Here's how Amazon is bringing Prego and Kraft Mac & Cheese to Whole Foods, using screens on the shelves and robots in a "micro-fulfillment center." This was reported recently by @wsj.com and officially confirmed today, with a video showing how it works. My take: www.geekwire.com/2025/how-ama...
10 years ago today ... www.geekwire.com/2015/amazons...
New this morning: OpenAI’s $38B cloud deal with Amazon takes ChatGPT maker further beyond Microsoft
Funny twist on the old "did not respond to a request for comment."
www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/m...
Because this week hasn't been crazy enough, somehow I ended up feeling compelled to do an impromptu deep dive on Amazon's tax situation this morning. Fascinating to see how legislation ripples so quickly through corporate finances.
One document references a $30,000 payment. The allegations were never proven. I would absolutely listen to a podcast about this, if someone were to report it out and make one. Would also be a great magazine article.
This led to an internal CIA investigation into the possibility that the agency itself was paying Hunt to write these novels, apparently as part of some attempt to influence public opinion about the agency and U.S. intelligence.
Back in the 1960s, a specialist in U.S. intelligence literature, Walter Pforzheimer, did some sleuthing to figure out that future Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt was writing spy novels under a pseudonym, David St. John. The novels featured "America's most ingenious spy, playboy Peter Ward."
1/ For an evening diversion, I couldn't help but start putting the newly released JFK files into Google's NotebookLM, in batches, to see what turned up. I'll leave the real reporting to the experts in the field. But here's a fascinating story that the AI turned up, unrelated to the assassination.
Ali Farhadi joined the @geekwire.com podcast with @toddbishop.bsky.social to talk about:
🧠 The state of AI industry post-DeepSeek
📈 The building momentum around truly open AI
📲 Why on-device AI was a priority with OLMoE
💡 How we will use AI to solve real problems in 2025
Listen: buff.ly/41kjuoR
Interesting, can you remember which podcast the ads are on? Would be fun to hear.
‘Open source will win’: Allen Institute for AI CEO Ali Farhadi on the new era of artificial intelligence https://www.geekwire.com/2025/open-source-will-win-allen-institute-for-ai-ceo-ali-farhadi-on-the-new-era-of-artificial-intelligence/
Researchers led by University of Washington Nobel winner achieve a scientific breakthrough https://www.geekwire.com/2025/researchers-led-by-university-of-washington-nobel-winner-achieve-a-scientific-breakthrough/
"The big things, the valuable things, the things that drive the world, in a computing sense, are also blessedly the boring things." — Corey Quinn (@quinnypig.com), offering a reality check on the AI hype as our guest on this week's @geekwire.bsky.social podcast. www.geekwire.com/2025/podcast...
The earnings call is under way now. Our full story is here: www.geekwire.com/2025/amazons...
4/ The company reported 1,556,000 full- and part-time employees as of Dec. 31, up 2% year-over-year. (This number does not include contractors or temporary personnel hired for seasonal work.) This chart always fascinates me for the story it tells over time.
3/ Sales by major segment:
Online Stores = $75.5B, up 7.1%.
Third-party seller services = $47.5B, up 9%.
Advertising = $17.3B, up 18%.
Subscriptions, including Prime = $11.5B, up 9.7%.
Physical stores = $5.6B, up 8%.
2/ AWS growth was slightly lower than expected, with sales of $28.8 billion, up 19%, vs. expectations of 19.3%. Although AWS sales ($28.8B) were ~15% of Amazon's total sales ($187.8B), operating profits ($10.6B) were >50% of Amazon's overall op. profits of $21.2B for the quarter.
1/ Amazon beat expectations with $187.8B in net sales, up 10%, and came in well ahead on the bottom line, with earnings of $1.86 per share, vs. expectations of $1.48. Quarterly profits surpassed $20 billion for the first time, up more than 88% from a year ago.
Trying something new here: Amazon's quarterly results for the three months ended Dec. 31 2024, in four charts.
Here is Microsoft's new bid to boost enterprise AI adoption: A new Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat experience, announced Wednesday morning, will give business users free access to basic AI features, and to AI agents on a pay-as-you-go basis, without paying $30/user/month. www.geekwire.com/2025/microso...
Thanks for thinking of me.
Here's the backstory and a podcast episode with more: www.geekwire.com/2025/from-im...
Here is the Dr. Rhythm.
Dr. Rhythm meets AI: I had fun over the holiday break blending a vintage 1980s drum synthesizer from my youth (a Boss DR-110, circa 1983) with my own plunking and strumming on guitar, and an AI music generator.
Can anyone explain the reason for the everpresent hard-rock music bed that plays during the highlights on @espn.com SportsCenter?
Hi Kathy! It's Proposal #9 (p. 87) in case you want more info.
www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Arch...
In case anyone is wondering, it's common for Satya Nadella to get in the range of 94% approval, less than other board members. My hypothesis is that it's due to a subset investors who want more separation between board and management.
Microsoft released the results of shareholder voting today, from its annual meeting. None of the shareholder proposals was approved, but it's interesting to look at the numbers. Almost no support for investing in Bitcoin, whereas a call for scrutiny of AI data sources received the most votes (36%).
