Once a modest online seller of books, Amazon is now one of the largest companies in the world, and its former CEO, Jeff Bezos, is the world’s most wealthy person. We track developments, both of Bezos and Amazon, its growth as a video producer, the popular Prime service, as well as its own hardware, which includes the Amazon Kindle e-reader, Amazon Kindle Fire tablets, and Amazon Fire TV streaming boxes.
That’s according to Amazon’s President and CEO Andy Jassy — a cold, yet unsuprising take from the man who’s planning to replace 600,000 employees with robots by 2033. In this Bloomberg article, you can read more about how he’s overhauling Amazon to go all-in on AI.
We asked the company to clarify what’s going on here. Maybe there’s an explanation, but I know a lot of people wouldn’t put it past Amazon to pull a stunt like this.
The new black-and-white Kindle Scribe without a glowing display has been MIA since it was announced last September. But according to an updated listing on Amazon’s store, it will finally be available starting on June 10th at 10AM ET for $429.99, giving the recently-announced Remarkable Paper Pure some more competition.
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The home security company launched two new products today: the Ring Spotlight Cam (2nd Gen) at $169.99 and the Ring Floodlight Cam (2nd Gen) at $199.99. Both feature Ring’s Retinal 2K video resolution, bringing higher-res support to Ring’s base models.
Increased resolution provides clearer video and better zoom capabilities and feeds richer data into Ring’s AI features, such as Search Party, AI-generated text descriptions, and search history. The cameras will be available on June 3rd.
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Prime Video hasn’t mentioned how many episodes its ordered to adapt the Rebecca Yarros dragon-riding romantasy novels that are so widely beloved by BookTok, but Meredith Averill (The Haunting of Hill House, Locke & Key) will serve as showrunner and executive producer. An expected release date also hasn’t been announced yet.
[Amazon MGM Studios]
Mark your calendar for November 11th.
”Season Three takes place at the height of the War of the Elves and Sauron, as the Dark Lord seeks to craft the One Ring that will give him the edge he needs to win the war, bind all peoples to his will – and at last rule all Middle-earth,” according to a press release.
Bandai has given its new Science Saru-produced The Ghost in the Shell reimagining a July 7th premiere date on Amazon Prime Video.
As The Information reports, Amazon is considering offering a “hybrid” mode that includes responses from its Rufus chatbot in search results for some products. Rufus can suggest and compare products like shopping modes in ChatGPT and Gemini, but Amazon says it’s more helpful for some products than others, and won’t entirely replace regular search.
[The Information]
Amazon has reportedly discussed casting the President’s eldest son to replace him as host if they film new episodes. The show isn’t in active development yet, but it would be the latest example of Amazon cozying up to the Trump family since it spent $75 million on the Melania documentary.
[The Wall Street Journal]
The ecommerce giant confirmed that it will hold the deals event one month early this year, offering discounts to Prime members in 26 countries. Amazon hasn’t revealed an exact date for Prime Day yet, but rumors suggest it could occur in “late June.”
[Amazon News]
The day after opening up its relationship with Microsoft and Azure, OpenAI announced an expanded deal with Amazon that brings its latest AI models, Codex, and other tools to AWS.
Ben Thompson interviewed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and AWS CEO Matt Garman and said it seems clear that “OpenAI’s focus is going to be on AWS,” particularly with an eye toward the new Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents setup.
The company is launching a new app for its AI-powered Quick assistant, which can write emails, connect to your calendar, and edit documents inside Zoom, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Slack. Amazon says Quick can connect to your local files, help you create custom apps, as well as provide alerts for missed emails and more.
There’s the way any good noir is meant to be consumed — in high-contrast monochrome below. And then there is a “True-Hue Full Color” that frankly sucks all the fun out of it and just serves to highlight the seams in the mediocre CGI.
The Amazon-owned company is testing robotaxi rides with employees as passengers to and from the Las Vegas airport. The plan is to offer the service publicly in the near future. But as many have noted, it may be tough going in a vehicle without any dedicated storage space for luggage.
The billionaire space race sure heated up yesterday with Amazon’s purchase of Globalstar. In response, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched 54 new Starlink satellites in less than 24 hours via two deployments, while Jeff Bezos has only managed to launch a total of 241 Leo satellites in the last 12 months.
Since launching in 2024 with 48 Hyundai dealerships, we’ve seen Amazon Autos add used cars from Hertz and Ford, but now the Wall Street Journal says it’s active in over 130 cities with Kia, Mazda, Subaru, Chevrolet, and Jeep vehicles listed. According to the article, one benefit to Amazon, beyond the listing fee, is attracting carmakers and dealers as advertisers.
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[Wall Street Journal]
The new Leo (formerly Project Kuiper) antenna will enable air travelers bandwidth of up to 1 gigabit per second for downloads and 400 megabits per second for uploads on Delta, JetBlue, and any other commercial airlines Amazon signs up.
Still, Amazon isn’t close to meeting its deadline from the FCC to launch 1,600 satellites by July 2026, having recently requested a two year extension.
Their morning routine, per an unapologetic New York Times profile, which delivers on the premise that “unabashed rich-person exuberance is back with a Blue Origin bang:”
They don’t touch their phones. Instead, they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for — and they can’t repeat what they named the day before. From there, the couple drink their morning coffee in a sunroom and watch the sun rise: hers from a mug that reads “Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again,” his from one she got him that spells HUNK in symbols from the periodic table.
And because I know you’re gonna search for it: here’s the mug.
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Going ad-free on Prime Video now costs $4.99 per month, instead of $2.99. It also comes with “exclusive” access to 4K streams.
The Audible Story House will only be open during the month of May, featuring story “tiles” that visitors can use to sample audiobooks, along with seven “listening spaces” equipped with Sony headphones and Dolby Atmos surround sound. Here are some renderings of what the pop-up might look like:
As part of the tentative deal, Amazon will ship 20 percent fewer packages through the Postal Service, The Wall Street Journal reports. An earlier WSJ report had said that Amazon was looking to cut “at least two-thirds” of its postal volume with the USPS.
[The Wall Street Journal]
