Morning Brief: iPhone 17 Tops Q2 Best-Selling Smartphones / GTA 6 Reveals 26-Minute Gameplay Demo / Dreame Coffee Responds to Store Closures
GTA 6 Reveals 26-Minute Gameplay Demo, Launching on PS5 and Xbox on November 19
Nvidia Agrees to Acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 Billion
iPhone 17 Tops Global Smartphone Sales Chart from April to June
Xpeng Robotaxi Obtains Fully Driverless Road Testing Qualification in Guangzhou
Yayoi Kusama Passes Away at 97
Anthropic Signs $45 Billion Compute Contract with Nscale
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Thinking Machines Lab Co-Founder Barret Zoph Joins Google DeepMind
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Nvidia Suspends Some AI Cloud Financing Share Schemes
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Plaud One Exploration Edition Released; Can Connect to Internet Independently and Execute Tasks from Conversations
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Tears of Themis Ends Collaboration with Dove
Mixue Group Reports H1 Revenue of 15.22 Billion Yuan, Net Profit Down 14.7% Year-over-Year
The Social Network Releases Official Trailer, Hitting North American Theaters on October 9
Lee Chang-dong's New Film 'Possible Love' Releases Trailer, Premiering on Netflix on November 6
GTA 6 Reveals 26-Minute Gameplay Demo, Launching on PS5 and Xbox on November 19
Rockstar released a 26-minute extended gameplay demo for GTA 6, titled 'A Substantial Glimpse,' via Netflix. The video showcases missions and open-world gameplay featuring the two protagonists, Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos, in Vice City and the state of Leonida.
After a six-hour exclusivity window on Netflix, the video will be available for free on Rockstar's official website and YouTube. A version with Chinese subtitles will be uploaded to Bilibili at 11:00 AM today.
The demo footage was recorded on the PS5. Rockstar has not yet disclosed the project's budget. External estimates place the total cost of GTA 6 at around $1 billion to $1.
5 billion, with nearly 4,000 people directly involved in its development; however, these figures are not officially confirmed.
GTA 6 is scheduled to release on November 19 this year for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The Standard and Ultimate editions are priced at $79.99 and $99.99, respectively.
Related Reading: GTA 6 Reveals 26-Minute Gameplay Demo—Is This Game Really Worth a 13-Year Wait?
Nvidia Agrees to Acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 Billion
According to The Information, Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face, an open-source AI model and dataset platform, for $12.9 billion. Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face has responded immediately; if the deal is completed, it will become one of the largest acquisitions in Nvidia's history.
Hugging Face hosts open-source models, datasets, and development tools for developers. The report notes that the platform currently generates an annualized revenue of approximately $150 million. Nvidia participated in its funding round back in 2023, when Hugging Face was valued at $4.5 billion.
The acquisition will also give Nvidia direct control over a key distribution platform within the AI open-source ecosystem. In July of this year, Hugging Face's infrastructure was breached by an agent during an internal security assessment by OpenAI, affecting some production nodes and clusters.
iPhone 17 Tops Global Smartphone Sales Chart from April to June
A latest report by Counterpoint Research shows that the iPhone 17 became the best-selling smartphone globally from April to June this year with a 6% sales share, while the iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone 17 Pro ranked second and third, respectively. Both Apple and Samsung had five models each in the top ten. The top ten models combined accounted for 26% of global smartphone sales, up 2 percentage points from the same period last year.
The overall smartphone market declined by 11% during the same period, while Apple's sales increased by 5% year-over-year. Counterpoint noted that the iPhone 17 series drove Apple's growth in India, Japan, the Middle East, and Africa, with sales in South Korea nearly doubling. The base iPhone 17 has narrowed the specification gap with the Pro models.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is the highest-selling Android device on the list...