AMZN
In a paper this month, the CMA said it had found an “interconnected web” of more than 90 partnerships and investments involving the same six Big Tech groups " /FT/
🟩 SP5 > Amazon > Latest > AMZN 0.00%↑
☑️ #117 May 13, 2024
7th Choose France Summit: Amazon and Microsoft to spend billions in France
@France24_en: The 7th annual foreign investment summit known as "Choose France" kicks off at Versailles with €15 billion in new projects expected. Also in this edition, China prepares a $140 billion debt float to fund economic stimulus. Plus, hundreds of environmental activists storm Tesla's German Gigafactory.
🔹Related content:
🙂
☑️ #116 May 6, 2024
ATSG Expands Operations in the Amazon Air Network
businesswire.com: [Transcription] WILMINGTON, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Air Transport Services Group, Inc. (ATSG.NaE), a leading provider of medium wide-body cargo aircraft leasing, air cargo transportation and related services, today announced an agreement to operate ten additional Boeing 767 freighters for Amazon.com Services LLC in the Amazon Air network by the end of 2024. The operating agreement through which ATSG’s airlines operate those aircraft will be extended to May 2029, with extension rights for five additional years.
“We’re pleased to further expand our leading role in the Amazon Air network that we started in 2016,” said Joe Hete, Chairman and CEO of ATSG. “Our operating capabilities will continue to support Amazon’s customer-centric commitments for years to come.”
Key features of the new and amended agreements include:
ATSG airlines to operate the initial ten Boeing 767-300 freighters provided by Amazon beginning in Summer 2024, with the potential to add up to ten more aircraft.
Operating agreement extended to May 2029, with the option to extend for an additional five years.
ATSG has also agreed to extend the exercise period for vested warrants for 21.8 million shares it previously issued to Amazon, amend the vesting conditions and extend the exercise period for unvested existing warrants for 2.9 million shares, and issued new warrants for up to 2.9 million additional shares to Amazon.
🔹Related content:
Introducing our first airplane (8/4/16): [Transcription] [Excerpt] Now, we see the same opportunity to innovate in transportation. I'm very excited to introduce Amazon One, a Boeing 767-300 that is our first ever Amazon branded plane which will serve customers by adding capacity to support one and two day package delivery in the US. Adding capacity for Prime members by developing a dedicated air cargo network ensures there is enough available capacity to provide customers with great selection, low prices and incredible shipping speeds for years to come. Over the next couple of years, we’ll roll out 40 planes just like this one.
🙂
☑️ #115 May 2, 2024
AI demand drives Amazon’s biggest cloud sales growth in a year
bloomberg.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit posted the strongest sales growth in a year, a sign that the retailer’s most profitable unit is recovering from a slump as businesses resume spending on technology projects, including artificial intelligence services.
“We’re seeing strong demand signals from our customers on the AWS side,”
“They’re signing longer deals with larger commitments, many with generative AI components.”
Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky
Olsavsky said generative artificial intelligence now represented a “multi-billion dollar revenue run rate business” for Amazon, the first time the company has publicly put even an approximate figure on that franchise.
💲 EARNINGS ANNOUNCEMENT: Apr 30, 2023
Amazon.com Announces First Quarter Results
Press Release | Related content:
☑️ #114 Apr 24, 2024
Amazon / Anthropic partnership merger inquiry
gov.uk: [Transcription] [Excerpt] The CMA is investigating Amazon.com, Inc’s (Amazon) partnership with Anthropic PDC (Anthropic).
🔹Related content:
CMA seeks views on AI partnerships and other arrangements (4/24/24)
Amazon and Anthropic Announce Strategic Collaboration to Advance Generative AI (9/25/23)
An Amazon spokesperson called the CMA’s probe into this type of partnership with Anthropic is "unprecedented"
🙂
☑️ #113 Apr 22, 2024
Prime Air: Amazon drone delivery is coming to Arizona
aboutamazon.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Later this year, Amazon customers in the West Valley Phoenix Metro Area can receive Prime Air drone deliveries from our Tolleson, AZ, Same-Day Delivery site.
Since starting drone delivery in College Station, Texas, and Lockeford, California, in 2022, we’ve delivered thousands of items to customers in less than an hour. Last year we also began delivering prescription medications in partnership with Amazon Pharmacy to customers in College Station. We’ve received great feedback from customers and communities as we’ve rolled out the service.
🔹Related content:
🙂
☑️ #112 Apr 12, 2024
AWS hedges its bets with NVDIA GPUs and homegrown AI chips
nextplatform.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] There was a time – and it doesn’t seem like that long ago – that the datacenter chip market was a big-money but relatively simple landscape, with CPUs from Intel and AMD and Arm looking to muscle its way in and GPUs mostly from Nvidia with some from AMD and Intel looking to muscle its way in. And a slew of AI startups that didn’t really sell much into the datacenter.
For AWS, it has its own Trainium (for training AI workloads obviously) and Inferentia (for AI inferencing obviously) – not to mention its Graviton CPUs and Nitro DPUs, all thanks to its 2015 acquisition of Israeli chip designer Annapurna. AWS has a lot of Nvidia GPUs, too, which are cornerstones of AI compute. But the rise of AI – and most recently, the accelerating innovation and adoption of the emerging generative AI technology – is creating a fluid processor environment that the company and other cloud providers will have to navigate.
