Matt Day

L.A.’s Entertainment Economy Is Looking Like a Disaster Movie Work is evaporating, businesses are closing, longtime residents are leaving, and Los Angeles’s creative middle class is hanging on by a thread.

The most important human story in the entertainment industry right now is the severe downturn in film and TV production in LA and how it's affecting middle-class crew workers. I spoke to dozens of them for this story about the depressed Hollywood economy. www.wsj.com/business/med...

Microsoft Bets $33 Billion on Neoclouds like Nebius to Ease AI Crunch Microsoft Corp.’s deal with neocloud company Nebius Group NV will provide computing power to internal teams creating large language models and a consumer AI assistant, according to people familiar wit...

Microsoft is planning to use the data center capacity its renting from Nebius as part of that enormous recent ~$19 billion deal to build its own AI models, @brodyford.bsky.social scoops: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Microsoft Promotes Sales Chief Althoff to Help Free Up Nadella Microsoft Corp. is giving its longtime sales chief oversight of marketing and operations in a reorganization designed to free up Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and his engineering leaders to de...

News: Microsoft sales czar Judson Althoff is getting a bigger new job: Commercial CEO. He'll take on marketing/operations teams to free up Satya Nadella & Co. for technical work. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Amazon Is Overhauling Its Devices to Take on Apple in the AI Era Under Microsoft veteran Panos Panay, the company looks to add polish to its gadgets at every price level.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

To reshape Amazon’s hardware group, Panay has brought in collaborators from his Microsoft days, as well as veterans from Amazon itself. The team includes Aidan Marcuss, who worked on Windows until last year and now heads Amazon’s TV business, as well as J Allard, the co-inventor of Xbox who now leads a team focused on new form factors. Ring creator Jamie Siminoff, meanwhile, returned earlier this year. Perhaps the most significant addition is the German-born Groene, who left his Microsoft role when Panay exited. When Groene joined Amazon eight months ago, his first order of business was bringing all of the company’s designers — across hardware, software and user experience — under one roof. That created a structure similar to the way Apple develops its products.

Panos is assembling a team.

Amazon Revamps Echo Speakers, Displays in Hardware Reboot New speakers include revamped look, upgraded silicon and integration with Alexa+ subscription service.

Echoes, too: Amazon Revamps Echo Speakers, Displays in Hardware Reboot www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Amazon Launches $40 4K Fire TV Stick and 4K Ring Security Cameras Ring cameras are getting a new Search Party feature to help triangulate lost pets.

Then, some Fire TVs, some Kindles. You know.

Amazon Launches 4K Ring Security Cameras and Pet-Finding Feature Company also introduces new smart home devices from its Blink brand.

Loitering at Amazon's new hardware launch event in NYC. First, some new Ring cams: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

OpenAI Floats the Promise of a More Useful Personal AI Welcome to Tech In Depth, our daily newsletter about the business of tech from Bloomberg’s journalists around the world. Today, Austin Carr looks at OpenAI’s effort to offer ChatGPT users a personal d...

Via @austincarr.bsky.social
www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Earlier this year, for instance, I sought to make a habit of checking in with Copilot Daily, a morning digest Microsoft Corp. added to its consumer chatbot app featuring widgets for weather and headlines. While refreshingly colorful compared with the stark AI interfaces I was accustomed to, the habit didn’t stick. An AI-generated voice briefing of news sounded like an eerie substitute for human equivalents accessible from countless media outlets, and Copilot’s list of suggested MSN links and conversation topics (“tips to maximize your travel fun”) was too often generic.

The world's biggest supercomputer, and many of its best minds, working feverishly to invent a newfangled Yahoo dot com landing page.

Microsoft Disables Some Israeli Use on ‘Mass Surveillance’ Rules Microsoft Corp., disabled some use of its software by the Israeli military after an investigation spurred by news reports that the company’s products were involved in the surveillance of civilians.

"The newspaper and other news organizations reported that Israel’s military intercepted millions of Palestinian mobile phone calls, stored them on Microsoft servers and used the data to select bombing targets in Gaza."
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Amazon, FTC Reach $2.5 Billion Deal in Prime Subscription Case Amazon.com Inc. agreed to pay $2.5 billion in penalties and refunds and change its process for how to cancel its Prime subscription to settle a lawsuit by the US Federal Trade Commission.

Amazon will pay $2.5 billion to settle an FTC case that it tricked shoppers into signing up for Prime and made it hard to cancel. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Microsoft Partners With OpenAI Rival Anthropic on AI Copilot Microsoft Corp. will start using artificial intelligence models from Anthropic to help power its workplace AI assistant, adding a significant partner to a product that has so far been predominantly dr...

