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Sony Posts 10% Profit Rise on Image Sensor Boost

(FILES) In this picture taken on May 9, 2022, the Sony logo is displayed at an entrance of the company's headquarters in Tokyo. (Photo by Philip FONG / AFP)
(FILES) In this picture taken on May 9, 2022, the Sony logo is displayed at an entrance of the company's headquarters in Tokyo. (Photo by Philip FONG / AFP)
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Sony Posts 10% Profit Rise on Image Sensor Boost

(FILES) In this picture taken on May 9, 2022, the Sony logo is displayed at an entrance of the company's headquarters in Tokyo. (Photo by Philip FONG / AFP)
(FILES) In this picture taken on May 9, 2022, the Sony logo is displayed at an entrance of the company's headquarters in Tokyo. (Photo by Philip FONG / AFP)

Sony on Wednesday reported a 10% rise in operating profit in the April-June quarter, beating analyst estimates, boosted by its industry-leading image sensor business.
Profit at the Japanese tech and entertainment conglomerate was 279 billion yen ($1.90 billion), compared with an average estimate of 275 billion yen from seven analysts polled by LSEG.
The impact from foreign exchange and higher sales helped profit at the image sensor business, a major supplier for smartphone makers, roughly triple to 36.6 billion yen.
A sprawling group encompassing music, movies, games and chips, Sony hiked its full-year profit forecast by 3% aided by foreign exchange rates.
Financial markets have been whipsawed in recent days following an interest rate hike by the Bank of Japan and weak labor data from the US that stoked recession fears.
"We are extremely concerned about the sudden fluctuations in exchange rates and possibility of economic downturn, particularly in the United States," Sony President Hiroki Totoki told an earnings briefing, according to Reuters.
The rise in the yen has left investors reassessing the outlook for Japanese multinationals, as the weak currency had provided a cushion for many heavyweight exporters.
Sony's assumed exchange rate for the year is approximately 145 yen to the dollar. On Wednesday, it was trading around 147, but it had been at 38-year lows near 162 at the start of July.
In the first quarter Sony sold 2.4 million PlayStation 5 (PS5) units, fewer than a year earlier, but booked a larger profit from its games business.
The group said in May it expects to sell 18 million PS5 units this fiscal year, compared to 20.8 million a year earlier.
The games industry is grappling with rising costs and weak pricing power. Sony-owned developer Bungie announced last week it is cutting almost a fifth of its workforce.
Sony's shares closed flat ahead of earnings and are down 8% year-to-date, giving the company a market capitalization of just over $100 billion.

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Technology

The Barista Is Human but an AI Agent Runs This Experimental Swedish Cafe

Hanna Petersson, a member of Andon Labs’ technical staff, uses a telephone handset to speak with Andon Café's AI agent "Mona" in Stockholm, Sweden, Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (AP)
Hanna Petersson, a member of Andon Labs’ technical staff, uses a telephone handset to speak with Andon Café's AI agent "Mona" in Stockholm, Sweden, Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (AP)
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The Barista Is Human but an AI Agent Runs This Experimental Swedish Cafe

Hanna Petersson, a member of Andon Labs’ technical staff, uses a telephone handset to speak with Andon Café's AI agent "Mona" in Stockholm, Sweden, Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (AP)
Hanna Petersson, a member of Andon Labs’ technical staff, uses a telephone handset to speak with Andon Café's AI agent "Mona" in Stockholm, Sweden, Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (AP)

The coffee might be poured by a human hand, but behind the counter something far less traditional is calling the shots at an experimental cafe in Stockholm.

San Francisco-based startup Andon Labs has put an artificial intelligence agent nicknamed “Mona” in charge at the eponymous Andon Café in the Swedish capital. While human baristas still brew the coffee and serve the orders, the AI agent — powered by Google’s Gemini — oversees almost every other aspect of the business, from hiring staff to managing inventory.

