Mark Zuckerberg is wagering that people want to take pictures with their sunglasses whether they admit it or not. Meta is exploring buying a 3% to 5% stake in eyewear leader EssilorLuxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban.

The roughly $5 billion investment would be pretty small potatoes for Meta, which has a market value near $1.2 trillion. But the deal would offer a peek into Meta’s wearable tech roadmap, which has historically been dominated by the success of its Oculus Quest 2 and, more recently, Meta Quest 3 VR headsets.

Tech giant Eye giant

The two companies have had a close partnership since their first collab, releasing smart glasses in 2021. Reactions to the first version ranged from bad to meh, but in October 2023, the next generation Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses hit the market, and consumers (plus Meta execs) were pleasantly surprised.

The new version sold more pairs in a few months than the original ones did in two years, according to EssilorLuxottica’s CEO.

• The glasses allow wearers to livestream what they’re seeing directly to Instagram and Facebook.
• They also feature AI that can answer user questions like, “What kind of flower am I looking at?”

What’s in a name? In 2017, against antitrust officials’ warnings, Essilor and its proprietary lens tech and Luxottica, with its big-name brands like Prada, Vogue Eyewear, Lenscrafters, and Sunglass Hut, became one: EssilorLuxottica. The conglomerate has since snapped up medtech companies and younger brands like Supreme to expand its eyewear empire.

EssilorLuxottica will handle the “cool.” Even a minority stake in the eyewear company could give Meta a leg up on competitors like Apple and Snap in making wearable tech that doesn’t look horrendous. The deal is not yet official, but Meta has already received approval from US antitrust officials, according to Bloomberg.—MM

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Trump recounts assassination attempt, attacks Dems in RNC speech. Former President Trump closed out the Republican National Convention with a speech describing in vivid terms his near-death experience at a rally last Saturday. But after beginning with a message of unity, Trump returned to familiar attacks and insults of his political opponents over the course of the speech, which lasted more than 90 minutes. Meanwhile, President Biden faces mounting pressure to drop out of the presidential race as he recovers from a bout with Covid. Former President Barack Obama is the latest major Democratic figure to reportedly tell allies that Biden should reconsider his candidacy, per the Washington Post.

Netflix keeps humming. The streaming leader delivered another huge quarter, adding ~8 million global subscribers—almost double what Wall Street predicted. The company also said memberships to its new ad-supported tier grew 34% from Q1, and it’s now planning to build an in-house ad-tech platform to launch in 2025. While the news was good, shares were down in after-hours trading, likely for one reason: Netflix expects subscriber growth to eventually slow down, and it plans to stop divulging the metric next year as it focuses more on revenue and profit.

OpenAI released a cheaper version of its flagship model. In an effort to appeal to a wider range of customers, the ChatGPT-maker announced GPT-4o mini, a slimmer, more cost-effective AI that can generate text and images. The lite model positions OpenAI to compete with Anthropic and Google, which have each already released low-cost versions of their advanced AI models. The company also said GPT-4o mini is the first to introduce a safety feature called “instruction hierarchy,” which makes it harder for users to trick the model into doing things it wasn’t designed to do.

Michelob Ultra and Bud Light are experiencing a Freaky Friday switch, but this one probably can’t be stopped with a magic fortune cookie. New consumer data shows that Bud Light has fallen to the third-best-selling beer in America, while Michelob Ultra has pushed ahead to take second place behind the top dog, Modelo.

The shake-up comes after a crucial period for beverage brands—between Memorial Day and July Fourth—that cements industry winners and losers for the year. For the four-week period ending on July 6, Bud Light accounted for 6.5% of beer retail sales while Michelob Ultra took 7.3% and Modelo 9.7%, according to NielsenIQ data. That’s not necessarily bad news for Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, since it also brews Michelob and has upped the brand’s marketing spend. (In the US, Modelo belongs to rival Constellation Brands.)

Imbibe vibes are changing: Modelo overtook Bud Light as the top-selling beer last year, following a boycott spurred by a collaboration with a transgender influencer. Now, Bud Light is also facing low-carb Michelob Ultra’s ascendance: With only 95 calories each, Ultras are surging among increasingly health-conscious drinkers.

Except to see more of No. 2 soon…fresh off being the exclusive beer sponsor of Copa América, Michelob Ultra holds the same distinction for Team USA at the Olympics.—CC

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It’s a dream come true for gamers’ 2013 selves: More than a decade after EA Sports shelved its NCAA football series for legal reasons, today’s worldwide release of College Football 25 (CFB25) marks a revival for the category—and EA’s biz.

It’s already crushing among pre-orderers. Fans who paid extra for an early bundle (the standard edition costs $69.99) or signed up for a free 10-hour trial have been able to play CFB25 since Monday.

• More than 713,000 people were reportedly playing concurrently at one point this week. That would’ve made CFB25 the second-most-popular game on the platform Steam in a 48-hour period, Kotaku reported.
• Reviews have been glowing, hailing everything from gameplay to attention to authentic college stadium details. Users overwhelmed the servers, leading to connection issues.

Hooray for EA. The video game publisher’s stock has rallied nearly 15% since releasing the game’s trailer two months ago. A TD Cowen analyst noted that demand is tracking ahead of what’s typically seen for the company’s popular Madden pro football games.

Other winners include…Sony and Microsoft, since only the new PlayStation, Xbox S Series, and Xbox X Series run CFB25 (anecdotally, console sales are up at Walmart), as well as the 11,000+ NCAA players who got at least $600 each (and a copy of the game) for their name, image, and likeness. EA was able to revamp its college football gaming after compensation for college athletes was legalized in 2021.—ML

Those crackers you bought in 2015 that you find in the back of your pantry one day are always a nice surprise, but those won’t get you through the apocalypse. What might, however, is Costco’s new doomsday bucket. For $80, the big-box store sells an “Emergency Food Bucket” of 150 freeze-dried meals, including rice, pudding, pasta, and, for some reason, potato pot pie. “Sounds like a standard trip to the grocery store,” you say. Well, here’s the kicker: The Armageddon meals last up to 25 years. Let’s see the spinach and kale Greek yogurt dip from Trader Joe’s do that.

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