Apple is once again the world's most valuable company, taking the top spot back from NVIDIA after Friday's trading session. Apple shares slipped 1.2% on October 30, leaving it with a market cap of $5.03 trillion, while NVIDIA dropped 4.2% to close at $4.93 trillion. This is the first time Apple has been ahead since it briefly overtook NVIDIA in late July. For context, NVIDIA became the first company to cross $5 trillion almost exactly a year ago, in October 2025. Friday's sell-off came after a run of tech earnings that disappointed investors, with Intel and Amazon following earlier reports from Alphabet and Meta. Intel's stock fell roughly 29% on Friday after a weak Q4 outlook, which CNBC called its worst day since the 1970s.

It looks like the bigger concern is whether the huge spending on AI data centers will pay off, and NVIDIA, as the main supplier of AI GPUs, is directly tied to those budgets. The outlays have grown large enough that Alphabet and Amazon have seen their free cash flow turn negative, pushing them toward debt markets for funding. Apple, meanwhile, has largely stayed out of the AI infrastructure race and kept its capital spending in check. Its shares are up 27% this year, more than twice NVIDIA's gain, and its free cash flow for fiscal 2026 (ended September 30) is projected to climb 38% to $142 billion. The gap between the two is only about $100 billion, though, so the ranking could easily flip back with one good day for NVIDIA.

Instagram is testing a new format called Features, which lets creators upload horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long. The test started on Monday with a small group of US creators, following an earlier trial in Brazil, and it's aimed squarely at podcasters, comedians, and other long-form creators who mostly publish on YouTube today. Instagram head Adam Mosseri and VP of Product Tessa Lyons announced it in a video. Plenty of creators already post Reels clips to promote full episodes hosted elsewhere, so Instagram now wants to host the full episode too. Reels can link straight to the full video, and Features will also be recommended on the Explore page.

While YouTube shares ad revenue with creators in its Partner Program, Instagram has no plans to do the same for Features, at least for now. An Instagram representative said the company is funding some creators directly, but that it's "too early to share a long-term monetization model." Lyons said established creators can bring their existing sponsorships and branded content along. Instagram already tried long-form video once with IGTV, which launched in 2018 and was shut down in 2022. This time, the TV seems to be a bigger part of the plan, as the Instagram for TV app, which debuted on Amazon Fire TV in December 2025, has now reached Apple TV in the US. There's no firm date for a wider rollout, and without a revenue share, it's hard to see many creators leaving YouTube anytime soon.

The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) shared an update on AV2 this week, and the clearest date in it comes from YouTube. Des Keane, Engineering Director at YouTube, confirmed the platform will begin streaming in AV2, which is the royalty-free successor to AV1 that AOMedia says offers roughly 30% better compression. In practice, that means either sharper video at the same bitrate or the same quality using less bandwidth, and the codec also adds support for multi-stream and multi-view video, higher frame rates, and improved HDR. Keane put it plainly: "YouTube AV2 streams will be available for Web as soon as early 2027."

Chrome is the other half. Jim Bankoski, VP of Engineering for Google Chrome, said AV2 playback has been demonstrated in the browser, though Google hasn't said which Chrome version will get it or whether it will be on by default. That demo dates back to CES 2026, where Google streamed AV2 videos from YouTube to a gaming laptop at 1080p and 24 FPS using a custom Chrome build with the reference decoder. Netflix and Prime Video are also exploring the format, but neither has shared a timeline. Meta wants to repeat its AV1 rollout with AV2, and Intel is working on SVT-AV2.

Xbox has hired a social media product veteran to run Mojang. In a memo to staff on October 8, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said Maria Angelidou-Smith, most recently chief product officer at Reddit, will join as CEO of Mojang and Minecraft. She starts on October 19 and reports directly to Sharma. Angelidou-Smith replaces Kayleen Walters, who moves over to lead XP, the new Xbox division for film, TV, merchandise, and live experiences. Walters had run Mojang since February 2025, and Xbox says Minecraft went from 350 million copies sold to more than 425 million in that time.

