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CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off the device, which can be controlled with small hand movements, at the company’s annual conference

Meta Platforms META -0.42%decrease; red down pointing triangle announced a new pair of smartglasses with a small built-in display at the company’s annual hardware and developer conference on Wednesday.

The glasses, which can be controlled by small hand movements via a wrist strap called the Neural Band, mark the latest advancement in Meta’s push into hardware. The company, which is betting that smartglasses will be the next big computing device, has seen growing success in the category after a rocky start.

“This isn’t a prototype. This is here, it’s ready to go and you’re going to be able to buy it in a couple of weeks,” Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said during the conference’s keynote address on Wednesday evening. The glasses-and-neural-band set retails for $799 and goes on sale Sept. 30.

Zuckerberg opened the keynote wearing the smartglasses, giving a live demonstration of them as he walked onstage at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Later in the address, he tried to do a video call with Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth via the glasses. It didn’t work the first time.

The company introduced its first generation of the smartglasses in collaboration with Ray-Ban owner EssilorLuxottica in 2021, to tepid interest. The glasses could take photos and record videos but lacked artificial-intelligence capabilities. In 18 months, Meta sold about 300,000 pairs, and less than 10% of purchases were still being actively worn two years later.

The second generation of the shades, which the company previously said was redesigned from the ground up with improved camera and audio capabilities and new AI tools, achieved more success.

EssilorLuxottica Chief Executive Francesco Milleri said on an earnings call earlier this year that the company had sold more than two million pairs of the Meta smartglasses since fall 2023, when the second-generation glasses went on sale, and that it was planning to expand its production capacity for the glasses to 10 million pairs annually by the end of 2026.

“It is no surprise that AI glasses are taking off,” Zuckerberg said. “This feeling of presence is a profound thing, and we’ve lost it a little bit with phones and we have the opportunity to get it back.”

At the Meta Connect conference on Wednesday, the company also unveiled an updated version of its existing Ray-Ban smartglasses and a new line of smartglasses designed for athletes in collaboration with Oakley, a brand that is also owned by EssilorLuxottica. The shades have an AI assistant built into them that can see and hear the user’s surroundings through a camera and speakers. They can take photos and record videos, play music and talk to the wearer.

Zuckerberg announced a new feature for the glasses called “conversation focus” that can amplify a user’s friend’s voice and drown out other noises and sounds.

Companies in Silicon Valley are racing to develop AI-enabled devices that can either replace—or, more likely, complement—the smartphone.

The Meta smartglasses need to be connected to a user’s phone to upload photos and videos. Competitor OpenAI is working on an AI “companion” with former Apple designer Jony Ive. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive have told employees the device will be capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life, be unobtrusive, be able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk and will be a third core device a person would put on a desk, after a laptop and iPhone.

In May, Google announced a new partnership with Warby Parker and luxury fashion house Kering to develop AI-powered glasses. The first line of products is expected to launch after 2025. Snap plans to launch holographic, augmented-reality glasses to the public next year, and Amazon.com sells glasses equipped with audio-calling and music-listening capabilities.

Meta also used the conference to tease new games that would soon be coming to its Quest virtual-reality headsets.

British automaker Jaguar Land Rover hasn’t been able to make cars this month after major breach

LONDON—Hundreds of high-end SUVs usually roll off Jaguar Land Rover’s production lines every day. This month, they have fallen silent.

A cyberattack discovered late last month prompted the Range Rover maker to power down its operations, a response that could cost the company tens of millions of dollars and threatens jobs across its supply chain.

The British company is now racing to restart its systems safely with the help of top cybersecurity experts flown in from around the globe. On Tuesday, it said the process “will take time” and extended the shutdown—previously expected to end Wednesday—to Sept. 24.

The company has also said some data was compromised, having initially said there was no evidence of stolen customer information.

JLR is working with the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre—part of Britain’s GCHQ signals-intelligence agency—to investigate the hack and with government ministers in London to minimize the ripple effects through its supply chain. The company declined to comment.

Hackers belonging to a trio of infamous cybercriminal groups—Lapsus$, ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider—appeared to claim responsibility on a joint Telegram channel that went by the name “scattered LAPSUS$ hunters 4.0” before it was taken offline Tuesday.

“Rip bozooo #JLR,” “Full SRC codes too,” and “We backdooring all yo CARS,” the authors wrote in rapid-fire messages on Sept. 3, after sharing a screenshot that appeared to come from a carmaker’s internal system. SRC is short for source, suggesting that the hackers are claiming to have JLR’s source code—a potentially serious breach.

