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Nvidia Earnings And Nano Banana
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Nvidia’s earnings are ok, but maybe showing signs of normalizing. Copilot for your TV. A blockchain for your cloud. I catch you up on that whole Nano Banana image AI craze sweeping the internet. And a summary of the Pixel phone reviews.
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Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride home for Thursday, August 28, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Nvidia's earnings are okay, but maybe showing signs of normalizing. Copilot for your tv, a blockchain for your cloud. I catch you up on that whole nano banana image, AI craze sweeping the Internet and a summary of the Pixel phone reviews. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Over 10 years ago, Mizzen and Main invented and some might say perfected the performance fabric dress shirt. To this day, they continue to embrace that same entrepreneurial spirit by re engineering classic American styles with modern fabrics. The goal is to make it easier for guys to achieve and enjoy their version of success. So whether you're grinding away in an office in San Francisco or on site in Austin, they've got you covered. Know me, I'm a Polo guy. So personally I'm super into their Versa line of polos. Go to mizzenandmain.com techbrew and use promo code brew15 to get 15% off your first purchase. That's mizzenandmain.com TechBrew promo code brew15 although Nvidia's Q2 earnings came in above many analysts expectations, warning signs of a potential slowdown in AI spending unsettled some investors, Nudging NVID stock down roughly 3% in after hours trading, Though as I write this, I see the stock is nudging into positive territory. As trading begins this morning, Nvidia delivered strong quarterly growth. Revenue and profits beat estimates and net income surged about 59%, reinforcing the company's vital role in AI hardware supply chains. Yet caution also weighed heavily on sentiment. Its data center revenue, despite climbing around 56% year over year and making up around 88% of total sales, fell slightly short of the anticipated 40 $41.3 billion at $41.1 billion. Meanwhile, China related challenges persisted. Nvidia didn't ship any H20 chips tailored again specifically for the Chinese market last quarter due to tighter U.S. export restrictions, although it indicated two to five billion dollars in potential shipments of those chips this quarter if tensions ease. The company forecasted about $54 billion in revenue for the fiscal third quarter through October, aligning with street consensus but missing more bul of over $60 billion. This forecast, which notably excludes any H20 revenue from China, signaled a deceleration following a two year AI driven boom. From the earnings call, Business Insider flagged five major takeaways. Number one, H20 chip uncertainty shipments to China remain unresolved. CFO Colette Kress noted that revenue from potential 2 to $5 billion in H20 chip sales isn't included in the guidance. More on that in a second. Also, there was a bit of a modest sales outlook. Despite strong results, Nvidia tempered growth forecasts, suggesting that momentum is cooling there. Also, they wanted to highlight the massive AI infrastructure opportunity that's still ongoing. The company sees 3 to 4 trillion dollars in AI infrastructure spending by 2030 presenting a significant long term growth Runway. They also want you to know that robotics is their future. Demand for compute and robotics is accelerating, they said. The new Jetson AGX Thor platform is gaining traction among develop. Also there are those next gen Rubin chips coming Nvidia is on track to begin volume production of its Rubin architecture in 2026, promising continuity in innovation and product cadence. But Bloomberg underscored Nvidia's lackluster forecast, suggesting the modest revenue outlook, even though it is aligned with the consensus estimates, signals a slowdown following exceptional AI fueled growth. Quote the results showed hints that spending by giant data center operators could tighten the at the margins if near term returns from AI applications remain difficult to quantify, emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said in a note. Nvidia also noted that the US government hasn't yet codified its plan to take a 15% cut of revenue from China AI chip sales, and it acknowledged risks to enacting that policy. Any request for a percentage of the revenue by the U.S. government may subject us to litigation, increase our costs and harm our competitive position and benefit competitors that are not subject to such arrangements, Nvidia said in a filing. End quote actually as promised. More on that quoting Bloomberg Again, the US Government hasn't indicated how it will put regulations in place that require the chipmaker to make the payments, Nvidia said late Wednesday. Discussions between Nvidia and the government are ongoing, according to Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress. If the plan isn't codified, Nvidia should be able to proceed with China sales without paying the commission, kress said in an interview. We have been communicating, she said. If nothing shows up, I've got licenses. I don't have to do this 15% until I see something that is a true regulatory document. Interesting. Anyway, Nvidia remains bullish. Overall, global spending on AI infrastructure such as data centers and high performance computing systems is projected