Snap Reports Slowest Revenue Growth in Over a Year as Ad Platform Glitch and Competition Weigh

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Snap Inc. (SNAP.N), the parent company of Snapchat, reported on Tuesday its slowest quarterly revenue growth in more than a year, affected by a temporary glitch in its advertising platform and strong competition from larger rivals such as Meta and TikTok. The news sent Snap shares down over 16% in extended trading.

The company acknowledged and resolved an error that unintentionally allowed some ads to run at significantly lower prices, which negatively impacted revenue. Snap faces intense competition from Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, as well as TikTok, with advertisers favoring the bigger platforms amid tighter marketing budgets due to economic uncertainty. Meta and Reddit recently reported strong second-quarter results, highlighting Snap’s tougher market environment.

In addition, the timing of Ramadan influenced advertising spend patterns, and the expiration of a U.S. duty-free import exemption (“de minimis”) led some Chinese advertisers to reduce their budgets on the platform.

Snap’s second-quarter revenue was $1.34 billion, up 8.7% year-over-year, largely in line with expectations but slower than the double-digit growth seen in the previous five quarters. The company’s net loss widened to $263 million from $249 million a year earlier.

Small and medium-sized businesses were the primary drivers of ad revenue growth. Snap’s subscription service, Snapchat+, continues to diversify revenue, with subscriber numbers rising 42% to nearly 16 million during the quarter. Daily active users increased 9% to 469 million, slightly above estimates.

Snap projects third-quarter revenue between $1.48 billion and $1.51 billion, matching analyst expectations.

Two Chinese Nationals in California Charged with Illegal Export of Nvidia AI Chips to China

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Two Chinese nationals residing in California, Chuan Geng and Shiwei Yang, have been arrested and charged by the U.S. Justice Department for illegally exporting tens of millions of dollars’ worth of advanced Nvidia AI chips, including H100 processors, to China without the required U.S. Commerce Department licenses. The alleged activities took place between October 2022 and July 2025.

Geng, 28, from Pasadena, and Yang, 28, from El Monte, ran ALX Solutions, a company founded in 2022 shortly after the U.S. imposed stringent export controls to curb China’s military modernization by restricting advanced technology exports. ALX allegedly shipped over 20 consignments through Singapore and Malaysia, common transshipment hubs used to conceal shipments destined for China. Payments for these shipments came directly from companies in China and Hong Kong, not the freight forwarders.

From at least August 2023 to July 2024, ALX reportedly purchased more than 200 Nvidia H100 chips—highly advanced AI processors used in training large language models—from San Jose-based Super Micro Computer. Invoices falsely declared end customers in Singapore and Japan, but U.S. export officials could not verify the shipments or companies at the listed locations.

Nvidia emphasized its strict compliance with U.S. export controls, noting that diverted products receive no support or updates. Super Micro affirmed its commitment to regulatory compliance and cooperation with authorities.

Geng was released on $250,000 bond following a federal court appearance in Los Angeles, while Yang, who overstayed her visa, faces a detention hearing on August 12.

OpenAI Launches Open-Weight Reasoning Models Optimized for Laptop Use

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OpenAI announced on Tuesday the release of two open-weight language models designed for advanced reasoning tasks and optimized to run efficiently on laptops, delivering performance comparable to its smaller proprietary reasoning models. Unlike fully open-source models, open-weight models provide publicly accessible trained parameters (weights) but do not include full source code or training data, allowing developers to run and fine-tune them locally or behind their own firewalls.

OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman highlighted that the ability to operate these models locally offers users greater control over security and infrastructure. The two models, gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, differ in size: the larger model runs on a single GPU, while the smaller one can run directly on personal computers. Both excel at coding, competitive mathematics, and health-related questions, having been trained on text-focused datasets with an emphasis on science and math.

Separately, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that OpenAI’s open-weight models are now available on its Bedrock generative AI marketplace—a first for OpenAI on the platform. Bedrock director Atul Deo praised the models as strong open-weight options for AWS customers.

This launch marks OpenAI’s first release of open models since GPT-2 in 2019, entering a competitive landscape that includes Meta’s Llama series and China’s DeepSeek-R1, both of which have influenced open-weight and open-source AI development trajectories this year.

OpenAI, backed by Microsoft and valued at around $300 billion, is currently seeking to raise up to $40 billion in a funding round led by Softbank Group.