It is not clear how long the experiment will last, but the AI agent appears to be struggling to turn a profit in Stockholm’s competitive coffee trade. The cafe has made more than $5,700 in sales since it opened in mid-April, but less than $5,000 remains from its original budget of $21,000-plus. Much of the cash was spent on one-time setup costs, and the hope is that it eventually levels out and makes money.

Many cafe patrons have found it amusing to visit a business that's run by AI. Customers can pick up a telephone inside the cafe and ask the agent questions.

“It’s nice to see what happens if you push the boundary,” customer Kajsa Norin said. “The drink was good.”

Ethical concerns

Experts say ethical concerns abound, ranging from technology's role in humankind's future to conducting job interviews and judging employee performance.

Emrah Karakaya, an associate professor of industrial economics at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, likened the experiment to “opening Pandora’s box" and said putting AI in charge can cause many problems. What might happen, he said, if a customer gets food poisoning? Who’s to blame?

“If you don’t have the required organizational infrastructure around it, and if you overlook these mistakes, it can cause harm to people, to society, to the environment, to business,” Karakaya said. “The question is, do we care about this negative impact?”

Founded in 2023, Andon Labs is an AI safety and research startup that says it focuses on “stress-testing” AI agents in the real world by giving them “real tools and real money.” It has worked with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Claude’s Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Elon Musk’s xAI, and the startup says it is preparing for a future where “organizations are run autonomously by AI.”

The Swedish cafe is billed as a “controlled experiment” to explore how AI might be deployed going forward.

“AI will be a big part of society in the future, and therefore we want to make this experiment (to) see what ethical questions arise when we have AI that employs other people and runs a business,” said Hanna Petersson, a member of Andon Labs’ technical staff.

The lab previously held pilots that put Anthropic’s Claude AI in charge of a vending machine business and a San Francisco gift store. The vending machine simulation revealed some worrying traits: The AI agent told customers it would issue refunds but never did, and it also intentionally lied to suppliers about competitor pricing to gain leverage.

AI agent struggles with inventory orders

Mona got to work after it was prompted with some basic instructions, Petersson said. The team told it to try to run the cafe profitably, be friendly and easygoing, and figure out operational details by itself but ask for new tools if needed.

From there it set up contracts for electricity and internet, and secured permits for food handling and outdoor seating. The agent then advertised for staff on LinkedIn and Indeed, and set up commercial accounts with wholesalers for daily bread and bakery orders. It communicates with the baristas via Slack, often messaging them outside of working hours, which is a workplace no-no in Sweden.

Other problems have arisen, particularly related to inventory.

The AI agent has placed orders for 6,000 napkins, four first-aid kits and 3,000 rubber gloves for the tiny cafe — plus canned tomatoes that aren’t used in any dish the cafe serves.

And then there’s the bread. Sometimes the agent orders far too much, while other days it misses bakeries’ daily deadlines, forcing the baristas to strike sandwiches from the menu.

Petersson said the ordering issues are likely due to the AI assistant’s “limited context window.”

“When old memory of ordering stuff is out of the context window, she completely forgets what she has ordered in the past,” Petersson said.

Barista Kajetan Grzelczak said he isn’t worried about being replaced by AI just yet.

“All the workers are pretty much safe,” he said. “The ones who should be worried about their employment are the middle bosses, the people in management.”

Technology

Nintendo Shares Slump as Price Hikes, Games Shortfall Spook Market

A logo of Japanese video game company Nintendo at their store in Tokyo, Japan, 08 May 2026. (EPA)
A logo of Japanese video game company Nintendo at their store in Tokyo, Japan, 08 May 2026. (EPA)
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Nintendo Shares Slump as Price Hikes, Games Shortfall Spook Market

A logo of Japanese video game company Nintendo at their store in Tokyo, Japan, 08 May 2026. (EPA)
A logo of Japanese video game company Nintendo at their store in Tokyo, Japan, 08 May 2026. (EPA)

Nintendo's shares fell 7% in Tokyo on Monday after the company hiked Switch 2 prices and as the market frets over a lack of high-profile games to build momentum.

Nintendo posted robust hardware sales for the financial year ended March but, while the company is known for its conservative forecasts, its outlook for this year underwhelmed the market.

