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☆ Amazon is chopping hundreds of jobs at its One Medical and Pharmacy units as part of a new cost-cutting mandate
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-06 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon's healthcare units, including One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy, are conducting fresh layoffs as part of a broader cost-cutting campaign, Business Insider has learned. The layoffs will impact "few hundred roles," Amazon's spokesperson confirmed in an email to BI. Amazon has started the year with a flurry of job cuts across a number of units including Twitch, Prime Video , Audible , and Amazon Pay. In an email to BI, Amazon's Amazon Health Services Senior Vice President Neil Lindsay confirmed the layoffs. "Unfortunately, these adjustments will result in the elimination of a few hundred roles within Amazon Pharmacy and One Medical.

Persons: Amazon's, Brian Olsavsky, Neil Lindsay, Lindsay, iRobot, Amir Dan Rubin Organizations: Amazon Pharmacy, Business, Amazon, Amazon Health Services, MGM

☆ Amazon cuts hundreds of jobs in Pharmacy, One Medical units: Read the memo
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-06 | by ( Annie Palmer | In Annierpalmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Amazon has eliminated hundreds of jobs in its Pharmacy and One Medical divisions, the company confirmed to CNBC. "Unfortunately, these changes will result in the elimination of a few hundred roles across One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy." At the start of this year, Amazon announced cuts in its Prime Video, MGM Studios, Buy with Prime, Twitch and Audible units. Here's the full memo from Lindsay:Hi everyone, The past year has been incredibly exciting for all of our health care businesses, and we're seeing tremendous growth for Amazon Pharmacy, One Medical, and Amazon Clinic. Unfortunately, these changes will result in the elimination of a few hundred roles across One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy.

Persons: Neil Lindsay, Lindsay, Andy Jassy, Brian Olsavsky, Amazon, Neil CNBC Organizations: Amazon, CNBC, Amazon Health Services, Amazon Pharmacy, MGM Studios, Amazon Clinic, Pharmacy, CARE Locations: Amazon's, d50nominations.cnbc.com

☆ Big Tech's AI spending plans mean big business for 3 portfolio stocks, including Nvidia
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-02 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | In Kevinstankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Some of Amazon's spending is likely to go toward its custom AI chips, known as Trainium and Inferentia. But the Seattle-based tech giant also buys Nvidia chips. On Thursday's post-earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said AWS offers the "most expansive collection of compute instances with Nvidia chips." Alphabet's spending on AI chips has typically been split between its custom chips designed in partnership with Broadcom, known as Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), and Nvidia's offerings. Including networking products that stitch together parts of the data center, about 15% of Broadcom's semiconductor revenue was tied to generative AI spending in fiscal 2023.

Persons: Eaton, Brian Olsavsky, FactSet, Amazon's capex, Andy Jassy, Meta's capex, Susan Li, Li, Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, Meta, it's, —, Amy Hood, It's, chatbot ChatGPT, AMD's, Ruth Porat, Porat, Jim Cramer's, Jim Cramer, Jim, Florian Gaertner Organizations: Big Tech, Nvidia, Broadcom, Eaton, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Web Services, Facebook, Devices, OpenAI, supercomputing, TPUs, CNBC, YouTube, Photothek, Getty Locations: Eaton, Seattle

☆ Tech's longtime highfliers are growing up by getting smaller
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-02 | by ( Ari Levy | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

They're still out hunting for the best technical talent, particularly in areas like artificial intelligence, but headcount growth is measured. Last year, tech companies were responding to dramatically changing market conditions — soaring inflation, rising interest rates, rotation out of risk — after an extended bull market. Meta slashed over 20,000 jobs in 2023, Amazon laid off more than 27,000 people, And Alphabet cut over 12,000 positions. Other than Nvidia , which had a banner 2023 due to soaring demand for its AI chips, none of the other mega-cap tech companies have been growing at their historic averages. By late this year, analysts are projecting growth at Meta will be back down to the low teens at best.