to reach $375 billion this year and climb to $500 billion next year. Long term demand for Nvidia's next generation products, including that Rubin architecture and its expanding footprint in robotics and edge computing continues to bolster optimism about its growth trajectory. Still, analysts warn that Nvidia's staggering ascent to a 4 trillion doll has raised the bar for investor expectations. The combination of slightly softer data center performance, muted guidance, and uncertainty in key international markets has introduced a note of caution, suggesting that the era of unbroken hyper accelerated growth could be transitioning to a more measured phase. For markets that have been treating Nvidia as a proxy for the health of the entire AI industry, this quarter's results signal both resilience and maybe the first hints of normalization in what has been the entire economy's hottest sector. Microsoft is expanding Xbox Cloud Gaming to Game Pass Core and Standard subscribers, dropping the Game Pass ultimate requirement and testing more PC game access. Quoting the Verge Microsoft currently restricts access to Xbox Cloud Gaming to Xbox Game Pass ultimate to get cloud access, meaning you have to pay $19.99 a month to get access to Xcloud. Xbox Insiders can now start testing the ability to stream cloud games included with Game Pass, Core and Standard subscriptions. As part of this insider experience, Xbox Game Pass Core and Standard subscribers will be able to stream cloud playable games included with their subscription or select cloud playable games they own, explains the Xbox Insider team. The expansion of Xbox Cloud Gaming to more Game Pass tiers comes just a week after Microsoft hinted at more affordable and accessible ways to access Xbox Cloud games. Microsoft was also previously working on a separate dedicated version of Xbox Cloud Gaming. Microsoft has also hinted in the past that there could even be eventually a free version Xbox Cloud Gaming in exchange for ads. Microsoft is also expanding PC game access to Game Pass, Core and Standard subscribers. As part of testing, Xbox Insiders subscribe to Game Pass Core or Standard will for the first time gain access to PC versions of select titles, giving you even more flexibility and the choice to play on a PC or Windows Handheld, says Microsoft. If you want to try out Xbox Cloud Gaming and PC games on Game Pass Core or Standard, you can join Microsoft's Xbox Insiders program and then visit xbox.complay to access Cloud games or the Xbox app on Windows for the additional PC titles. Samsung has rolled out Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant to its 2025 lineup of TVs and monitors, letting users ask for movie suggestions, plot recaps and more. Quoting the Verge on TV Copilot takes on a friendly, animated presence that resembles the opalescent Copilot appearance Microsoft showed off last month, though in a color that makes it look more like a personified chickpea. The beige blob will float and bounce around your screen while its mouth moves in line with its responses. Copilot will automatically appear ON supported Samsung TVs, where you'll find it within the Samsung Tizen OS home screen, Samsung Daily plus and click to search. You can also access Copilot by using a voice command or selecting it with your remote. From there, hit the mic button on your remote and you can start speaking to Copilot. Microsoft notes that you can sign into the app for a more personal Copilot experience that allows the AI assistant to reference your previous conversations and preferences. Copilot is rolling out now on Samsung 2025 TVs, including Micro RGB, Neo, QLED, OLED, the Frame Pro, the Frame models, as well as the M7, M8 and M9 smart monitors. Microsoft has previously announced plans to bring Copilot to LG TVs as well. End quote Google Cloud says its Universal Ledger, a Layer one blockchain for financial products, is in a private test and plans to reveal more details at a later date. Quoting the block Google Cloud is building its own blockchain network named Google Cloud Universal Ledger or GCUL for the financial sector, according to Rich Widman, Google Cloud's Web3 head of strategy, who announced this on Tuesday. Widman wrote in a LinkedIn post that GCUL aims to provide financial institutions with a performant, credibly neutral blockchain platform that enables Python based smart contracts. Besides bringing to bear, Google's digital GCUL is a neutral infrastructure layer, Widman said in the post. Tether won't use Circle's blockchain and Adyen probably won't use Stripe's blockchain, but any financial institution can build with gcul. GCUL is currently in a private testnet and further details will be revealed at a later date. According to Widman's post, Google Cloud officially described GCUL as a new service for the financial market, accessible through a single API and programmable to enable payment automation and digital asset management. The company also stated that GCUL was designed with a focus on compliance and will operate as a private permissioned system, while Widman described GCUL as a Layer one network. The permissioned and private nature of Google Cloud's upcoming blockchain has resulted in community skepticism, with some arguing that it should not be mistakenly described as a decentralized blockchain. Google Cloud had previously announced the GCWL initiative in March in collaboration with with the CME Group, where CME was piloting solutions on the platform for use in wholesale payments and asset tokenization. End quote.