Angelidou-Smith's background is in community products, with no game studio role mentioned. According to the memo, she spent nearly a decade at Meta, where she led Facebook Groups along with Events, Creators, Search, Profile, and Monetization. She later led product and technology at HR software company Personio and joined Reddit in November 2025. Sharma wrote that Mojang already has an exceptional game development team, so Xbox went looking for someone who has "built products for communities at enormous scale" and understands how creators, technology, and monetization come together. Her first order of business, apparently, is to learn from the teams and the community.

Sony is seemingly pulling away from its XR ambitions, as the company has reportedly transferred 43 patents it holds in the United States to none other than Meta. In a large transfer between June and September this year, Sony's patents revolving around virtual, augmented, and mixed reality headsets have been transferred to Meta to strengthen its internal hardware team. These patents reportedly include things like head-mount displays, XR glass types, and much more that Sony has been working on since 2010 up until 2022.

However, not only patents in the United States are at stake here, as there are a total of 419 global patents that Sony will transfer to Meta. Around 180 patents out of these 419 will be those held in the United States, while the remaining 239 were filed in different countries where Sony has research and development teams like in Japan, China, Korea, Europe, and other regions.

A New Mexico jury has found that Facebook violated the state's Unfair Practices Act 43,899,725 times, according to the New Mexico Department of Justice. The verdict came on September 25 in State of New Mexico v. Facebook, Inc., a case filed by the state's attorney general in 2021 over the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, following a two-week trial in Santa Fe. Per NMDOJ, the jury found that Facebook made false or misleading statements about how it collected, protected, shared, and used personal information, and about its handling of misinformation and hate speech. NMDOJ says the jury also found the statements willful, including those about Facebook's investigation of third-party apps after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

A Meta spokesperson said the company disagrees with the verdict and will continue to defend itself. Meta's lawyers acknowledged past mistakes during the trial but denied selling user data, Reuters reported. Here's the statement:

"Meta's platforms are forums for free expression. We have a First Amendment right to manage those platforms in a way we believe best serves the interests of our community. This means prioritizing free speech, protecting our users' information and giving them control over their data."

Meta has detailed Horizon Create and Horizon Studio, two generative AI tools that can let people build playable 2D and 3D games from text prompts. Horizon Create is a mobile app aimed at quick, on-the-go creation, while Horizon Studio is a web-based tool with more granular controls for editing details like difficulty, art direction, and progression systems. Both run on the Meta Horizon Engine and let creators publish across Meta's apps, including Facebook and Instagram. Describing what the tools can do, Horizon VP Saxs Persson said:

"You have an idea, you open the app, describe the game you want to build in your own words, and the system starts building it with you. It's not a sketch, it's not a prototype, you build playable 2D and 3D games with real depth. From there, everything is one prompt away; reimagine the environment, change the characters, make a new quest or a new level, tweak the difficulty so new players can stay with it."

Reuters reports that Meta has been testing a "human concierge" for Muse, its new personal AI agent, where human contractors handle some of the phone calls Muse places for users. The report is based on internal company posts seen by Reuters. Muse launched on September 8, and its calling feature can phone US businesses to book a haircut, check whether a store has an item in stock, or collect quotes. Apparently, not every call went smoothly, with one employee saying their insurance company kept hanging up once it realized it was talking to an AI. Meta reportedly enabled the human option for half of its employees last week, with an opt-out group for anyone who didn't want in.

It looks like that didn't go over well internally. Some employees raised privacy concerns, warning that sensitive information could accidentally end up with call center contractors. One of them reportedly wrote, "We are one bug away from unnecessary information being leaked to human callers." It gets even messier as another employee, who had Muse call his internet and cable provider to negotiate his bill, said the transcript showed the contractor made a racist reference. A Meta Superintelligence Labs vice president reportedly acknowledged it was a mistake to start the test without proper disclosures and said the feature has been rolled back for now.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Meta today announced a strategic multi-generation collaboration for Qualcomm Technologies to be a supplier for data center CPUs for Meta. Qualcomm Technologies' data center CPU, the Qualcomm Dragonfly C1000, is planned to power Meta's next-generation server fleet, underscoring the growing importance of high-performance, power-efficient compute in large-scale scale-out environments.