🔹Related content:
Exclusive: inside Amazon’s A.I. Chip Lab (8/12/23)
Take a look inside the lab where AWS makes custom chips (8/11/22)
🙂
☑️ #111 Apr 11, 2024
The largest technology transformation since the cloud
finchat_io: $AMZN "Generative AI may be the largest technology transformation since the cloud (which itself, is still in the early stages), and perhaps since the Internet." - Andy Jassy, CEO
🔹Related content:
🙂
☑️ #110 Mar 27, 2024
Leaked document: Amazon expects to save $1.3 billion by slashing office vacancies, terminating leases early, and other moves
businessinsider.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] To get there, Amazon is letting certain leases naturally expire, stopping the use of some office floors, and negotiating early lease terminations for some buildings, the person said. They asked not to be identified, citing private matters.
"We're constantly evaluating our real-estate portfolio based on the dynamic and diverse needs of Amazon's businesses by looking at trends in how employees are using our offices,"
"In some cases, employees may move buildings to increase collaboration and drive better utilization of our workspaces. In other cases, we may take on additional space where we're currently limited or make adjustments where we have excess capacity. The changes we've already made are improving vacancy rates, and we expect to see further progress as we continue to learn and iterate on our portfolio."
Brad Glasser, a spokesperson for Amazon
🙂
☑️ #109 Mar 27, 2024
Amazon concludes $4 billion investment in Anthropic
aboutamazon.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Amazon and Anthropic deepen their shared commitment to advancing generative AI.
Deepening our commitment to advancing generative AI, today we have an update on the announcement we made to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic for a minority ownership position in the company. Last September, we made an initial investment of $1.25 billion. Today, we made our additional $2.75 billion investment, bringing our total investment in Anthropic to $4 billion.
🙂
☑️ #108 Mar 26, 2024
Amazon Pharmacy now offers Same-Day Delivery in New York City and the L.A. area. Here’s how AI is helping us deliver medication faster.
aboutamazon.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Same-Day Delivery will expand to more than a dozen cities by the end of the year using environmentally friendly delivery vehicles, including e-bikes, electric vans, and drones.
🔹Related content:
Amazon Pharmacy for prescribers
Amazon’s Health Care Services:
🙂
☑️ #107 Mar 12, 2024
Amazon Tells Warehouse Workers to Close Their Eyes and Think Happy Thoughts
404media.co: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Amazon is telling workers to close their eyes and dream of being somewhere else while they’re standing in a warehouse. A worker in one of Amazon’s fulfillment centers, who we’ve granted anonymity, sent 404 Media a photo they took of a screen imploring them to try “savoring” the idea of something that makes them happy—as in, not being at work, surrounded by robots and packages.
🙂
☑️ #106 Mar 4, 2024 🟠 opinion
Nuclear Energy as ESG
@energybants: AMAZON FINALLY GOES NUCLEAR
Amazon just bought a massive data center under construction right at one of America's best nuclear plants.
Operating costs for the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania are crazy low - likely around $25 per MWh.
Why is this a huge nuclear signal?
Until recently, Jeff Bezos was giving immense funding to enviro org NRDC, a group that has been trying to destroy American nuclear power plants.
NRDC succeeded at Indian Point, so New York City now runs on just natural gas and diesel. They almost succeeded at Diablo Canyon in California.
Amazon is bigger than Jeff, true. And Bezos may not have known the America-sabotaging dirty energy mission his money was supporting at NRDC, which only cut their anti-nuclear program late last year according to insiders.
But unlike Microsoft which has long had a pro-nuclear founder in Bill Gates, a stated interest in purchasing clean nuclear electricity, and even a nuclear power program, Amazon has been silent on nuclear.
Even Google has been louder than Amazon, saying 24/7 clean energy from nuclear would probably be an important clean energy resource in the future.
So by buying a data center that uses nearly HALF of a massive nuclear plant's output, Amazon is effectively announcing that they're a nuclear-powered company.
This is colossal for the "Nuclear Energy as ESG" story.
The major tech companies, which are essentially all entirety of the ESG sector, were avoiding buying nuclear power, instead misleading the public for years about using 100% renewable even though they knew it wasn't true.
Now, in order to accept the tech giants as ESG, major financial groups and the ESG ratings agencies that work with them will have to accept that these companies are openly powering themselves with zero-emission nuclear energy.
With the power demand for data centers soaring, and the major companies like Microsoft and Amazon now openly buying nuclear power to meet their needs, we are in the beginning of a new nuclear age.
Will the nuclear industry be able to meet this demand? That's the next challenge
🔹Related content:
Talen Energy Announces Sale of Zero-Carbon Data Center Campus: [Transcription] [Excerpt] HOUSTON, March 4, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Talen Energy Corporation ("Talen") (OTCQX: TLNE) today issued the following statement regarding the sale of its 960-megawatt Cumulus data center campus in northeast Pennsylvania to a major cloud service provider. Read more
🙂
☑️ #105 Feb 28, 2024
Amazon’s Big Secret
theatlantic.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Nearly 30 years after the company was founded, we still don’t really know where its profits come from. The answer will loom large in the antitrust case against it.
