Huawei Technologies Co. continued to grow revenue for the sixth consecutive quarter, tallying $33.6 billion for the period ending in June, a 33.7 percent increase year-over-year. The privately held company releases limited financial information. The net profit margin at the half-year mark was said to be 13.2 percent, equivalent to $7.7 billion. Bloomberg extrapolated that to profit of about $5 billion for the quarter, which represents an 18.6 percent decline over the same period last year when asset sales boosted results. The overall trend saw Huawei and other Chinese smartphone manufacturers continuing to gain ground against Apple. Read more

Musician and tech entrepreneur will.i.am is launching an interactive radio service built around conversational AI. Called RAiDiO.FYI, the service lets listeners talk to artificial intelligence serving as DJs as part of a one-on-one exchange designed as a personalized listening experience. RAiDiO.FYI’s AI DJs are trained to converse about topics ranging from music to sports, weather and breaking news. The new service is an offshoot of the performer’s FYI.AI, a platform of digital tools for artists. Users can access RAiDiO.FYI for free on the FYI app for iPhone and Android. Read more

In an effort to create a safer environment for teens, social platform Snapchat is providing educators with resources to familiarize them with the app and help them understand how students use it. The company has launched a website called “An Educator’s Guide to Snapchat.” The announcement, timed to the start of the new school year, comes as lawmakers have been pressuring social networks to do more to protect children, with Florida and Indiana going so far as to enact school cell phone bans. Legislators in California and New York have been exploring similar prohibitions. Read more

Hanoi Police in conjunction with global anti-piracy group Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has closed down what is being called the largest pirate streaming operation in the world. The takedown of the notorious Fmovies and other active piracy sites involved the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations unit and the U.S. Department of Justice International Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (ICHIP) program working with Vietnamese authorities. In 2023, Fmovies was ranked by Similarweb as the world’s 11th most popular website in the TV, Movies & Streaming category. Read more

Nvidia has had another impressive quarter. Record revenue of $30 billion in Q2 was up 122 percent from a year ago, while data center revenue of $26.3 billion marked a 154 percent increase from the same period in 2023. The performance was seen by many as an assurance of AI’s staying power, although others raised concern that if the AI companies buying chips do not start generating profits soon, the sugar high of the two-year AI boom could precede a crash. Nvidia took the occasion to tout its next-generation Blackwell chips, reassuring investors that a mid-production “tweak” would not delay release. Read more