Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Samsung’s long-rumored Galaxy Glasses just leaked — and they look a lot like Meta’s Ray-Bans.

The first model skips AR entirely, betting on Google Gemini and cameras to do the heavy lifting. Meta already owns 73% of the smart glasses market — Samsung wants to be the Android answer to that dominance. But the real play is what comes next.

In today’s tech rundown:

• Samsung’s Meta-rival smart glasses leak

• Spotify is now a fitness app

• Australia slaps Big Tech with journalism tax

• SpaceX, Anduril win Golden Dome contracts

• Quick hits on other tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

SAMSUNG

🕶️ Samsung’s Meta-rival smart glasses leak

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: Leaked renders of Samsung’s Galaxy Glasses reveal a display-free, camera-forward frame that looks a lot like Meta’s Ray-Bans — only cheaper, and with a more powerful follow-up already in the pipeline, reports Android Headlines.

The details:

• Codenamed “Jinju,” the entry-level Galaxy Glasses pack a Snapdragon AR1 chip, a 12MP Sony IMX681 sensor, and a 155mAh battery.

• Priced between $379 and $499, the display-free Jinju runs Android XR with Gemini onboard for hands-free capture, real-time translation, and visual search.

• A second model, “Haean,” is expected in 2027 with a micro-LED display for true AR overlays, competing with Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses.

• Samsung could preview Jinju as early as Google I/O, with a fuller reveal likely at a Galaxy Unpacked event later this summer.

Why it matters: Samsung’s two-model rollout is a studied move: let Meta absorb the market risk, then enter with sharper specs and a lower price tag. Jinju keeps expectations low-key — with no display, just camera and AI — while Haean, arriving in 2027 with a micro-LED overlay, is where Samsung’s real AR ambitions live.

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SPOTIFY

 💪 Spotify is now a fitness app

Image source: Spotify

The Rundown: Spotify is turning itself into a full‑blown fitness platform, folding a new workout hub, Peloton video classes, and creator‑led programs into the main app for its roughly 600M users.

The details:

• A new in-app Fitness hub surfaces workouts via an onboarding questionnaire, then generates a personalized starter pack.

• More than 1,400 on-demand Peloton classes — runs, strength, cardio, yoga, but not bike workouts — are available to Premium subscribers, ad-free.

• Both free and Premium subscribers can access curated playlists and content from wellness creators like Yoga With Kassandra and Chloe Ting.

• Workouts save, queue, and download like any track — video on TV, audio on your phone, recovery on your smart speaker, no app-switching.

Why it matters: Spotify says nearly 70% of its Premium subscribers already work out to Spotify music, and there are more than 150M fitness playlists active globally. So rather than letting those users bounce to Apple Fitness+ or YouTube, it’s now competing directly for their workout time.

BIG TECH

🗞️ Australia slaps Big Tech with a journalism tax

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: Australia is threatening to hit Meta, Google, and TikTok with a 2.25% levy on local revenues if they don’t cut deals to pay news publishers for the journalism powering their platforms.

The details:

• Australia has unveiled draft “News Bargaining Incentive” laws to force major platforms to pay publishers or face a compulsory levy on Australian revenues.

• The 2.25% charge would kick in if platforms skip content deals with local publishers.

• Any platform clearing A$250M (~$179M) a year in Australia is in scope, and the scheme could reportedly funnel up to A$250M annually into newsrooms.

• The proposal replaces Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, which collapsed after Meta walked away and dropped news from its feeds.

Why it matters: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the plan is meant to stop tech giants from using Australian journalism for free, keep newsrooms alive, and block platforms from dumping news to avoid payments. Canada and the EU are also rolling out rules that get Big Tech to share ad money with the outlets supplying their headlines.

DEFENSE TECH

☄️ SpaceX, Anduril win Golden Dome contracts

Image source: Boeing

The Rundown: Twelve companies — including SpaceX, Anduril, and Lockheed Martin — landed fast-track contracts worth $3.2B to prototype space-based interceptors for President Trump’s Golden Dome defense system by 2028.

The details:

• The contracts target orbital tech designed to destroy enemy missiles before they re-enter the atmosphere, a capability that has never been fielded at scale.

• The award mixes legacy defense primes with newer space-warfare startups: True Anomaly, Turion Space, Quindar, and Sci-Tec all made the cut.

• Golden Dome’s price tag could hit hundreds of billions, with Space Force commanders flagging affordability as the program’s defining constraint.

• SpaceX isn’t just building satellites; it’s developing the operating system that will knit Golden Dome’s interceptors, sensors, and command networks together.

Why it matters: No country has ever put weapons in orbit to shoot down ballistic missiles, and no one has proven it can be done. If Golden Dome works, and if Congress pays for it, the U.S. could destroy enemy missiles just seconds after launch. For now, it’s more of a concept than hardware — and a pricey one at that.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Joby Aviation is running a week-long series of demo flights in NYC using its electric air taxis to travel between JFK Airport and Manhattan in under 10 minutes.

Elon Musk is preparing to launch X Money, an in-app banking and payments service, as a key step toward turning X into a WeChat-style “everything app.”

Apple is expanding its “Ultra” branding beyond Apple Watch to include the long-rumored foldable iPhone and a MacBook with OLED touchscreen, Macworld reports.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said AI won’t kill entry-level jobs and is hiring 1K new graduates and interns to work on the company’s AI platforms as proof.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a bill that would have paused construction of large data centers in the state until fall 2027, promising to study their impact instead.

Social media scams cost Americans more than $2.1B in 2025, according to a U.S. Federal Trade Commission report that highlights an eightfold increase since 2020.

Tokyo plans to build a 1-gigawatt floating offshore wind farm near the Izu Islands by 2035, aiming to create the world’s largest facility of its kind.

Meta signed a deal with startup Overview Energy to receive up to 1 gigawatt of solar power beamed from satellites as infrared light to ground-based solar farms at night.

Europe cleared Moderna’s first mRNA flu–COVID shot, while the U.S. remains without it after Moderna pulled its FDA application amid RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine push.

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team