WWD : Nike ACG Officially Reveals Its Viral Cooling Shirt and New Ultrafly Super

Nike ACG Officially Reveals Its Viral Cooling Shirt and New Ultrafly Super Shoe
Prototypes of both were worn by Caleb Olson for his win at the Western States ultramarathon.

Caleb Wilson in the Nike ACG Radical AirFlow top at Western States and his ACG Ultrafly from the ultra-marathon.

Caleb Olson won the 2025 Western States men’s ultra-marathon in June with the second fastest time in course history, and he also garnered a nontrivial amount of attention for the holey crop-top shirt he did it in.
Now, Nike ACG is ready to get the word out on that viral top, the Radical AirFlow, as well as the new Ultrafly trail super shoe.
Offering what Nike ACG is calling “radical cooling,” hence the name, the sweater-like top features cone-shaped airducts to increase the speed of airflow and boost the speed of sweat evaporation. These holes are placed strategically and vary in size in the mission of temperature management, as do dimples on the interior side.

Nike ACG Radical AirFlow
Getting more scientific, it’s the Bernoulli principle and Venturi effect at work on the Radical AirFlow. The former is a concept explaining how a fluid (or air) increasing in speed will simultaneously decrease in pressure. The latter is the name for the phenomenon in which a fluid increases in speed when moving from one section of a pipe into another that’s smaller.

Western States was chosen as the race appearance for the Radical AirFlow because of the notorious heat in the 100-mile run. Perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, wearing the top makes you feel cooler than without it.

Aside from encouraging Airflow, the top also absorbs and retains 50 percent less sweat than other garments tested by Nike. It also has large cut-outs at the armpit and elbows, and is cropped so as not to block access to a running belt.

Olson and other ACG athletes were also wearing a prototype for the ACG Ultrafly, a successor to the original Ultrafly Trail from outside of the ACG line. Underfoot is ZoomX cushioning paired with a 7/8 length carbon fiber plate that’s less rigid than that on the original Ultrafly Trail and split down the middle for better torsional flexibility and control on uneven surfaces. A full-length ZoomX sockliner is also used for the first time in a trail-running shoe, and a wider last gives more room in the toe box, a boon as feet swell over the course of long runs.


Nike ACG Ultrafly (pair)
A men’s size 10 comes in at 287 grams with a stack height of 37mm and a 4mm drop. The Vibram Lightbase outsole then comes with 3mm lugs.

Nike ACG conducted 13 rounds of testing on the UltraFly, accumulating more than 30,000 miles of running.

“Since the beginning of 2024, I’ve been racing in the Nike ACG Ultrafly,” Olson said. “It’s been my go-to, do-it-all racing shoe. It can handle some of the most rugged terrain I’ve raced on at Transgrancanaria, as well as the singletrack at Western States. It’s a great balance between all-day comfort and top-end performance that has helped put me on top of the podium at some of my biggest races.”

Both the Nike ACG Radical AirFlow and Ultrafly will release in spring 2026.

A close up of the Nike ACG Radical AirFlow
One of the airducts that speeds up airflow for superior cooling on the Nike ACG Radical AirFlow.
Nike ACG Ultrafly (lateral)
Nike ACG Ultrafly (above)
Nike ACG Ultrafly (above)

WWD : Venice’s Hotel Gabrielli Reopens Its Doors Just in Time for the Venice Fil

Venice’s Hotel Gabrielli Reopens Its Doors Just in Time for the Venice Film Festival
Over the centuries, Hotel Gabrielli has been a haven for creatives and philosophers like Polish artist Alicja Kwade, architect Adolf Loos, writer Franz Kafka and neurologist Sigmund Freud.

RESTORED GLORY: More than 700 Murano glass chandeliers and wall sconces are alight once again inside the luxurious halls of Venice’s Hotel Gabrielli.

On Monday, just as the lagoon began to welcome cinema’s A-list for the Venice Film Festival, guests were able to view the five-star hotel for the first time since Starhotels took over the property in 2022. Boasting sweeping views of San Giorgio Maggiore island, the structure was originally opened as a hotel 1856 and has been owned by the Perkhofer family ever since.