The Kyoto-based firm extended the life of the original Switch with games from franchises such as "The Legend ‌of Zelda" and, while ‌it has scored hits such as "Pokemon Pokopia", it ‌is seen ⁠as lacking potential ⁠blockbusters.

"The year-on-year decline in game shipment guidance risks signaling that Nintendo lacks confidence in its pipeline," Morningstar analyst Kazunori Ito wrote in a note.

"However, as user engagement typically accelerates in the second year of a console cycle, we view this as too pessimistic," he wrote.

Nintendo also said it would raise prices of its Switch 2, with the Japanese language Switch 2 Japan model to go ⁠up by 10,000 yen ($63.73) to 59,980 yen from May ‌25 and prices in markets, such as the ‌US, to rise from September 1.

The company has an audience among casual gamers ‌who are seen as particularly sensitive to price hikes, which come as electronics ‌makers grapple with a memory chip price surge.

The second year "is crucial and our non-consensus view is that it will release a Mario AAA game this year," Jefferies analyst Atul Goyal wrote in a note.

"The... guidance bar is low by design — Nintendo ‌has beaten initial (operating profit) guidance in each of the past four fiscal years," he wrote.

Unlike more diversified peer Sony, ⁠Nintendo remains highly dependent ⁠on its core gaming business even as its characters and intellectual property prove popular in movies and at theme parks.

With the PlayStation 5 having spent longer on the market, "Sony is in a much better position to pass higher costs of memory chips to consumers," Amir Anvarzadeh of Asymmetric Advisors wrote in a note.

Sony, whose shares were up 10% in Tokyo on Monday, forecast lower sales but higher profit at its gaming business. The company also said it was planning a new joint venture to develop and manufacture image sensors in Japan with TSMC as it seeks to control costs.

"These results were at least validating of the thesis that Sony can protect group profits by scaling back PS5 shipments," Bernstein analyst David Dai wrote in a note.

Technology

Musk Blasts French Prosecutors Probing His X Platform

SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk during his visit at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023 and (R) the new Twitter logo rebranded as X, pictured on a screen in Paris on July 24, 2023. (Photo by Alain JOCARD / AFP)
SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk during his visit at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023 and (R) the new Twitter logo rebranded as X, pictured on a screen in Paris on July 24, 2023. (Photo by Alain JOCARD / AFP)
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Musk Blasts French Prosecutors Probing His X Platform

SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk during his visit at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023 and (R) the new Twitter logo rebranded as X, pictured on a screen in Paris on July 24, 2023. (Photo by Alain JOCARD / AFP)
SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk during his visit at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023 and (R) the new Twitter logo rebranded as X, pictured on a screen in Paris on July 24, 2023. (Photo by Alain JOCARD / AFP)

Elon Musk has launched a tirade against French judicial authorities currently investigating possible abuses on his X social network -- prompting a fresh legal complaint from a gay rights group Saturday.

France opened an inquiry in January 2025 into allegations that X, formerly known as Twitter, was used to interfere in French politics.

The probe has since widened to cover allegations of Holocaust denial, distribution of sexual deepfakes and most recently possible complicity in the distribution of images of child sexual abuse.

Responding to a post on the latest phase of the inquiry, Musk wrote in French on Friday: "They're faker than a chocolate euro and gayer than a flamingo in a neon tutu!"

French campaigning group Stop Homophobie filed a complaint against Musk over his latest comments.

The group's lawyer, Etienne Deshoulieres, told AFP they had filed a complaint for "public insults towards a group of people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity".

The SpaceX and Tesla tycoon, under investigation along with former X CEO Linda Yaccarino, recently failed to respond to a summons from the French judiciary for an informal interview.

He already labelled French magistrates "mentally retarded" in an earlier post in French, following a raid on X's Paris office in mid-February.

At the time of the raid, the social network condemned what it called an abusive judicial action with political motives and denied any wrongdoing.

Contacted by AFP about Musk's latest published remarks, X declined to comment.