Qualcomm Technologies' solutions will be in production starting in the second half of 2028 and future data center capacity expansions. Qualcomm Technologies' platform approach, spanning advanced compute, high-performance connectivity, and system-level optimization, is designed to deliver substantial performance per watt and help reduce total cost of ownership at scale.

Meta has signed an agreement to deploy AWS Graviton processors at scale. The deal marks a significant expansion of a long-standing partnership between the two companies as Meta builds its next generation of AI.

The deployment starts with tens of millions of Graviton cores, with the flexibility to expand as Meta's AI capabilities grow. The deal reflects a shift in how AI infrastructure gets built: while GPUs remain essential for training large models, the rise of agentic AI is creating massive demand for CPU-intensive workloads—real-time reasoning, code generation, search, and orchestrating multi-step tasks. Graviton5 is purpose-built for these workloads, giving Meta the processing power to run them efficiently at scale.

NVIDIA's latest GeForce NOW update has introduced 90 FPS streaming to various VR headsets, and Apple users are in for a treat. For the Apple Vision Pro headset, GeForce NOW will deliver 90 FPS at 4K resolution, offering a noticeable improvement for anyone using NVIDIA's game streaming service with their Vision Pro headset. The Apple Vision Pro features two displays, one for each eye, capable of running at a resolution of 3,660 × 3,200 and up to 120 Hz. It's great news that NVIDIA has updated its GeForce NOW service to officially support at least 4K resolution, running at 90 FPS. While it's unclear how many gamers use the Apple Vision Pro as their gaming display, the addition of support by NVIDIA suggests a significant number. Available as part of the Ultimate package, members can stream at 90 FPS on other VR headsets as well, but at lower resolutions.

Additionally, everyone can stream at 1080p and 90 FPS, while 1440p is reserved for Pico and Meta Quest. Currently, only the Apple Vision Pro can handle 4K and 90 FPS output from GeForce NOW. Although not many games can run at 4K resolution and 90 FPS on their own, NVIDIA's DLSS technology can boost the frame rate and deliver impressive visuals, ensuring a smooth 4K mode at 90 FPS. Finally, NVIDIA has also scheduled the rollout of H.265 video decoding support for browsers, which will greatly enhance streaming efficiency and visual quality from NVIDIA's virtual gaming server.

Arm has made a significant move stepping into production silicon for the first time in its history with the launch of the Arm AGI CPU, a data center processor designed specifically for agentic AI workloads. For over three decades, Arm has been purely an IP licensing business. With the launch of its AGI CPU series, Arm made a fundamental shift in how the company positions itself in the market. The AGI CPU is built on a 3 nm process, packs up to 136 Neoverse V3 cores, runs at a 300 W TDP, and delivers 6 GB/s of memory bandwidth per core at under 100 ns latency. It supports up to 6 TB per chip and DDR5-8800 speeds. On the I/O side, the chip features 96 PCIe Gen 6 lanes along with CXL 3.0 and AMBA CHI (Coherent Hub Interface) links. Each core handles a dedicated program thread, which Arm says eliminates throttling and idle threads under sustained load.

Specifically important in the data center business, density figures are notable. Air-cooled systems can fit up to 8,160 cores per rack, while liquid-cooled systems push that above 45,000. Data centers are expected to need more than four times the current CPU capacity per gigawatt to keep up, and Arm is arguing that x86 architecture carries too much overhead and complexity for this new class of workload. Arm claims more than 2x performance per rack versus x86, adding that this can translate to potential savings of up to $10 billion per gigawatt of AI data center capacity.

