A visitor is seen trying a Ray-Ban Meta glasses at a Meta

A visitor trying on Ray-Ban Meta glasses at a Meta stall at Mumbai Tech Week (Ashish Vaishnav/Getty Images)

Meta thinks it can save its hardware division with AI subscriptions. There are reasons to be skeptical.

An $8 AI subscription won’t plug a $19 billion hardware hole.

Fresh after rejuvenating investors with alternate revenue streams, Meta is throwing them a curve. It believes the path to those software riches requires pushing even deeper into money-losing hardware.

While Mark Zuckerberg’s Reality Labs division continues to rack up losses at a spectacular rate — to the tune of $4 billion last quarter alone and $83 billion since the fourth quarter of 2020 — a newly leaked internal memo reported by The Information reveals Meta thinks it can use physical gadgets as the ultimate Trojan horse for AI software subscriptions.

Meta is reportedly prepping an ambitious new lineup of wearable devices, including expanding its smart glasses lineup, testing an AI-powered pendant, and targeting 10 million device sales in the second half of 2026.

But the real strategy shift isn’t about selling gadgets; it’s about monetizing the software inside them. Meta’s VP of wearables, Alex Himel, noted that to “build a sustainable business beyond hardware margins,” the company needs to push users toward paid subscriptions for its Meta AI chatbot and other apps.

Like much of the tech world, Meta is hoping to develop a cozier relationship with its users by also selling the devices on which they access its software. The thinking is that Meta will sell the hardware as the gateway, and charge monthly for the AI brains. Wall Street, however, is deeply skeptical for a very simple reason: the math is brutal.

Reality Labs lost over $19 billion last year and Zuckerberg earlier this year said he expects 2026’s losses to be similar. Meanwhile, Himel’s memo says that Meta aims to reach 6.8 million monthly active wearable users by the end of this year.

If we assume a utopian, best-case scenario where literally every single one of those 6.8 million users ponies up for an $8-a-month Meta AI subscription ($96 a year), it would generate roughly $653 million in annual revenue.

That covers 3.4% of Reality Labs’ annual operating loss.

To actually break even on an $8 monthly sub, Meta would need around 200 million paying subscribers. For context, Spotify has 293 million paying subscribers globally — and it took the streamer over a decade to get there without asking anyone to wear a camera around their neck or on their face. Zuckerberg expects Reality Labs’ losses to gradually come down, which could theoretically mean needing fewer subscriptions to cover the loss, but that will take time and perfect execution.

Meta isn’t entirely blind to this volume problem. The memo also highlights a new push into the B2B market with “Wearables for Work,” targeting enterprise clients who have much deeper pockets and a willingness to pay premium rates for “vertical-specific” tech.

Enterprise contracts might eventually offer higher margins, but for now, Meta’s plan to reverse its hardware losses looks less like a financial turnaround and more like a drop in the bucket. Wall Street loves a good recurring revenue stream — but an $8 subscription can’t magically fill a $19 billion sinkhole (not to mention address its yawning $145 billion capex bill).

The stock is down around 3% today.

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Rani Molla48m

Despite a massive surge in corporate AI spending, the technology is broadly failing to deliver the massive cost reductions executives had anticipated, according to a new global survey from Bain & Co. shared with Bloomberg. The largest share of major companies measuring their AI returns — 40% — realized cost savings of 10% or less, with poor access to internal data cited as the primary roadblock. Most had expected higher returns. More concerningly, Bain warned that many companies are using their original, overly optimistic projections — rather than their actual savings — to justify funding their next wave of expensive AI investments, creating a “circular bet with a structural leak.”

Jon Keegan1h

Anthropic confidentially files for IPO

Anthropic has filed confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its initial public offering. The IPO is expected to be one of the largest in US history, and will likely be joined by OpenAI, which is also expected to go public before the end of the year.

The company filed a draft S-1 form with the SEC, which does not indicate the price of the offering. The official public S-1, which will come later, will give potential shareholders a first look at the finances of Anthropic, which just last week announced that it raised $65 billion, reaching a valuation of $965 billion. This puts the company well ahead of archrival OpenAI, which is currently valued at $850 billion.

Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC

Rani Molla3h

Prosus may thwart Uber’s bid for Delivery Hero

Uber’s aggressive pursuit of Delivery Hero could hit a major roadblock. After the European food delivery giant rejected Uber’s initial $11.6 billion buyout offer, the American company pivoted, scooping up a 37% stake in the open market.

Now, Prosus, formerly Delivery Hero’s largest shareholder, is plotting a counteroffensive.

Thanks to an EU regulatory waiver Monday that temporarily pauses its mandatory stock sell-down, the Amsterdam-based investment firm is reportedly looking to either increase its stake or rally other shareholders against Uber. The goal: block the takeover entirely or force a significantly higher premium.

Prosus has warned about the loss of European tech relevance if a US giant swallows the company. Meanwhile, investors are loving the drama: the takeover tug-of-war, which also includes DoorDash, has sent Delivery Hero stock soaring over 75% in the past month.

Uber faces Prosus challenge in Delivery Hero pursuit

Rani Molla4h

Tesla sales surge in European markets in May

Tesla sales surged across Europe in May, Reuters reports, with sales jumping double and even triple digits in a number of early-reporting markets. Of course, 2025 was a very difficult year for Tesla sales in Europe, so the growth is coming off notably small denominators.

Interestingly, the resurgence is happening without EU approval for supervised Full Self-Driving, something CEO Elon Musk predicted would cause sales to “improve significantly” after blaming the absence of the tech for its weak sales.

The company has received approval for a version of its FSD tech in the Netherlands, as well as Lithuania and Estonia, and expects “EU-wide” permission in the second or third quarter.

Rani Molla5/29/26

Microsoft is reportedly building a super app to tame product sprawl — and finally crack mobile

Super apps are very 2010s, but they might be the future for Microsoft. The enterprise giant is working on combining its sprawling and often confusing product suite into a single super app expected by late summer, Fortune reports.

By unifying the tools, Microsoft is hoping that the massive popularity of some of its offerings — particularly GitHub Copilot — will rub off on its other, slower-growing products.

The tool will merge its coding assistant GitHub Copilot, its chat function Copilot, its Copilot Cowork tool, and a new agentic workflow called Autopilot. The move, known internally as “Delivering one Copilot,” will have the dual purpose of simplifying Microsoft’s fragmented desktop AI offerings and finally helping the office software giant gain a foothold on mobile, where competing tools have dominated.

Microsoft is taking a page from frenemy OpenAI’s playbook. In March, OpenAI announced plans for its own desktop super app to combine ChatGPT, Codex, and its Atlas browser into one central workstation.