The newly restored luxury hotel now offers 66 exclusive rooms and suites starting at 650 euros. The revamp was spearheaded by Milan-based Andrea Auletta and lined with hardwood floors and furnished with antique furniture enhanced by contemporary details. The doors of its Venetian-style facade open up to welcoming spaces characterized by beam ceilings, arched windows and original frescoes.

“Today, we open the doors to what we hope will become Venice’s new living room, a place where hospitality becomes the art of welcoming. Every guest here will not just be a visitor, but part of an exclusive community sharing in the beauty of Venice from the lagoon’s most privileged vantage point,” Starhotels chief executive officer and president Elisabetta Fabri said. Hotel Gabrielli is located just a few steps away from Piazza San Marco on Riva degli Schiavoni, a promenade that hosts a string of world class hotels like the Hotel Danieli.

One of the most alluring features of the hotel is its 6,458 square feet private garden, which Starhotels said is one of the city’s largest. In addition to a panoramic terrace, it also boasts a luxury spa and a private dock for guests.

Throughout the ancient city, hotel groups have salvaged the fate of aging historic palaces. Orient Express, for example, has begun taking reservations for its highly anticipated second hotel location in Venice, which is scheduled to open April 1. The Orient Express Palazzo Donà Giovannelli was built as a noble residence built in 1436 and is located in the Cannaregio district. It was redesigned by Paris-based architect and designer Aline Asmar d’Amman.

The Venice Film Festival will run on the Lido di Venezia from Wednesday to Sept. 9.

The Information : Is One of Tesla's Key Battery Innovations Worth It?

Is One of Tesla's Key Battery Innovations Worth It?

In 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised to completely rework his processes and release a cheap electric vehicle for the masses. That sent rivals scurrying, especially to keep up with his vow to stop making batteries “wet,” the expensive conventional way, requiring toxic solvents, massive drying ovens and cavernous factories. Instead, Tesla would use a new “dry” process that, along with other innovations, would halve its battery costs. That could mean a significant reduction in the price of EVs and real profits for automakers.

Five years later, Tesla’s cheap car is nowhere to be seen, and neither are dry batteries. In China, the U.S., South Korea and elsewhere, the industry’s best large-scale battery manufacturers continue to use the wet methods invented more than three decades ago.

The main reason the industry is clinging to its old wet ways is that no one has yet figured out how to produce batteries at lightning speed—Tesla’s Nevada factory pumps out 70 cylindrical battery cells a second—without any liquid to hold it all together.

But industry doubts have also crept in about Musk’s original claim that dry processing would dramatically reduce the cost of producing batteries, by far the most expensive single parts in an EV. Dry processing definitely pares costs, since you don’t pay for solvents, and the method incurs lower electricity bills. But the cost of new equipment largely overtakes those savings, according to industry experts and people familiar with the situation at Western EV and battery makers.

The savings would be bigger in any new gigafactory built from scratch, but the use of dry processing equipment would make its most substantial impact when combined with other battery innovations Musk proposed like the larger 4680 battery. Dry processing alone would “not be a game changer” and would not allow Western battery makers to match the low costs achieved by dominant Chinese producers, said one of the people familiar with the situation.

“I think once it’s in place and the gains are real but incremental, folks will wonder, ‘Why did we talk about it so much?’” said another of the people.

Despite the skepticism swirling around the technology, there is a massive global rivalry to develop it at scale. For more than a year, for instance, Tesla has been locked in a lawsuit with Matthews International, a Pittsburgh, Penn., company that manufactured most of Tesla’s dry processing equipment.

In February, an arbitrator ruled against Tesla’s claim that Matthews had violated Tesla’s patents by selling the equipment to other companies. But Tesla is now seeking to vacate the ruling and to reverse a key Matthews patent.

On Tesla Battery Day in September 2020, when Musk introduced the idea of dry batteries, he was talking about the electrodes—the cathode and anode, the most expensive components of a battery.

Announcing the dry idea alongside Musk in 2020, Drew Baglino, then Tesla’s senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, said the new method would change everything. Using dry processing, you would achieve “a 10 times reduction in [factory] footprint, a 10 times reduction in energy and a massive reduction in investment,” he said. Musk said the innovation, if extended across all Tesla EVs, would save the company $1 billion a year.