Persons: Tayfun, There's, Daniel Flax, Neuberger Berman, CNBC's, Morgan Stanley, Brian Nowak, Brian Olsavsky, They're, Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, Olsavsky, Phil Spencer, Justin Sullivan, Okta, Zuora, Evan Sohn, Recruiter.com, " Sohn, Susan Li, Ben Barringer, Cheviot, Barringer, —, Annie Palmer Organizations: Anadolu Agency, Getty Images Technology, Amazon, Meta, hasn't, Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, SAN FRANCISCO, Activision, FTC, Getty, Federal, Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, Tech, Nvidia, Finance, CNBC Locations: Menlo Park , California, Silicon Valley, CALIFORNIA, San Francisco , California

☆ Amazon's CFO declines to say layoffs are over and commits to 'very careful' investments
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-02 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Amazon's CFO Brian Olsavsky declined to say whether more layoffs are coming. Olsavsky said Amazon will make "very careful" investments. AdvertisementEven after cutting at least 27,000 jobs since late 2022, Amazon may not be done with layoffs. During a call with reporters on Thursday, Amazon's chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky declined to answer a question about whether layoffs are over and hinted even more job cuts may be on the table. This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers.

Persons: Brian Olsavsky, Olsavsky, — Organizations: Service, Business

☆ Amazon cloud unit speeds up revenue growth as clients adopt AI services
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-01 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky speaks at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston, Texas, on March 7, 2023. Amazon said on Thursday that its cloud division grew revenue 13% year over year in the fourth quarter, exactly in line with analysts' projections. The company pointed to growing traction in cloud services for artificial intelligence. Revenue from Azure and other cloud services at Microsoft rose 30%, and Alphabet's Google Cloud revenue, which includes Google Workspace productivity software subscriptions, increased about 26%. The Amazon cloud group turned over $7.17 billion in operating income.

Persons: Adam Selipsky, Amazon, StreetAccount, Brian Olsavsky, Jensen Huang, Huang, Mark Mahaney Organizations: Amazon Web, P Global, AWS, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Accor, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Locations: Houston , Texas, Las Vegas, Accor S.A

☆ Amazon set to report fourth-quarter earnings after the bell
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-01 | by ( Annie Palmer | In Annierpalmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon is slated to report fourth-quarter earnings Thursday after the closing bell. In January, Amazon said it would let go of employees across units including Prime Video, MGM Studios, Twitch, Audible and Buy with Prime. In November, Amazon launched "Q," an AI chatbot for businesses, as well as new Trainium chips for AI applications. Discovery 's Max by introducing ads to Prime Video programming. Amazon will discuss the report on a conference call with analysts at 5:30 p.m.

Persons: Andy Jassy, Amazon, Evercore, Jassy's, Brian Olsavsky, Max Organizations: Web, Amazon, MGM Studios, Revenue, National Retail Federation, Netflix, Disney, Hulu, Warner Bros, Citi Locations: Ukraine

☆ Microsoft's AI boost helped cloud business outpace rivals Amazon and Google in latest quarter
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-27 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

That's faster than Google Cloud's 22% growth and more than double the pace of expansion at Amazon Web Services, which reported 12% growth. "Today more than half of all funded generative AI startups are Google cloud customers," Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said on the company's earnings call Tuesday. "Our generative AI business is growing very, very quickly," Jassy said. Jassy said companies including Adidas, Booking.com , Merck and United Airlines are building generative AI apps in AWS. Still, Amazon was behind Microsoft in releasing a tool for deploying generative AI.

Persons: Satya Nadella, Mark Moerdler, Sundar Pichai, Andy Jassy, Jassy, Brian Olsavsky, Jefferies, Brent Thill Organizations: Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services, AWS, Bernstein Research, Adidas, Booking.com, Merck, United Airlines, OpenAI Service, Oracle, Skanska, Starbucks, Amazon Locations: OpenAI, Maersk

☆ Big Tech earnings highlighted big spending on artificial intelligence. Here's what it means for AI king Nvidia
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-27 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | In Kevinstankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

All four companies are buyers of Nvidia's cutting-edge AI chips, which dominate the market for training the massive models that power applications like the viral ChatGPT. "I think that Nvidia is the quiet partner behind the winners including Microsoft," Jim Cramer said Friday. Notably, about 3 percentage points of Azure's growth was linked to customer AI spending, Hood said. Amazon Amazon's results and earnings call Thursday added to the body of evidence on AI spending as a priority at U.S. tech giants. This week's slate of Big Tech earnings left little doubt that, as more Nvidia chips become available, there will be a place inside data centers for them to go.