Cyber experts say the groups, which consist largely of young men and teenagers, are capable, but the boasts they broadcast need to be treated with a high level of skepticism.

Two or three screenshots aren’t enough to assess the credibility of their claims, according to a researcher at Israeli cybersecurity company Kela.

The cyberattack comes at a difficult moment for JLR. This year, President Trump’s trade policy has increased the tariffs due on the vehicles the automaker ships from Europe to the U.S., its most important market. Profit almost halved year over year in its most recent quarter.

The profit impact of the hack could be the equivalent of almost $7 million a day, according to an estimate of lost sales by John Bailey, a professor at Birmingham Business School. JLR continues to pay its production workers even though they aren’t coming to work.

Some losses could be covered by insurance. A JLR spokesman said the company would discuss the financial impact in its next results.

Still, with net cash on its balance sheet and owned by Indian conglomerate Tata, JLR is in a relatively strong position. Before the increase in U.S. tariffs, the company was more profitable than it had been for years thanks to the popularity of its sport-utility vehicles, particularly in the U.S.

JLR assembles its top-end Range Rovers at the historic Land Rover factory in Solihull, England, just outside Birmingham. Other models come from an old Ford plant near Liverpool, while the company in 2018 also opened a factory in Slovakia that makes the new Land Rover Defender. All three plants are affected by the shutdown.

Concerns in Britain center on JLR’s network of small suppliers, which rely on steady production at the company’s U.K. factories for a big chunk of their business. JLR was Britain’s second-largest vehicle manufacturer by volume last year, and the companies that send parts to its factories “just in time” for final assembly—common practice in today’s auto industry—employ roughly 100,000 staff.

Members of Parliament last week called on the country’s Treasury to support JLR’s supply chain with “emergency Covid-style economic support mechanisms.” The Treasury has yet to respond. JLR executives are in daily dialogue with the government.

The company won’t necessarily lose sales as a result of the shutdowns. In the U.S., dealers had 113 days of supply of Land Rovers and Range Rovers in August, according to Cox Automotive, among the highest in the industry.

Meanwhile, the Jaguar brand, whose luxury sedans have long struggled to compete with their German rivals, is all but dormant: Existing models are no longer in production and a new generation of more expensive electric vehicles aren’t due to be launched until next year. A fuchsia-infused video clip to celebrate the relaunch at Miami Art Week last December attracted jibes, including from Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, for not including any cars.

This isn’t the first time JLR has been hit by a cyberattack. The automaker was the victim of an incident in March that was claimed by a hacker who goes by the name Rey. The same individual was among those bragging about the most recent attack on Telegram. Kela’s analysts have traced Rey to Jordan.

Scattered Spider, one of the loose groupings of hackers on the Telegram channel that claimed the latest attack, brought chaos to MGM Resorts on the Las Vegas Strip in 2023. It is also suspected to be at least in part behind a spate of high-profile cybersecurity breaches at British retailers earlier this year. Marks & Spencer, one of Britain’s largest retailers, said a hack that brought down its online-clothing store for weeks ended up costing it the equivalent to $410 million.

Three men and one woman, with ages ranging from 17 to 20, were arrested in July as part of an investigation into the retailer cyberattacks by Britain’s National Crime Agency. Three of the suspects were based in the U.K.’s West Midlands region, where much of Britain’s car industry is located. The individuals are now on conditional bail.

In recent days, the rowdy Telegram channel through which the hackers communicated publicly included a series of vague apologies. On Tuesday, it was abruptly taken offline.

US supermajors seek to emulate success of transatlantic peers such as Shell, BP and Total

ExxonMobil and Chevron are chasing a bigger slice of the $70bn energy trading business, expanding their operations to capture a boom in liquefied natural gas and catch up with rivals Shell and BP.

The two US supermajors have traditionally been more risk-averse than their European peers, preferring to focus on oil and gas production, but are now prioritising the lucrative sector.

“Inside Exxon, they say only three things now matter: Guyana [where the company is developing a huge offshore oilfield], the US and trading,” said one senior gas trader.

An executive at one of the companies said of energy trading that “I want to scale it now. I need all the talent.”

Exxon and Chevron are focusing on LNG, which consultants at McKinsey believe, together with gas and power, will soon eclipse oil as the biggest driver of commodity trading profits.

Both companies have appointed new heads of LNG trading, based in Asia, where demand is expected to grow the fastest. Exxon hired Sid Bambawale from Vitol to run its LNG trading business, while Chevron promoted Frankie Lee, formerly its UK manager, to lead its global desk.