From the start, Tesla workers had trouble making cathodes the dry way. Without solvents, the cathode powder crumbled like cake mix without milk or butter, making it hard to coat it uniformly on the aluminum substrate.

Four years later—in July 2024—Cole Otto, a senior Tesla engineer, posted a photo on LinkedIn of what he said was the first Cybertruck outfitted with an entirely dry 4680. And in March this year, Bonne Eggleston, senior director of the 4680 program, told me he expected all Cybertrucks to be using dry batteries later in 2025.

The company has said nothing more about its dry battery plans since. Neither Eggleston nor Otto responded to messages.

Other companies battling to get dry electrodes into EVs include PowerCo, Volkswagen’s battery-making arm; South Korea’s LG Energy Solution, General Motors’ main battery supplier; and China’s Lead Intelligent Equipment, a battery equipment maker in Wuxi.

“What we realize is that the dry coating process race has begun,” said Moshiel Biton, CEO of Israel’s Addionics. Biton said his company is supplying advanced battery foils to multiple dry processing developers.

None of these companies has said whether its dry equipment is ready for prime time, nor what it costs. Even though dry processing eliminates some expensive manufacturing steps, the specialized equipment it requires is costly, especially now in its nascent stages of adoption, according to BloombergNEF, a renewable energy research firm.

In an earnings call with analysts on Aug. 6, Matthews CEO Joe Bartolacci said the company had signed a binding contract for a production line with a small developer of solid-state batteries. But he did not disclose the name of the customer nor whether the Matthews equipment could operate at fast speeds with a low defect rate.

Industry experts told me that if Tesla or other battery makers can work the bugs out of fast dry processing, the method is likely to be used in future battery plants, since that is where costs could be saved once it is scaled up. In the West, that could be a long wait, since EV sales are growing slowly, and there already is a considerable surplus of battery production capacity.

But Iola Hughes, head of research at Rho Motion, a battery research firm, thinks some new factories using dry methods will emerge by 2028, presuming someone figures out how to make cells fast.

The Information : VCs Bet on AI Chips That Use Light Instead of Electronics

VCs Bet on AI Chips That Use Light Instead of Electronics

When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in March said his company would release hardware that lets an AI data center chip send information directly over optical cables instead of needing to convert to optical from electrical signals, it was a shot in the arm for optics developers that have long wanted a bigger role in data centers.

Using light to send information over fiber optic cables is well-established, but attempts to use light for computation in data center servers have struggled. Some investors now think the time is right to use optical technology for active computation in the chips themselves, instead of just using it to ferry data between chips.

The idea is that light can encode information in its wavelength, amplitude and phase. By bouncing light off a clever arrangement of mirrors and other devices, for instance, and allowing the beams of light to interact, the light can perform addition and multiplication—essentially replacing traditional electronic chips.

Compared to moving electrons in copper wires or transmitting radio waves over the air, sending light through fiber optics “is both very contained, very fast, and a piece of fiber is like the size of a strand of hair,” said Bill Long, chief strategy officer at Zayo, which provides fiber optic connections, including to AI data centers.

Plus, light gives off less heat than electronics, reducing the risk of overheating, compared to a standard graphics processing unit for AI. “If you want to just make a GPU 100 times faster, and you do nothing about the fundamental energy efficiency, what you’re saying is the GPU is going to burn 100 times the power, and everything melts,” said Patrick Bowen, CEO of Neurophos, which designs photonics chips. Those chips direct light using preposterously small components, drawing on research on invisibility cloaks at Duke University.

Since March, investment firms have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into photonics-focused startups such as Lumotive, Arago and Q.Ant that aim to use light instead of electrons for computation. Geometry, a new venture capital fund that invests in photonics and other “deep tech” sectors, has nearly finished raising $30 million and invested in Irradiant Technologies, which manufactures photonic components, said Ben Levy, a general partner of the fund.

Some kinds of math are difficult to do with light and still require electronics, Levy said. That, along with the difficulty of competing against Nvidia, is why some photonics firms focus on hardware that can move information between traditional chips in a data center, similar to Nvidia’s upcoming product, which is known as a switch. Huang said the optics switch would save lots of energy in an AI data center, compared to traditional electronic switches.