Persons: haven't, —, Jensen Huang, Jim Cramer, NVDA, Jim, Amy Hood, Hood, Ruth Porat, Porat, Susan Li, Brian Olsavsky, Andy Jassy, Jassy, It's, Jim Cramer's, Jensen Huang Getty Organizations: Nvidia, Big Tech, Microsoft, Facebook, U.S, Google, Broadcom, AWS, Loop, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, CNBC Locations: China, OpenAI, Amazon's

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon on Thursday reported strong revenue and profits from the summer months driven by growth in online sales and its advertising business. Amazon made $9.9 billion in profits, topping analysts' expectations and sending its stocks higher in after-hours trading. Amazon is also seeing strong customer demand across categories like beauty, health and personal care items, Olsavsky said. Meanwhile, Amazon's cloud competitors have delivered mixed results. Earlier this week, Microsoft reported strong revenue for its flagship cloud platform, Azure, while revenue from Google’s Cloud division fell below analysts’ expectations.

Persons: Andy Jassy, Brian Olsavsky, “, ” Olsavsky, Olsavsky, ”, Jassy, FactSet, Lina Khan Organizations: Amazon, Amazon's, Revenue, Web Services, AWS, Microsoft, Google’s, Federal Trade Commission, Big Tech Locations: San Francisco

☆ Despite the AI hype, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are seeing cloud growth rates stall as customers try to cut costs
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-26 | by ( Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Despite the promise of generative AI to turbo-charge cloud computing sales, growth rates in the sector remains stalled for Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. All three cloud providers reported this week that cloud customers are still scrutinizing their IT budgets amid a shaky global economy. Cloud sales growth rates stalled this year as customers navigated rising inflation and destabilizing geopolitical conflicts. The company told investors the stalled growth was due to "customer optimization efforts" — a nicer word for cost-cutting. At the same time last year, Amazon Web Services sales were growing by more than double that rate.

Persons: Brian Olsavsky, GitHub Copilot, Satya Nadella, Amy Hood, Hood, It's, Nadella, Ellen Thomas Organizations: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services Locations: ethomas@insider.com

☆ Leaked memo shows Amazon will make Fresh grocery deliveries for Prime members a lot cheaper again
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-05 | by ( Ashley Stewart | Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon Prime members in the US will soon be able to get free grocery delivery orders from Amazon Fresh when they spend over $100 on the site, Insider has learned. In an email to Insider, Claire Peters, Amazon's worldwide VP of Amazon Fresh, said the change will go into effect Thursday afternoon. Amazon offers grocery delivery to Prime members in more than 3,500 cities and towns across the U.S. Non-Prime members in a dozen metro areas, including Austin, Boston, and San Diego, can also receive grocery deliveries. Amazon is considering a separate, standalone grocery subscription service for Prime members, as Insider previously reported . The internal document about the new Fresh fee structure reflects Amazon's willingness to keep investing in the Fresh grocery business.

Persons: Claire Peters, Peters, Amazon's, it's, Amazon, It's, Brian Olsavsky, Eugene Kim Organizations: Amazon, Foods, U.S . Locations: Austin, Boston, San Diego

For the second quarter, Amazon's revenue grew 11% to $134.4 billion, beating estimates of $131.5 billion from analysts polled by Refinitiv. In recent months, Amazon Web Services (AWS) saw its sales growth slow as wary businesses scrutinized their cloud bills. The unit beat estimates of around $21.7 billion in second-quarter cloud sales, increasing them 12% to $22.1 billion. Its rivals posted bigger jumps off smaller bases: 28% growth in Alphabet's June-quarter cloud revenue and a 26% quarterly increase for Microsoft's Azure. Longer-term, Amazon aims to turn one unit, its $35 billion in yearly gross business-to-business e-commerce sales, into $100 billion, Jassy told analysts.

