30/07/2025

BIZ & FINANCE WEDNESDAY | JULY 30, 2025

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EU accuses Temu of breaking bloc’s digital rules

AI glasses help EssilorLuxottica boost sales PARIS: EssilorLuxottica, the world’s top maker of eyeglasses, said on Monday a tripling of sales of Ray-Ban Meta AI connected glasses helped drive increase in profits. The group’s revenue climbed by 5.5% to €14 billion (RM68.6 billion) in the first half of the year, with net profit edging 1.6% higher to €1.4 billion. EssilorLuxottica’s chief executive Francesco Milleri said results showed the group is “keeping pace with our growth targets despite a volatile environment”. Like other European firms, the weak dollar impacted the company’s performance in the North American region, nearly wiping out growth in the second quarter. EssilorLuxottica said AI glasses gained momentum in the first half of the year, with Ray-Ban Meta more than tripling in revenue year-over-year. It also announced new AI-enabled Oakley glasses in June. “We are leading the transformation of glasses as the next computing platform, one where AI, sensory tech and a data-rich healthcare infrastructure will converge to empower humans and unlock our full potential,” said Milleri. The Ray-Ban glasses, equipped with camera, headphones and microphones, allow wearers to prompt Meta’s AI without opening their phone by saying “Hey Meta”. The firm did not provide sales fig ures for the glasses or comment on the minority stake Meta has taken in it, which was disclosed earlier this month by Bloomberg. – AFP AstraZeneca quarterly net profit jumps on record US growth LONDON: British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca yesterday said net profit rose 27% in the second quarter, boosted by record growth in its key US market. Profit after tax rose to US$2.45 billion (RM10.4 billion) in the three months to the end of June, the company said in an earnings statement, following its recently announced multi-billion-dollar investment in the United States. Total revenue climbed 12% to a quarterly record of US$14.5 billion, driven by strong cancer drug sales. Amid the threat of President Donald Trump’s possible tariffs on pharmaceutical imports, AstraZeneca has unveiled plans to invest US$50 billion in the US by 2030 and has already began moving some of its European production to the US. CEO Pascal Soriot said the “investment reflects not only America’s importance but also our confidence in our innovative medicines”. The US accounted for 44% of AstraZeneca’s total revenue in the second quarter, with US revenue jumping a record 13%. The firm expects half of its revenue to come from the US by 2030. – AFP

volume forecasts from clients, said one of the sources and a fourth source. The Trump administration said the resumption of H20 sales was part of negotiations with China over rare earth magnets – elements essential for many industries and which Beijing had limited exports of as trade war tensions escalated. The decision drew bipartisan condemnation from US legislators who are worried that giving China access to the H20 will impede American efforts to maintain its lead in AI technology. But Nvidia and others argue that it is important to retain Chinese interest in its chips – which work with Nvidia’s software tools – so that developers do not completely switch over to offerings from rivals like Huawei. – Reuters EU can slap a fine on Temu. Fines under the DSA can go as high as 6% of a company’s total worldwide annual turnover and force it to make changes to address violations. Launched in October, the EU probe continues to investigate other suspected breaches including the use of addictive design features that could hurt users’ physical and mental well-being and how Temu’s systems recommend content and products. The DSA is part of the EU’s reinforced legal weaponry to curb the excesses of Big Tech, with stricter rules for the world’s biggest platforms. It has faced criticism from the US administration under President Donald Trump. The Republican-dominated judiciary committee of the US House of Representatives described the DSA in a scathing report as a “foreign censorship threat” on Friday. Staunch President Donald Trump ally Jim Jordan, committee chair, met EU tech sovereignty chief Henna Virkkunen in Brussels as part of a bipartisan delegation on Monday. “We had a constructive discussion on how to promote digi tal innovation, AI and regulate this field smartly,” she said on X after the meeting. There are currently other DSA probes into Chinese online retailer AliExpress, social media platforms Facebook and Instagram and X as well as TikTok. The EU also wants to crack down on cheap packages that flood into the bloc each year, with a proposal under discussion for a two-euro flat fee per parcel. Last year, 4.6 billion such pack ages entered the EU – more than 145 per second –with 91% originating in China. The EU expects the numbers to increase. – AFP

the continent’s market in 2023, Temu has 93.7 million average monthly active users in the 27-country bloc. The European Union said Temu’s October 2024 risk assessment was “inaccurate and relying on general industry information rather than on specific details about its own marketplace”. Temu is under investigation as part of a mammoth law known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) that forces the world’s largest tech firms to do more to protect European consumers online and better police content online. Temu will now be able to respond to the EU regulators’ findings and defend itself, but there is no time limit on how long an investigation may last. If confirmed to be in breach, the

o Regulators believe Chinese online shopping giant not doing enough to protect consumers from dangerous products

BRUSSELS: The European Union accused Chinese-founded online shopping giant Temu on Monday of breaking the bloc’s digital rules by not “properly” assessing the risks of illegal products. EU regulators believe Temu is not doing enough to protect European consumers from dangerous products and that it may not be acting sufficiently to mitigate risks to users. “Evidence showed that there is a high risk for consumers in the EU

to encounter illegal products on the platform,” the European Commission said in its preliminary finding. It pointed to a mystery shopping exercise that found consumers were “very likely to find non-compliant products among the offer, such as baby toys and small electronics”. Temu said only it would “continue to cooperate fully with the commission”. Wildly popular in the European Union despite only having entered

The Temu logo displayed on a mobile phone in front of a screen bearing the European Union logo. – AFPPIC

Nvidia orders 300,000 H20 chips from TSMC

TAIPEI: Nvidia placed orders for 300,000 H20 chipsets with contract manufacturer TSMC last week, two sources said, with one of them adding that strong Chinese demand had led the US firm to change its mind about just relying on its existing stockpile. Donald Trump’s administration this month allowed Nvidia to resume sales of H20 graphics proc essing units (GPUs) to China, revers ing an effective ban imposed in April designed to keep advanced AI chips out of Chinese hands due to national security concerns. Nvidia developed the H20 specifically for the Chinese market after US export restrictions on its other AI chipsets were imposed in late 2023. The H20 does not have as much

available and it had no immediate plans to restart wafer production for the GPU. Nvidia needs to obtain export licenses from the US government to ship the H20 chips. It said in mid-July it had been assured by authorities that it would get them soon. The US Department of Commerce has yet to approve those licenses, one of the sources and a third source said. Nvidia on Monday declined to comment on the new orders or the status of its license applications. The US Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nvidia has asked China companies interested in purchasing Nvidia H20 chips to submit new docu mentation including order

computing power as Nvidia’s H100 or its new Blackwell series sold in markets outside China. The new orders with Taiwan’s TMSC would add to existing inventory of 600,000 to 700,000 H20 chips, according to the sources who declined to be identified. For comparison purposes, Nvidia sold around 1 million H20 chips in 2024, according to U.S. research firm SemiAnalysis. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during a trip to Beijing this month that the level of H20 orders it received would determine whether production would begin again, adding that any restart to the supply chain would take nine months. The Information reported after Huang’s trip that Nvidia had told customers it had limited H20 stocks