Samsung

Google and Samsung opened preorders on Nov. 12 for glasses with Google's Gemini AI assistant built in, from $395 for Warby Parker frames and $449 for Gentle Monster frames in the U.S. They go on sale on Dec. 10 in the U.S., and Gentle Monster's also in South Korea. A camera in the frame lets Gemini answer questions about what the wearer is looking at, and Google says the glasses are designed to hide bystanders' faces from the AI. How well the answers and the face hiding work in daily life won't be clear until buyers have them.

Six Samsung companies are committing $1 billion to Helix, a company set up by the investment firm KKR to build data centers along with the power plants and network lines that run them, on top of more than $10 billion its founders committed. Samsung says getting enough electricity is now the biggest limit on building AI data centers, and KKR says that, as an investor, Samsung may get an early chance to sell Helix goods and services. The companies have not said what share of Helix the money buys or where it will build first.

Humanoid robots, not electric vehicles, are shaping up as the first commercial market for solid-state batteries, according to a news report citing industry sources. Samsung SDI has picked robots as the first target for its SolidStack batteries, with mass production aimed at the second half of 2027. Cost could slow the shift: analysts put early prices at $400 to $600 per kWh, against roughly $350 per kWh needed for robot batteries to pay off.