The two companies have also struck a series of deals with third parties for roughly 7mn tons a year each of US LNG to expand their trading portfolios.

Exxon and Chevron were forced to watch from the sidelines two years ago when the likes of Shell, BP and TotalEnergies, along with commodity traders such as Vitol and Trafigura, captured more than $104bn of earnings before interest and tax between them, according to McKinsey, as energy prices lept in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Those groups’ energy trading desks quickly moved to shift cargoes of oil and gas from elsewhere in the world to Europe to fill the gap as the supply of Russian gas was shut off. Profits fell back to $70bn last year, the consultancy said, while predicting that they would hit $115bn by 2030. Shell, the world’s largest LNG trader, sold 66mn tons last year, more than twice the total that it produced.

Peter Clarke, head of Exxon’s LNG division, said the US supermajor was changing its approach.

“If you go back in history, you found a customer, and you signed them up for the full offtake and you had a ship that basically went backwards and forwards,” he said. “Today it is totally different,” Clarke added, explaining that Exxon now also buys gas from other producers and pools it into a global sales portfolio.

Chevron has adopte:::::::::::::::d a similar strategy, with Freeman Shaheen, president of global gas, saying customers wanted greater flexibility.

“If it is too warm or too cold they need more, or less,” he said. “If I take a step back and create a diverse portfolio of supply and a diverse portfolio of customers, we can help that happen. Now what I’m excited about is putting the puzzle together.”

The companies’ moves coincide with a rapid expansion of the US LNG industry, which is set to more than double its export capacity from 85mn tonnes a year at the start of last year to about 180mn tonnes by 2028, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

The coming surge in gas exports prompted the Trump administration to press Europe this month to sign more deals, after the EU committed to buy $750bn of energy from the US over the next three years.

“In the past, the US consumed all the gas they produced,” said Benjamin Lakatos, executive chair of MET Group, an energy producer and trader in Switzerland. “Now they have excess production, they have to sell.”

He added that LNG profits were constantly shifting along the value chain from producer to consumer. “If you are only in one segment, you have two, three good years and then a terrible year,” he said. “If you want to be successful in LNG, you need to be everywhere.”

But industry insiders caution that Exxon in particular could struggle to adapt its culture to allow trading to flourish.

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“People tend to go to Exxon and then leave around 18 months later, frustrated at having to do things the Exxon way,” said one trader.

Another analyst pointed to a different barrier for the US groups, saying “it may be difficult for them to accept paying traders more than their chief executives. That’s a mindset the Europeans got comfortable with a long time ago.”

While Shell and BP do not disclose how much their traders earn, independent traders do reveal their annual bonus pool. Trafigura, for example, shared $3bn for the first half of 2023 between roughly 1,200 shareholders, almost all of whom were traders and executives at the business.

US supermajors seek to emulate success of transatlantic peers such as Shell, BP and Total

ExxonMobil and Chevron are chasing a bigger slice of the $70bn energy trading business, expanding their operations to capture a boom in liquefied natural gas and catch up with rivals Shell and BP.

The two US supermajors have traditionally been more risk-averse than their European peers, preferring to focus on oil and gas production, but are now prioritising the lucrative sector.

“Inside Exxon, they say only three things now matter: Guyana [where the company is developing a huge offshore oilfield], the US and trading,” said one senior gas trader.

An executive at one of the companies said of energy trading that “I want to scale it now. I need all the talent.”

Exxon and Chevron are focusing on LNG, which consultants at McKinsey believe, together with gas and power, will soon eclipse oil as the biggest driver of commodity trading profits.

Both companies have appointed new heads of LNG trading, based in Asia, where demand is expected to grow the fastest. Exxon hired Sid Bambawale from Vitol to run its LNG trading business, while Chevron promoted Frankie Lee, formerly its UK manager, to lead its global desk.

The two companies have also struck a series of deals with third parties for roughly 7mn tons a year each of US LNG to expand their trading portfolios.

Exxon and Chevron were forced to watch from the sidelines two years ago when the likes of Shell, BP and TotalEnergies, along with commodity traders such as Vitol and Trafigura, captured more than $104bn of earnings before interest and tax between them, according to McKinsey, as energy prices lept in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Those groups’ energy trading desks quickly moved to shift cargoes of oil and gas from elsewhere in the world to Europe to fill the gap as the supply of Russian gas was shut off. Profits fell back to $70bn last year, the consultancy said, while predicting that they would hit $115bn by 2030. Shell, the world’s largest LNG trader, sold 66mn tons last year, more than twice the total that it produced.