Persons: Pascal Rossignol, Brian Olsavsky, Olsavsky, Andy Jassy, Arun Sundaram, Sundaram, Jassy, Thomas Monteiro, Investing.com, Monteiro, Refinitiv, Chavi Mehta, Jeffrey Dastin, Noel Randewich, Arun Koyyur, Aurora Ellis, Chris Reese Organizations: REUTERS, Amazon.com Inc, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Refinitiv, Amazon Web Services, CFRA Research, Reuters, Thomson Locations: Lauwin, France, Alphabet's, Bengaluru, Jeffrey Dastin San Francisco

☆ Amazon set to report second-quarter earnings after the bell
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-03 | by ( Annie Palmer | In Annierpalmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon will report second-quarter earnings after the market close on Thursday. In the first quarter, AWS sales increased roughly 16%, the slowest growth since 2015, when Amazon began breaking out cloud revenue. AWS rivals Microsoft and Alphabet last week reported solid results in their cloud businesses, beating analysts' revenue expectations. Last week, Amazon hosted an AWS Summit, where the company announced updates related to generative AI, including a service that uses the technology to transcribe and summarize doctors' patient visits. Also during the quarter, Amazon hosted its annual Prime Day discount bonanza, which it touted as its "biggest ever."

Persons: Andy Jassy, it's, Brian Olsavsky, workloads Organizations: Amazon, Seattle, Refinitiv Revenue, Web, Services, Evercore, Microsoft, Apple, Meta Locations: Seattle, Israel

☆ Amazon CEO Andy Jassy now has 16 direct reports. See the growing and evolving list here, including a newly promoted executive from Alexa.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-31 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently expanded his group of direct reports. Jassy has added at least 8 new executives to his direct reports since becoming CEO in 2021. Amazon recently created a new AI group that reports to CEO Andy Jassy. In his 2 years since becoming CEO, Jassy has added or replaced at least 8 executives in his top leadership team. (Jassy's direct reports are different from the S-team, a group of more than two dozen most senior decision-makers at Amazon).

Persons: Andy Jassy, Rohit Prasad, Prasad, Doug Herrington, Adam Selipsky, Brian Olsavsky, Jassy, There's, Dave Clark, Jay Carney, Jeff Blackburn, James Hamilton, Mike Hopkins, Eric Remling, Beth, Dave Limp, David Zapolsky, Drew Herdener, WW Communications Eric Rimling, Paul Kotas, Peter Krawiec, Alexa Stacey Pistole, Steve Boom, Steve Schmidt, Eugene Kim Organizations: Amazon, Alexa, Business, Amazon Studios, Amazon Devices, WW Amazon, WW Communications, Amazon Video, Corporate Locations: It's

Amazon previously said it is seeing a decrease in growth in AWS as business clients reallocated their spending to reduce costs. Investors are also looking to see how Amazon's advertising business intersects with more language models and generative AI. The company's advertising business was seeing "robust growth" due to its machine learning investment, Chief Executive Andy Jassy said in the first-quarter earnings call. Net sales of Amazon's advertising business in the first quarter were $9.51 billion. Amazon's first-quarter operating income was $4.77 billion a 74.4%% increase from $2.74 billion in the fourth-quarter and a 30.1% increase from last year.

Persons: Tom Forte, Forte, Brian Olsavsky, Andy Jassy, Arun Sundaram, China's Temu, Sundaram, Amazon's, Arriana McLymore, Aurora Ellis Organizations: Investors, Web Services, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Davidson Companies, YouTube, Thomson Locations: NY, Refinitiv, Singapore, United States, New York City

Since 2015, Prime Day sales have risen to more than $7 billion and could top $8 billion this year. Now in its ninth year, Amazon's annual Prime Day has become a fact of American life — a quasi-holiday that retailers of all types pile into. Protestors in New York raising awareness of Amazon facilitating ICE surveillance efforts coinciding with Amazon Prime Day 2019. How Prime Day is goingLast year, Amazon drove more than $7 billion in sales through its Prime Day sales, according to Insider Intelligence. The number of Amazon Prime account holders has ballooned too, with nearly 175 million people using Amazon Prime in the US today — around two-thirds of the country's population — according to a report by Insider Intelligence.