But here’s something you won’t find in those materials, because it was deemed too sensitive to unredact: precisely how Amazon makes its money. Nearly 30 years after the company was founded, we still don’t really know. Amazon has long cultivated the impression that it operates its shopping platform at razor-thin margins, relying instead on its cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), for much of its profit.
And yet the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit contends that Amazon’s e-commerce business is, in fact, “enormously profitable.” The resolution to this dispute is likely to figure heavily in whether the judge finds that Amazon is merely a benevolent retail giant or a destructive monopoly. And regardless of what happens in the Amazon case, the fact that large corporations have been able to keep such basic information private helps explain why policy makers, journalists, and the public were so slow to recognize the growing problem of monopolization in America.
🙂
☑️ #104 Feb 27, 2024
Amazon is intensifying its investment focus on startups at the intersection of artificial intelligence and robotics
ft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Amazon to invest in start-ups that combine AI with robotics.
Franziska Bossart, head of the corporate venture capital arm that was set up in 2022, told the Financial Times that “generative AI holds a ...
🔹Related content:
@AgilityRobotics : Digit will first be tested at Amazon’s robotics research and development facility just south of Seattle. This development broadens the relationship between the two companies, as Agility is already part of the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund. At Agility, we make robots that are made for work. Our robot Digit works alongside us in spaces designed for people. Digit handles the tedious and repetitive tasks meant for a machine, allowing companies and their people to focus on the work that requires the human element.
🙂
☑️ #103 Feb 20, 2024
Amazon.com Set to Join Dow Jones Industrial Average; Uber to Join Dow Jones Transportation Average
press.spglobal.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] NEW YORK, Feb. 20, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- S&P Dow Jones Indices will make the following changes to the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and Dow Jones Transportation Average (DJTA) effective prior to the open of trading on Monday, February 26:
Amazon.com Inc. (NASD:AMZN) will replace Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (NASD:WBA) in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Reflecting the evolving nature of the American economy, this change will increase consumer retail exposure as well as other business areas in the DJIA. The index change was prompted by DJIA constituent Walmart Inc.'s (NYSE:WMT) decision to split its stock 3:1, which will reduce Walmart's index weight due to the price weighted construction of the index. Walmart will remain in the DJIA.
🔹Related content:
The Sandbox Daily: [Transcription] [Excerpt] The timing of the index swap, though, may be less than ideal. Over the last year, Amazon is up +78% while Walgreens is down 39%. Investors who passively invest by ETFs or major announcements will be effectively selling low and buying high. Many have been quick to quip about the 2020 Dow roster changes when the Dow booted Exxon Mobil and added Salesforce.com after a nearly identical price performance setup.
🙂
☑️ #102 Feb 20, 2024
Insider Trades: Bezos’ Trading Plan
sec.gov: [Transcription] [Summarizer] FORM 4 - Statement of changes in beneficial ownership of securities.
Bezos has reached his previously disclosed plan to sell up to 50 million shares by the end of January 2025, following the latest transactions (automatic sells)
Automatic Sell: 41,991,943 Shares* (latest transactions)
5,998,849 Million Shares (2/20/24) - Period of Report: 2024-02-15
5,998,849 Million Shares (2/16/24) - Period of Report: 2024-02-15
5,998,849 Million Shares (2/15/24) - Period of Report: 2024-02-15
5,998,849 Million Shares (2/14/24) - Period of Report: 2024-02-13
5,998,849 Million Shares (2/13/24) - Period of Report: 2024-02-13
5,998,849 Million Shares (2/12/24) - Period of Report: 2024-02-09
5,998,849 Million Shares (2/9/24) - Period of Report: 2024-02-09
Disposition (Non Open Market): 8,008,057 Shares*
Rest of the trading plan available here: BEZOS JEFFREY P (CIK: 0001043298)
Keyword: “Securities Disposed of”
🔹Related content:
The transactions occurred under a Rule 10b 5-1 trading plan adopted by the reporting person on 11/08/2023.
Form 144 Securities to be Sold: 50000000 / Aggregate Market Value: 8457500000.00
*Data not verified. Do your own research.
🙂
☑️ #101 Feb 17, 2024
One of Oregon’s smallest utilities is suddenly among the state’s biggest polluters. Why? Amazon data centers
oregonlive.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] The Umatilla Electric Cooperative is responsible for 1.8 million tons of carbon emissions annually, according to newly released state data, even though it has just 16,000 customers. It’s now the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases among all Oregon utilities because of one of those customers: Amazon.
🔹Related content:
Umatilla Electric Company: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Umatilla Electric Cooperative is a member-owned business that sells energy and invests in and supports other services to improve the quality of life in our communities.
AWS Eyes New Strategies to Meet Energy Goals for its $15 Billion Oregon Cloud Region (5/1/23)
🟩 SP5 > Amazon > Latest > AMZN 0.00%↑