It's a double feature on GFN Thursday. This week, GeForce NOW offers smoother sights in virtual reality (VR) and a sprawling new land to conquer. Streaming at 90 frames per second (FPS) comes to supported VR headsets. And Crimson Desert, which recently surpassed 3 million wishlist additions on Steam, debuts in the cloud with GeForce RTX 5080-class power. Catch it as part of four new games on GeForce NOW

VR, but Make It 90 FPS
VR in the cloud is getting a smoothness upgrade. GeForce NOW is boosting support for Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest devices and Pico devices to stream at up to 90 FPS for Ultimate members, bringing crisper motion and more responsive gameplay straight from the cloud. The app update is starting to roll out to members starting today. Members can transform the space around them into a personal gaming theater with GeForce NOW, playing favorite PC titles on a massive virtual screen. With support for up to 90 FPS for Ultimate members, gameplay feels smoother, movement more natural and action more comfortable. All premium members can continue to enhance their experiences with NVIDIA RTX and DLSS technologies in supported titles. Just fire up GeForce NOW on supported VR platforms, step into a virtual big screen and let the cloud handle the heavy lifting. From chill sessions in a virtual theater to high-octane firefights, 90 FPS helps keep every moment looking sharp and feeling responsive.

TrendForce's latest research on the foundry industry reveals that continued investment in the AI arms race by North American CSPs and AI startups will keep demand for AI processors and supporting ICs strong in 2026. Global foundry revenue is projected to grow 24.8% YoY to approximately US$218.8 billion, with TSMC expected to post the largest increase of around 32% YoY.

Demand for advanced nodes will continue to be driven by AI GPUs from companies such as NVIDIA and AMD. Meanwhile, North American CSPs, including Google, AWS, and Meta, and AI startups such as OpenAI and Groq, are accelerating the development of their own AI chips. Many of these designs are expected to enter volume production and begin shipping in 2026, becoming key drivers for 5/4 nm and more advanced process technologies.

The Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) group today announced its formation, led by founding members AMD, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and OpenAI. This industry consortium marks a pivotal shift toward a hyperscaler-driven open ecosystem to enable the development of a multi-vendor supply chain for optical scale-up interconnects. By aligning on an open specification, the OCI MSA members are promoting a robust optical ecosystem which will ensure that the future of AI interconnects is built with a flexible, multi-vendor foundation to meet the optical interconnect needs of modern AI infrastructure.

The Physics and Power Mandate
As large language models (LLMs) advance toward super intelligence, traditional copper-based connectivity is reaching limitations in physical reach which are impacting AI cluster scale-up domain architectures. OCI will enable migration from copper-based to optical-based scale-up architectures, alleviating copper interconnect bottlenecks.

Meta has laid out an aggressive, inference-first roadmap for its in-house accelerators, announcing four Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) generations developed with Broadcom and due to be integrated into its data centers over the next two years. The family spans MTIA 300, 400, 450, and 500, with early units already running ranking and recommendation workloads and later designs optimized for real-time model serving. Since Meta runs some of the largest social platforms on the web, developing a fast inference accelerator is required to make social media browsing and recommendation algorithms instant. Rather than pursuing raw peak arithmetic alone, Meta emphasizes memory throughput and inference efficiency. According to the specification table, HBM bandwidth and capacity rises substantially across the series while compute grows more linearly. This means that Meta's point is increasing on-package bandwidth and capacity which can cut latency and power costs for production inference.

The MTIA chips also include hardware support for attention primitives and mixture-of-experts layers, along with low-precision formats tailored to inference to reduce conversion overhead. Software compatibility was a stated priority. Meta says the stack runs natively on common frameworks, so existing production models can be deployed on both GPUs and MTIA without major rewrites, which should ease adoption. Multiple MTIA generations are built to share the same chassis, rack, and networking, allowing upgrades by swapping modules rather than refitting data center infrastructure. That modularity helps explain Meta's fast release cadence compared with the industry norm, considering that Meta's data centers span millions of chips. MTIA chips are already running at kilowatt power budgets and PetaFLOPS of compute, so MTIA accelerators are also competing with industry-leading solutions from NVIDIA, AMD, and other hyperscalers.