Microsoft Copilot: Now, with models from the Pepsi to OpenAI's Coke. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Amazon Heads Into FTC Jury Trial Over Prime Cancellation Claims Amazon.com Inc. squared off in court against the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that the company duped customers into signing up for the Prime subscription service and then made it too hard...

Amazon Prime on trial in Seattle: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Many Cascade PBS journalists I admire are losing their jobs. Seattle is also losing a valuable piece of its news ecosystem. I think of the many journalists scattered throughout local newsrooms who passed through Cascade PBS/Crosscut at some point, freelanced there, or got their start there.

Amazon Introduces Whole Foods 365 Line to Singapore in Brand Test Amazon.com Inc.’s Whole Foods Market is taking its house brands to Singapore, a test of how the private-label goods will fare in a market where the grocer has no brick-and-mortar presence.

Whole Foods is taking its 365 house brand international. Singapore tomorrow, with plans for more expansion to other countries where Amazon's organic grocer doesn't operate any stores stores: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Big sign over a grocery store. "America Northwest Seafood" over images of a crab and the state of Maryland.

I have some notes

Trump to Add New $100,000 Fee for H-1B Visas in Latest Crackdown President Donald Trump signed a proclamation Friday that would move to extensively overhaul the H-1B visa program, requiring a $100,000 fee for applications in a bid to curb overuse.

Big bills for Amazon and Microsoft if this holds. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Amazon Expects Kuiper Satellites to Serve Five Countries by 2026 Amazon.com Inc.’s satellite internet venture aims to be able to offer service to the US, Canada, France, Germany and the UK by the end of the first quarter of 2026, an executive said.

Amazon's Kuiper satellite venture figures its on track to serve US, Canada, France, Germany and the UK by 1Q 2026: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Seattle’s racial income gap among the widest in U.S. The gap in income between Seattle households headed by an Asian person and those headed by a Black person was about $77,700 last year, writes FYI Guy.

Via Seattle’s racial income gap among the widest, new census data shows | The Seattle Times www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

The gap in income between Seattle’s highest and lowest earning racial/ethnic groups was among the largest in the nation last year, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2024, households headed by an Asian person had the highest median income in Seattle, estimated at around $141,300. Households headed by a Black person had the lowest median income last year, estimated at around $63,600.

Staggering numbers

Amazon Tests GM EV Delivery Vans in Bid to Meet Climate Goals Amazon.com Inc. has been quietly evaluating General Motors Co.’s BrightDrop electric van, evidence that the e-commerce company continues to explore options to reduce the carbon emissions of its sprawl...

Amazon's kicked the tires of GM's BrightDrop EV delivery vans: www.bloomberg.com/news/article... Small-scale - on the order of a dozen vehicles - testing as part of Amazon's massive last-mile fleet.

Amazon, Google Probed by FTC Over Search Advertising Practices The US Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google misled advertisers that place ads on their websites, according to people familiar with the matter.

Another target of the FTC's Amazon probes: the company's fast-growing advertising business. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Microsoft’s Access to OpenAI Tech Is Focus of Contract Talks Microsoft Corp. is in advanced talks to land a deal that could give it ongoing access to critical OpenAI technology, an agreement that would remove a major obstacle to the startup’s efforts to become ...

As you may have read here: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Microsoft, OpenAI Reach Early Agreement in For-Profit Change OpenAI and its largest investor, Microsoft Corp., have reached a preliminary agreement about the structure of their partnership, a move that could pave the way for the artificial intelligence startup’...

Today's most important Microsoft news: they're getting close on a megadeal with OpenAI: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Microsoft to Put More Computing Power Behind In-House AI Models Microsoft Corp. plans to expand its physical infrastructure to train its own artificial intelligence models that it hopes will be competitive with OpenAI, Anthropic and other firms.

Today's (second?) most important Microsoft news: they're throwing more chips at their internal AI effort: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Microsoft Orders Employees Back to Offices 3 Days Per Week Microsoft Corp. said many employees must soon return to the office three days a week.

News
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Bloomberg TV screen. Stock ticker and headline. Two guys. One, professional. One, me, mouth hanging open, doing a squinty eyebrow raise (?)

#newsface

Microsoft Orders Employees Back to Offices 3 Days Per Week Microsoft Corp. said many employees must soon work three days a week from an office.

Microsoft is returning to the office* www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
*for three days a week, starting in the Seattle area, starting in February.

Amazon Buys Stake in Latin American Delivery Startup Rappi Amazon.com Inc. has taken a stake in the Colombian delivery company Rappi Inc., a strategic partnership that pairs the e-commerce giant’s retail and technology infrastructure with one of Latin America...

Amazon's going shopping in Latin America, buying a stake in Rappi, along with the option to scoop up 12% of the Colombia-based quick delivery/everything app outfit. New: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...