Peter Clarke, head of Exxon’s LNG division, said the US supermajor was changing its approach.

“If you go back in history, you found a customer, and you signed them up for the full offtake and you had a ship that basically went backwards and forwards,” he said. “Today it is totally different,” Clarke added, explaining that Exxon now also buys gas from other producers and pools it into a global sales portfolio.

Chevron has adopted a similar strategy, with Freeman Shaheen, president of global gas, saying customers wanted greater flexibility.

“If it is too warm or too cold they need more, or less,” he said. “If I take a step back and create a diverse portfolio of supply and a diverse portfolio of customers, we can help that happen. Now what I’m excited about is putting the puzzle together.”

The companies’ moves coincide with a rapid expansion of the US LNG industry, which is set to more than double its export capacity from 85mn tonnes a year at the start of last year to about 180mn tonnes by 2028, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

The coming surge in gas exports prompted the Trump administration to press Europe this month to sign more deals, after the EU committed to buy $750bn of energy from the US over the next three years.

“In the past, the US consumed all the gas they produced,” said Benjamin Lakatos, executive chair of MET Group, an energy producer and trader in Switzerland. “Now they have excess production, they have to sell.”

He added that LNG profits were constantly shifting along the value chain from producer to consumer. “If you are only in one segment, you have two, three good years and then a terrible year,” he said. “If you want to be successful in LNG, you need to be everywhere.”

But industry insiders caution that Exxon in particular could struggle to adapt its culture to allow trading to flourish.

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“People tend to go to Exxon and then leave around 18 months later, frustrated at having to do things the Exxon way,” said one trader.

Another analyst pointed to a different barrier for the US groups, saying “it may be difficult for them to accept paying traders more than their chief executives. That’s a mindset the Europeans got comfortable with a long time ago.”

While Shell and BP do not disclose how much their traders earn, independent traders do reveal their annual bonus pool. Trafigura, for example, shared $3bn for the first half of 2023 between roughly 1,200 shareholders, almost all of whom were traders and executives at the business.

Mars to invest €1bn in European manufacturing as US demand slows

Consumer goods group pledges spending as EU regulators probe its proposed acquisition of Kellanova

Mars has pledged to invest €1bn into its European operations by the end of 2026 as demand for packaged foods slows in the US and the group seeks EU approval for its $35.9bn acquisition of Pop-Tarts maker Kellanova.

The family-owned group behind M&M’s and Whiskas cat food will invest in modernising its factories across the bloc, including its chocolate factory in Poland, and decarbonising its supply chain, by tackling agricultural emissions in countries such as the Netherlands.

Mars chief financial officer Claus Aagaard told the Financial Times the investments were designed to rebalance the company’s operations between Europe and the US.

“If you look at the last 10 years, a lot of growth in the [consumer packaged goods] space has come from the United States [rather than Europe],” Aagaard said. “We would really like to rebalance that . . . because the US [growth rate] is maybe a little bit slower than it has been over the last decades.”

After four years of persistently high inflation US consumers have been cutting back spending, while the snack food industry is also being challenged by the popularity of appetite-suppressing medications, such as Ozempic. Still, Aagaard said he remained confident in the long-term prospects of the American market.

Mars operates 24 factories across 10 EU countries and employs 25,000 people. Its forthcoming investment plans mark a step up from its recent spending on its European manufacturing facilities, which totals €1.5bn over the past five years.

Mars is disclosing the investments as the European Commission conducts an antitrust probe into its proposed acquisition of cereal and snack maker Kellanova, which was formed in 2023 from the break-up of the Kellogg company.

The commission, which began an in-depth probe in June over concerns the deal could result in higher prices for consumers, was set to rule on the transaction by October 31 but that deadline has been delayed until December 19.

Aagaard said there was “no direct link” between Mars’s investment plans and the investigation, but that he remained confident the deal would be approved. The deal has already been cleared by the US Federal Trade Commission.

More than half of Kellanova’s $12.7bn in revenue last year came from North America, while a fifth was from Europe.

Mars’s investments in Europe come amid heightened transatlantic tensions and criticism about the bloc’s lagging economic competitiveness relative to China and the US.

Aagaard said the company, one of the world’s largest family-owned businesses, was committed “to invest in Europe, drive innovation and do our part to drive consumer growth, which in the end drives economic growth”.

