Meta Takes on Apple's AirPods With New Hearing Feature for Smart Glasses

Just a few days until Christmas and the holiday spirit is already in full swing! Sending virtual hugs to everyone still glued to their laptops this season. Don't worry, you're not alone. While you're at it, you might want to check out Lovable's playbook to see how they rocketed to a $6.6 billion valuation in record time. Their growth strategy is definitely worth studying.

Cursor, the AI coding assistant that's been making waves in developer circles, just bought in a deal that reportedly went "way over" Graphite's last valuation of $290 million. It's the latest move in what's shaping up to be an aggressive acquisition strategy from a company that's only been around since 2022.

The match makes a lot of sense when you think about the actual workflow of coding with AI. AI tools like Cursor can churn out code pretty quickly, but here's the catch: that code is often buggy. Developers end up spending a ton of time reviewing and fixing what the AI produced, which kind of defeats the purpose of using AI to speed things up in the first place.

That's where Graphite comes in. The five-year-old startup specializes in AI-powered code review and debugging, with a particular focus on something called "stacked pull requests." Without getting too technical, this feature lets developers work on multiple connected changes at the same time instead of waiting around for each one to get approved. It's about keeping the momentum going.

Cursor already has its own code review tool called Bugbot, but Graphite brings specialized capabilities that complement what Cursor's building. The goal is to speed up the entire process from writing code to actually shipping it, closing the loop between AI-generated code and production-ready software.

This isn't Cursor's first shopping spree. Last month, the company picked up Growth by Design, a tech recruiting firm. In July, it acquired the team from an AI-powered CRM startup called Koala. The company seems to be buying up pieces that fit into a larger vision of what an AI-powered development platform should look like.

It's worth noting that Cursor CEO Michael Truell and Graphite's founders have history. They met through Neo, a program for college students run by Ali Partovi's venture firm, which also backed Graphite early on. Both companies share investors including Accel and Andreessen Horowitz, so there were already plenty of connections between the two.

OpenAI just opened the gate for developers to build apps inside ChatGPT, launching what people are already calling an app store for the AI chatbot. Now, any developer can submit their app for review and potential approval, marking a major shift in how ChatGPT could work in the future.

The company first announced apps were coming to ChatGPT back in October, with big names like Expedia, Spotify, Zillow, and Canva signing on to integrate their services directly into the chatbot. The idea was simple: instead of ChatGPT just being a conversation tool, it could become a place where you actually get things done.

Now OpenAI is opening this up beyond the major platforms to any developer who wants to build for ChatGPT. The company describes it as extending conversations by bringing in new context and letting users take actions, whether that's ordering groceries, turning an outline into slides, or hunting for housing.

The Apps SDK, which is still in beta, gives developers the tools they need to create these experiences. Once they're ready to go, developers can submit their apps through OpenAI's developer platform and track the approval process. OpenAI says approved apps will start rolling out throughout the coming year.

There's also a new app directory inside ChatGPT's tools menu, making it easy for users to discover and access these apps. Think of it like browsing an app store, except everything lives inside your ChatGPT conversations.

This is clearly a strategic move by OpenAI to make ChatGPT stickier. Right now, most people use ChatGPT for quick questions or specific tasks, then leave. If OpenAI can turn the chatbot into a platform where you book travel, manage tasks, create content, and shop for groceries all in one place, there's a lot more reason to keep coming back and stay engaged.

Swedish startup Lovable just raised $330 million at a $6.6 billion valuation, more than tripling its worth in just five months. If that sounds absurdly fast, well, everything about this company has been absurdly fast.

Lovable makes what's become known as a "vibe-coding" tool, which is basically a way to build apps and write code by describing what you want in plain English instead of actually coding. The Stockholm-based company only launched in 2024, but it's already hit some eye-popping milestones. It reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue within eight months of launching, then doubled that to $200 million just four months later.

The new Series B round was led by CapitalG and Menlo Ventures, with participation from Khosla Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Databricks Ventures. This comes after Lovable raised a $200 million Series A back in July that valued the company at $1.8 billion. So in the span of less than half a year, the company's valuation jumped from $1.8 billion to $6.6 billion.

Major companies like Klarna, Uber, and Zendesk are using Lovable's platform, and the company claims more than 100,000 new projects are created on it every day. In its first year alone, users built more than 25 million projects. Those are staggering numbers for such a young company.

Lovable plans to use the new funding to build deeper integrations with other apps, expand features for enterprise customers, and flesh out the infrastructure needed to support full applications, including databases, payment systems, and hosting. Essentially, they want to make it possible to go from idea to fully functional app without ever writing traditional code.

What makes Lovable's story especially interesting is that its CEO, Anton Osika, deliberately ignored advice from investors to move the company to Silicon Valley. Speaking at a conference in Helsinki in November, he said staying in Europe was actually key to the company's success, citing access to talent and a strong mission-driven culture. He basically told the tech world you don't have to be in the Bay Area to build a massive AI company.

There was a small hiccup in November when the company got called out for not paying VAT, a tax required in the European Union. Osika acknowledged this and said they'd fix it, while pushing back on critics who claimed it proved Europe isn't good for fast-growing startups.

Meta's Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses are getting a new feature that might actually solve a real problem: helping you hear conversations in noisy places. The update, rolling out first in the U.S. and Canada, uses the glasses' built-in speakers to amplify the voice of whoever you're talking to, cutting through background noise at restaurants, bars, or crowded events.

The feature was first teased at Meta's Connect conference earlier this year, and now it's finally arriving. You can adjust how much amplification you want by swiping the right temple of the glasses or tweaking the settings in the app, letting you dial it in based on whether you're at a mildly noisy coffee shop or a packed nightclub.

Of course, whether this actually works well in practice remains to be seen. But the concept isn't entirely new. Apple's AirPods have had a similar Conversation Boost feature for a while, and the Pro models even added clinical-grade hearing aid support recently. Meta is essentially bringing that same idea to smart glasses, which makes sense given that glasses sit closer to your ears than earbuds you might pop in and out.

The glasses are also getting a quirkier update that connects to Spotify. Look at something and the glasses can suggest music that matches what you're seeing. Spot an album cover and it might play that artist. Stare at your Christmas tree and it could cue up holiday tunes. It's more of a novelty feature than anything groundbreaking, but it shows how Meta is thinking about linking what you see with actions you can take through your apps.

The Spotify feature is available in English across a bunch of countries, including the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, several European nations, Brazil, India, Mexico, and the United Arab Emirates. The conversation-focus feature, though, is limited to the U.S. and Canada for now.

Both updates are part of software version 21, which is rolling out first to people in Meta's Early Access Program. You have to join a waitlist and get approved to be part of that program, but broader availability should come later.

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