AMD is seeing server CPU demand it didn't fully anticipate, with CEO Lisa Su describing it as having "far exceeded" her expectations. Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference earlier today, Su outlined how the landscape has shifted as agentic AI applications have taken off, pushing CPUs back into the spotlight alongside accelerators. The CPU-to-GPU ratio in AI compute workloads has evolved dramatically over the past few months, and top customers reportedly told Su that CPU demand sitting alongside AI was "under-forecasted." Supply is tightening as a result. The sudden spike in customer commitments left little time for the supply chain to adjust, though AMD says it's working closely with partners to ease existing bottlenecks and expects capacity to expand over the coming year. Su expressed confidence that AMD's product lineup is well positioned to address training, inference, and agentic workloads going forward. We've also seen this play out at the customer level, with hyperscalers like Meta signing CPU agreements with AMD and NVIDIA, a sign that compute is diversifying away from a pure GPU focus.

Back in late January, Intel disclosed it had to reallocate wafer capacity from its PC division to Xeon production after hyperscalers started ordering larger quantities than anticipated, triggering a temporary shortage. Then, in early February, both Intel and AMD warned customers in China about tightening supplies, with Intel Xeon delivery times stretching to as long as six months and prices up more than 10%. AMD's situation is somewhat less difficult, but lead times have still pushed out to eight to ten weeks for some orders. On the consumer side, AMD's next-gen Ryzen 'Olympic Ridge' desktop processors based on Zen 6 are rumored to have slipped to 2027, possibly another sign that AMD is prioritizing Zen 6 chiplets for EPYC server processors.

AMD and Meta today announced a 6-gigawatt agreement to power Meta's next generation of AI infrastructure across multiple generations of AMD Instinct GPUs. This agreement expands on the companies' existing strategic partnership and aligns roadmaps across silicon, systems and software to deliver AI platforms purpose-built for Meta's workloads. The first deployment will use a custom AMD Instinct GPU based on the MI450 architecture to deliver AI platforms that are optimized for Meta's workloads at gigawatt-scale. Shipments supporting the first gigawatt deployment are scheduled to begin in the second half of 2026 powered by the custom AMD Instinct MI450-based GPU and 6th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs, codenamed "Venice," running ROCm software and built on the AMD Helios rack-scale architecture. AMD Helios was developed jointly by AMD and Meta through the Open Compute Project to enable scalable, rack-level AI infrastructure.

"We are proud to expand our strategic partnership with Meta as they push the boundaries of AI at unprecedented scale," said Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO, AMD. "This multi-year, multi-generation collaboration across Instinct GPUs, EPYC CPUs and rack-scale AI systems aligns our roadmaps to deliver high-performance, energy-efficient infrastructure optimized for Meta's workloads, accelerating one of the industry's largest AI deployments and placing AMD at the center of the global AI buildout."

NVIDIA today announced a multiyear, multigenerational strategic partnership with Meta spanning on-premises, cloud and AI infrastructure. Meta will build hyperscale data centers optimized for both training and inference in support of the company's long-term AI infrastructure roadmap. This partnership will enable the large-scale deployment of NVIDIA CPUs and millions of NVIDIA Blackwell and Rubin GPUs, as well as the integration of NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet switches for Meta's Facebook Open Switching System platform.

"No one deploys AI at Meta's scale—integrating frontier research with industrial-scale infrastructure to power the world's largest personalization and recommendation systems for billions of users," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Through deep codesign across CPUs, GPUs, networking and software, we are bringing the full NVIDIA platform to Meta's researchers and engineers as they build the foundation for the next AI frontier."

Virtuix Inc., a leading developer of full-body virtual reality systems, today announced that it has joined the Made for Meta program of Meta Platforms, Inc. Through the program, Virtuix plans to make its "Omni One" 360-degree treadmill compatible with Meta Quest headsets and games, broadening Omni One's reach to the world's largest XR user base.