But Geometry’s other general partner, Tom Walton-Pocock, says that the time is right for the more ambitious idea of light-based chips. One reason is recent advances in the materials that go into photonics components. The other reason comes down to the kind of math that modern AI models use. “If you look at a neural net today, it’s huge, dense blocks of matrix multiplication,” he said.

Those are exactly the kind of operations where photonics—er—shines.

>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
Other news:
  • VALN -20.6% (reports FDA suspends license of Chikungunya vaccine in US)
  • AXGN -17% (provides update on FDA review timeline for avance nerve graft)
  • RH -7.8% (President Trump announces major tariff investigation on furniture imports)
  • LVWR -7.4% (files prospectus supplement, enters into ATM sales agreement up to $50 mln of its shares)
  • W -6.8% (President Trump announces major tariff investigation on furniture imports)
  • OABI -5.9% (enters $30 million private placement)
  • VENU -4.9% (files for 1,724,138 share common stock offering)
  • KDP -4.5% (to acquire JDE Peet's for €15.7 bln; to separate into two independent companies)
  • WSM -3.4% (President Trump announces major tariff investigation on furniture imports)
  • HIVE -2.8% (Crosses 16 EH/s as expansion in Paraguay powers forward)
  • ACOG -2.5% (files for $250 mln mixed securities shelf offering)
  • WULF -2.4% (announces full exercise of greenshoe option in $1 billion convertible senior notes offering)
  • SION -2% (announces first subjects dosed in Phase 1 trial evaluating NBD1 Stabilizer, SION-451)
  • ACM -1.2% (awarded a place on National Highways' Specialist Professional and Technical Services 3 framework in the U.K. as part of a consortium with Arup)

>>> US Gapping up

Gapping up
In reaction to earnings/guidance:
  • NSSC +22.7%, PDD +8.6%, SSL +7.3%
Other news:
  • VTLE +11.9% (report Crescent in advanced talks to acquire VTLE, according to Reuters)
  • LZM +4.7% (files for 2.5 mln share common stock offering by selling shareholder)
  • ETHZ +3.6% (files mixed securities shelf offering)
  • IMAB +2.8% (announces the appointment of independent directors)
  • ARGX +2.7% (reports topline results from ADAPT SERON Study of VYVGART in Patients with AChR-Ab Seronegative gMG)
  • AVTR +2.6% (insider buying)
  • TBPH +2.4% (completes enrollment in Phase 3 CYPRESS study of Ampreloxetine)
  • MLKN +2.1% (President Trump announces major tariff investigation on furniture imports; co has less exposure)
  • LZB +1.9% (President Trump announces major tariff investigation on furniture imports; co has less exposure)
  • ONC +1.8% (BeOne Medicines to sell its royalty rights on the worldwide sales, excluding China, of Amgen's (AMGN) IMDELLTRA (tarlatamab-dlle) for up to $950 million to Royalty Pharma (RPRX))
  • INTC +1.5% (announces agreement with Trump Administration for US govt to take a 9.9% stake)
  • STOK +1.5% (Stoke Therapeutics and Biogen (BIIB) Announce Presentations of Clinical Data from Studies of Zorevunersen for the Potential Treatment of Dravet Syndrome at the 36th International Epilepsy Congress)
  • ONCY +1% (files for $150 mln mixed securities shelf offering)

