, according to the report. The effort underscores Meta’s push to expand beyond its core social media products and capitalize on growing consumer interest in prediction markets, a category that has gained momentum as users increasingly turn to events such as political changes and sports as betting opportunities. The plans are part of a broader effort to launch a wave of new apps. During an April company-wide meeting, a recording of which was reviewed by The Information, Zuckerberg said he had discussed building as many as 50 new apps with Chief Product Officer Chris Cox. In May, Meta launched two new apps: Instants, which integrates with Instagram and allows users to send disappearing photos, and Forum, a Reddit-like app designed for communities to connect.
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Nvidia on Tuesday released new open-source software for scientists and biotech firms to develop AI agents for their research, even if they don’t have coding experience. The software, Nvidia’s BioNeMo Agent Toolkit, is part of the AI chip leader’s effort to convince companies to use its AI development tools, which run especially well on its server chips. Pharmaceutical and life sciences firms are already large users of AI models for drug discovery and back-office tasks. Nvidia said life-sciences software firm Dassault Systemes and AI research startup Lila Sciences are using the new BioNeMo agent tools. The tools work with Nvidia’s NemoClaw, an open-source software to create personal agents that can write code, edit files and surf the web. “ We need to create the conditions [where AI] agents can specialize because the work that’s done in science and life sciences is deeply specialized,” said Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare.
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