"Joining the Made for Meta program expands our addressable market to millions of active Quest users who already own and love their VR headset and games library," said Jan Goetgeluk, CEO of Virtuix. "We look forward to collaborating with Meta as we continue to scale our consumer business and bring our immersive, full-body gaming experience to a mass audience."

North American CSPs' continued investments in AI infrastructure are expected to increase global AI server shipments by more than 28% YoY in 2026, according to the latest market research from TrendForce. The rapid growth of AI inference services is boosting demand for general-purpose servers, supporting both replacement and expansion efforts. Consequently, TrendForce predicts that total global server shipments, including AI servers, will accelerate from 2025, with a 12.8% YoY growth in 2026.

The server market from 2024 to 2025 primarily centered on training advanced large language models (LLMs), utilizing AI servers with GPUs and HBM for parallel computing. However, starting in the second half of 2025, the growth of AI agents, LLaMA-based applications, and Copilot upgrades shifted CSP's focus toward inference services as a monetization strategy. AI inference workloads are now deployed not only on dedicated AI server racks but also on general-purpose servers that handle pre- and post-inference computing and storage.

Rokid, a global pioneer in human-computer interaction and AI-powered eyewear, today unveils Rokid Ai Glasses Style at CES 2026. Style is a display-free, voice-centric AI glasses built for all-day wear, combining an open AI ecosystem, prescription-first design, dual-chip architecture, and a strong commitment to global accessibility.

Weighing just 38.5 grams, Style is among the lightest full-featured AI glasses on the market. Designed as premium eyewear rather than a gadget, it represents Rokid's answer to the industry's long-standing dilemma: how to deliver powerful AI functionality without compromising comfort, style, or battery life.

The cloud accelerator market share study was conducted at UBS bank, one of the leading research hubs and close followers of market trends. According to UBS, NVIDIA commands 71.2% of the cloud accelerator location share, which includes GPUs and other types of ASICs. The study also included AMD, and other ASICs. For the AMD front, the situation is entirely different as the data shows AMD only captures 5.8% of the cloud accelerator location share. The remaining portion is split between ASICs designed by the likes of AWS, Meta, Broadcom, MediaTek, and many others, which command 22.3%.

For NVIDIA, the company has managed to penetrate its GPUs in 258 datacenter locations, serving as cloud GPU providers. This is a significant number considering that some of these customers are ordering tens and even hundreds of thousands of GPUs at once, especially as the demand expands. NVIDIA is still the backbone of the entire AI infrastructure, and even its older GPUs, which include A100 and H100, are capturing a significant part of the GPU cloud market share. As "Blackwell" SKUs, designed for a million GPU scale systems, are scaled, and we enter the "Rubin" era, NVIDIA's lead may only expand.

Apple is making a notable comeback in the VR/MR market with its upgraded Vision Pro, which still uses OLEDoS display panels. The device aims to drive the next generation of head-mounted devices by enhancing computing power and weight distribution.

TrendForce's latest report on "2025 Near-Eye Display Market Trends and Technology Analysis" indicates that OLEDoS, the preferred display technology for mid-to-high-end VR/MR devices, is experiencing significant breakthroughs in both supply chain and application areas. Consequently, OLEDoS adoption in VR/MR is projected to rise to 58% by 2030.

Today at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit in San Jose, AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) showcased a static display of its "Helios," rack scale platform for the first time in public. Developed based on the new Open Rack Wide (ORW) specification, introduced by Meta, "Helios" extends the AMD open hardware philosophy from silicon to system to rack, representing a major step forward in open, interoperable AI infrastructure.

Extending AMD leadership in AI and high-performance computing, "Helios" provides the foundation to deliver the open, scalable infrastructure that will power the world's growing AI demands. Designed to meet the demands of gigawatt-scale data centers, the new ORW specification defines an open, double-wide rack optimized for the power, cooling, and serviceability needs of next-generation AI systems. By adopting ORW and OCP standards, "Helios" provides the industry with a unified, standards-based foundation to develop and deploy efficient, high-performance AI infrastructure at scale.