>>> US Research Calls I

Research Calls I
  • Upgrades
    • Alignment Healthcare (ALHC) upgraded to Overweight from Sector Weight at KeyBanc, tgt $21
    • Alaska Air (ALK) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Raymond James, tgt $70
    • Dyne Therapeutics (DYN) upgraded to Strong Buy from Outperform at Raymond James, tgt $35
    • Fabrinet (FN) upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at JPMorgan, tgt $345
    • FirstEnergy (FE) upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Barclays, tgt $49
    • Lazard (LAZ) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Keefe Bruyette, tgt $65
    • Okta (OKTA) upgraded to Buy from Hold at Truist, tgt $125
    • Olaplex (OLPX) upgraded to Buy from Hold at Canaccord, tgt $2
    • Venture Global (VG) upgraded to Buy from Neutral at UBS, tgt $18
  • Downgrades
    • American Airlines (AAL) downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at Raymond James
    • American Eagle (AEO) downgraded to Underperform from Neutral at BofA Securities, tgt $10
    • Golar LNG (GLNG) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at B. Riley, tgt $44.50
    • Quest Diagnostics (DGX) downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Robert W. Baird, tgt $194
    • SentinelOne (S) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BTIG Research
    • Symbotic (SYM) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at DA Davidson, tgt $47
  • Others
    • Ambiq Micro (AMBQ) initiated with a Neutral at BofA Securities, tgt $42
    • Ambiq Micro (AMBQ) initiated with a Buy at Needham, tgt $48
    • Ambiq Micro (AMBQ) initiated with a Buy at Stifel, tgt $45
    • Ambiq Micro (AMBQ) initiated with a Neutral at UBS, tgt $40
    • Argenx (ARGX) initiated with an Outperform at RBC Capital, tgt $850
    • Crescent Biopharma (CBIO) initiated with a Buy at Jefferies, tgt $26
    • Civitas Resources (CIVI) initiated with a Market Perform at William Blair
    • Crescent Energy (CRGY) initiated with an Outperform at William Blair
    • Cue Biopharma (CUE) initiated with a Buy at Lucid Capital, tgt $4
    • Journey Medical (DERM) initiated with a Buy at H.C. Wainwright, tgt $13
    • Devon Energy (DVN) initiated with an Outperform at William Blair
    • Diamondback Energy (FANG) initiated with an Outperform at William Blair
    • Figma (FIG) initiated with a Buy at BofA Securities, tgt $85
    • Figma (FIG) initiated with an Equal Weight at Wells Fargo, tgt $82
    • Figma (FIG) initiated with an Outperform at William Blair
    • Figma (FIG) initiated with a Peer Perform at Wolfe Research
    • Figma (FIG) initiated with a Neutral at JPMorgan, tgt $65
    • Figma (FIG) initiated with a Sector Perform at RBC Capital, tgt $75
    • Figma (FIG) initiated with an Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley, tgt $80
    • Figma (FIG) initiated with a Neutral at Goldman, tgt $48
    • Gates Industrial (GTES) initiated with an Overweight at JPMorgan, tgt $35
    • Magnolia Oil & Gas (MGY) initiated with an Outperform at William Blair
    • Mach Natural Resources (MNR) initiated with an Outperform at William Blair
    • Matador (MTDR) initiated with an Outperform at William Blair
    • NewAmsterdam Pharma (NAMS) initiated with an Overweight at Wells Fargo, tgt $45
    • Northern Oil and Gas (NOG) initiated with an Outperform at William Blair
    • Permian Resources (PR) initiated with an Outperform at William Blair
    • Shoulder Innovations (SI) initiated with a Buy at Jefferies, tgt $19
    • Shoulder Innovations (SI) initiated with a Buy at BTIG Research; tgt $23
    • Shoulder Innovations (SI) initiated with an Overweight at Morgan Stanley; tgt $18
    • Shoulder Innovations (SI) initiated with an Overweight at Piper Sandler, tgt $18
    • Shoulder Innovations (SI) initiated with a Buy at Goldman, tgt $20
    • Viper Energy (VNOM) initiated with an Outperform at William Blair

>>> Europe : Brokers Upgrades & Downgrades - 25h of August 2025 V2(+)

>>> Up
* Bossard Raised to Buy at Bank Vontobel; PT 210 Swiss francs (+)
* Lazard Raised to Outperform at KBW; PT $65

>>> Down
* Hexagon Cut to Hold at ABG; PT 110 kronor
* Orsted Cut to Sell at Clarksons; PT 200 kroner
* Rebl Group Oyj Cut to Sell at Inderes; PT 1.10 euros
* Thule Cut to Sell at SEB Equities; PT 225 kronor

>>> Initiation
* Ambiq Micro Rated New Buy at Stifel; PT $45
* Argenx ADRs Rated New Outperform at RBC; PT $850
* Beiersdorf Rated New Hold at Baptista Research
* BeOne Medicines ADRs Rated New Hold at Baptista Research
* Napatech Reinstated Buy at ABG; PT 30 kroner
* Zillow Rated New Hold at Baptista Research; PT $88.10

>>> Call