Brussels to review Corsia system and consider extending levy to long-haul flights

The world’s biggest airlines are grappling with an expected shortfall in the industry’s flagship climate scheme, as they try to fend off the risk of the EU imposing a carbon tax on long-haul flights to countries including the US. 

The pool of available credits in the scheme is running low and mostly made up of just one forest protection project — in the South American nation of Guyana.

A group of 130 countries including the US, Canada, Australia and the UK has committed to take part in a UN-backed market system to compensate for international aviation’s carbon footprint, known as Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (Corsia).

Airlines in these countries must either buy carbon credits or procure so-called sustainable aviation fuel — which is also in short supply — to keep net emissions at 85 per cent of a 2019 pre-pandemic peak.

Brussels is due to review next year how effective Corsia has been at encouraging EU airlines to decarbonise, and whether it should consider extending an existing carbon tax on flights inside the bloc to international flights. Any tax would likely be matched by the UK, which has outlined plans to re-link its carbon tax to the EU’s following Brexit.

Marie Owens Thomsen, senior vice-president for sustainability at the International Air Transport Association, told the Financial Times she had an “intense fear” the EU would proceed with a tax on international aviation.

This would be an “existential threat to our global industry”, like “throwing a nuclear bomb into our system”, because of the increased costs and competitive distortion. Iata represents airlines responsible for 80 per cent of global air traffic, including American Airlines and British Airways. 

Countries have been reluctant to greenlight the sale of credits from projects such as national rainforest protection under a recently finalised UN mechanism.

Governments cannot use credits to meet national climate goals once these have been used by airlines, creating a disincentive to sell them. 

As a result, MSCI Carbon Markets, part of the global rating agency, has said that nearly all its scenarios for the scheme’s first phase in 2024 to 2026 predict a shortfall of credits available for airlines to buy ahead of a deadline in January 2028. Its most pessimistic scenario puts compliance costs for participating airlines in this period at $10bn.

The reliance on just one project carries reputational risks. MSCI told clients earlier this year in a note seen by the Financial Times that it had identified material “legal” and “ethical” risks for the project, saying Guyana’s government may have overestimated the CO₂ stored in trees.

Guyana said its forest stock had been independently assessed, and that it had a long-term national commitment to keep forests standing.

MSCI also noted a complaint by Amerindian groups that they had not been consulted on the decision to issue credits linked to land they said they own.

ArtTrees, the certifying body hosted by US non-profit group Winrock International, rejected the complaint as well as later appeal in 2023. It was a “global quality benchmark” aiming to “unlock finance at scale for ambitious climate action”, it told the FT this week.

Guyana said its forest protection scheme afforded indigenous groups “genuine self-determination and direct benefit sharing”. It added that the period covered by the complaint preceded the issuance of credits eligible for Corsia.

Historically, aviation has been responsible for about 4 per cent of man-made global warming including all vapours, scientists have found, or about 2.5 per cent of annual CO₂ emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Countries will gather next week for the first assembly of the UN International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) agency in three years, to discuss questions that include the implementation of Corsia.

While the scheme is meant to be mandatory for all members from 2027, some including China, India, Russia and Brazil have yet to confirm they will fully take part. Others that have joined, including the US, have not yet passed domestic laws to make it mandatory.

Iata is pushing to increase the supply of credits, and to defend Corsia’s role in the industry’s climate plans.

“The global world order that has governed civil aviation, now that’s going to fall apart, and we’re all just going to go into our little layers and do what we feel like . . . that will also be to the detriment of everyone in the global economy,” Thomsen said.

Iata had called on diplomats in the EU and UK to encourage developing countries with natural carbon sinks such as rainforests to start issuing carbon credits that airlines can purchase and address the “terrifying” shortfall, Thomsen said.

The UK Department for Transport said it had confidence Corsia would become a “strong, effective tool supporting decarbonisation across the aviation sector worldwide”. The ICAO said that Corsia was on “track and providing crucial momentum” to scale up cleaner aviation fuel, cut emissions and provide a market solution.

A bigger problem, industry climate experts say, is that Corsia aims only to limit the pace of aviation growth, rather than to bring aviation emissions down to “net zero” by mid-century. Credits are much cheaper per tonne of CO₂ than the EU and the UK’s carbon tax on other polluting industries.

“Politically, it [Corsia] runs the risk of unravelling,” said Tim Johnson, director of the Aviation Environment Federation. More importantly, “it’s not getting the carbon price up — it’s in crisis for that reason alone.”