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Look, I pride myself in trying to catch everything in tech that matters, but sometimes I do drop the ball. And in the case of nanobanana, the thing that has taken over the Internet this week, I failed you. I dropped the ball. So to catch up earlier this week, Google revealed it was behind the viral Nano Banana image model and launched it as Gemini 2.5 flash image with finer edit controls in the Gemini app. There's also an API and more. And yes, the image quality is very, very, very good. Quoting TechCrunch Gemini's new AI image model is designed to make more precise edits to images based on natural language requests from users, while preserving the consistency of faces, animals and other details, something that most rival tools struggle with. For instance, ask ChatGPT or Xai's Grok to change the color of someone's shirt in a photo and the result might include a distorted face or an altered background. Google's new tool has already drawn attention in recent weeks. Social media users raved over an impressive AI image editor in the crowdsourced evaluation platform LM Arena. The model appears to users anonymously under the pseudonym nanobanana. Google says it's behind the model if it wasn't already obvious from all the Banana related hints, which is really the native image capability within its flagship Gemini 2.5 flash AI model. Google says the image model is state of the art on LM arena and other benchmarks. We're really pushing visual quality forward, as well as the model's ability to follow instructions, said Nicole Brychtova, a product lead on visual generation models@Google DeepMind, in an interview with TechCrunch. This update does a much better job making edits more seamlessly, and the model's outputs are usable for whatever you want to use them for, said Brichtova. End quote. And that's really the thing. If you've tried this out, it basically obviates the need for Photoshop or any other sort of editing software entirely it's not just about saying, hey, make me a photo of a penguin riding a bicycle. It's about doing any of the edits you would turn to Photoshop to do with such granular control that you can be like, change the color balance of this photo, cut out this thing over here, change the color over there, or even change the full wardrobe of that guy there. It's really and truly impressive. This is not a good look. Quoting the Verge tech brand Nothing has been caught passing off stock images from professional photographers as samples taken by its recently announced phone3.5 sample images that Nothing claimed were captured by the device were actually licensed photos taken with other cameras. The photographer behind one of the images has anonymously confirmed to the Verge that it wasn't taken using the Phone 3 and that nothing had purchased the image license via the Stills Stock photo marketplace. The Verge has seen the EXIF file for the anonymous photographer's image and can confirm it wasn't captured using the Phone 3. According to the data, it was taken in 2023, long before the Phone 3 was released this year. The five photographs were featured on an in store demo unit of Nothing's phone and include shots of a spiral staircase, a car headlight, a glass, a window, and a woman looking towards the camera, all of which are available to license through Stills. Roman Fox, another photographer who captured the car headlight, also confir to Android Authority that Nothing had paid for his image, which was taken in 2023 using a Fujifilm X H2 camera. Nothing demo samples were accompanied by the message Judge for yourself. Here's what our community has captured with Phone three. In a statement posted on X Nothing co founder Akis Evangelides says the stock images featured on Live Demo units were placeholders that should have been updated. Nothing is, quote, actively rectifying the situation, according to Evangelitas, describing the fakery as unfortunate oversight with no ill intent. An initial version of the LDU Live Demo unit needs to be submitted with placeholders around four months before launch to be implemented and tested as we ramp towards mass production, said Evangelitis. Once we enter mass production, those placeholder images are replaced with photo samples through a new version of the ldu, along with final product renders and videos. In this case, it was brought to our attention that some Live Demo unit stock imagery was not updated. Licensing photos that were never intended for public use is a little perplexing, especially given that Nothing's previous process involved using photos that were actually shot using the company's older phones. This isn't the first time that a phone company has been caught using fake photography examples, but you would think that nothing would have learned from those previous mistakes. End quote finally today, the reviews of the Pixel 10 are out. I'm going to focus on the 10 Pro models, the flagship models. The Pixel Fold reviews still seem to be under embargo anyway. Reviewers agree the Pixel 10 Pro maintains a familiar, refined aesthetic similar to its predecessors, with no dramatic design overhaul. But the new phones benefit from brighter displays and modest battery improvements. While some reviewers see the unchanged design as a safe rather than stale move, the overall build still reflects flagship craftsmanship. Apparently under the hood lies Google's tensor G5 chip and folks say Pro variants feel notably snappier, with less over heating and smoother multitasking than past Pixel phones. Camera hardware remains strong. The Pro models retain high quality sensors and advanced Zoom options. The ProRes Zoom, a generative AI feature boosting 30x plus zoomed shots, delivers impressive detail in some cases, though some reviewers, including the Verge, say results can feel a bit artificial at times. Battery life receives mixed feedback. The Pixel 10 Pro contributes incremental gains, some folks say, but other reviewers like the shortcut highlight the fact that the the XL model at least can last nearly two days. As for all the AI bells and whistles, MagicQ apparently stands out for its contextual suggestions, such as offering to share an address from Gmail in a text conversation operating entirely on device, if you'll remember, for improved privacy. Other AI LED tools include that Camera Coach, Magic Editor, journaling prompts and an AI translation system that mimics a speaker's voice. While MagicQ frequently hits the mark, other features are somewhat reactive at best, they say, sometimes amusing, but not always genuinely useful. The conclusion from sampling the reviews from the Verge, the shortcut, expert reviews and gadget, and a few YouTube videos is that the Pixel 10 Pro refines the Pixel formula with faster, smarter AI, improved charging and a solid camera suite. Its AI features like Magic Q and Prores Zoom shine, though some feel more experimental than essential. If you value on device AI and polished incremental upgrades, it's a strong contender but not a revolution. And if you currently have a Pixel 9, apparently you're probably fine. Not upgrading. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.