Persons: Michael M, Jack Ma's Alibaba, Diego Piacentini, Jeff Bezos, Brad Stone, Bezos, Execs, Stone, Meagan Wulff Reibstein, Wulff, Kevin Hagen, Brian Olsavsky, Rafael Henrique, Scott Olson, Andrew Lipsman, Lipsman, — Organizations: Amazon Prime, Companies, Amazon, Intelligence, Insider Intelligence, Workers, Walmart, Getty, Target, Target Circle, Black, Prime Locations: China, Tokyo, London, Paris, Munich, Japan, Europe, New York

☆ Amazon is abandoning several of its Fresh stores and seeking tenants to sublease them and one landlord is suing over rent
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Alex Bitter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon is trying to sublease several planned Amazon Fresh stores in the Midwest. Amazon has opened fewer Fresh stores for months, but grocery remains a priority for the company. Amazon is also facing a lawsuit from its landlord at a planned Amazon Fresh location in Philadelphia, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal. Amazon has been slowing the pace of new Amazon Fresh store openings for the better part of a year. Do you work at an Amazon Fresh store and have a story idea to share?

☆ Codename Burnham: Amazon has a secret new home robot with ChatGPT-like features that understands a lot more of its surroundings.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Amazon is working on an upgraded version of its home robot Astro, powered by 'Burnham' technology. The robot has ChatGPT-like features, using large language models and other advanced AI. This is a new phase for Astro and the latest example of Amazon adding AI models to existing products. In one of these documents related to Burnham, Amazon describes an Astro product that costs $995. As LLMs were growing in scale, they started demonstrating "emergent skills in both inference and problem-solving," one of the Amazon documents stated.

☆ CEOs are getting closer to finally saying it — AI will wipe out more jobs than they can count
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Tech workers are finding out what it's like to be replaced by AI. It's the boldest statement yet from tech firms turning to AI to help them get efficient. Tech workers are about to find out. Here are five tech firms that have acted first with a big bet on AI. AmazonAmazon has been among the most bruised tech firms since the downturn of 2022 was kickstarted.

☆ Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet deliver slower cloud growth. Here's how AI could reverse that trend
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Paulina Likos | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

As more and more businesses of all sizes continue their digital transformations, Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet aim to be there to provide cloud solutions. However, those gains quickly evaporated as the post-earnings call got underway and Wall Street learned of slowing cloud growth in April , the first month of Q2. The company is now using AI as a tool to accelerate cloud growth and gain share. The Club's take: Microsoft demonstrated impressive cloud growth given the difficult macroeconomic backdrop for the quarter. We hope to see a reacceleration in cloud growth along with profitability momentum.

☆ Top cloud providers Amazon, Microsoft and Google face ongoing spending cuts by clients
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The result is slowing revenue growth at the cloud divisions run by Amazon , Microsoft and Google . AWS saw deceleration in the third and fourth quarters, and last quarter Microsoft finance chief Amy Hood spooked analysts with comments about a slowdown in December that she expected to persist. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said "what we're seeing is enterprises continuing to be cautious in their spending in this uncertain time." At Google, cloud growth slowed to 28% from a year earlier in the first quarter from 32% in the prior period. WATCH: Ongoing deceleration in IT spending not reflected in tech earnings

☆ Amazon's cloud warning rattles investors
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Aditya Soni | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

April 28 (Reuters) - Growth in Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O) lucrative cloud business is slowing and investors are worried. Shares fell 4% on Friday as Amazon's cloud business slowed in April after posting its weakest quarterly growth since the company began breaking out the unit's sales in 2015. The results are in contrast to those of Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) Azure cloud business, which grew at 27%. Still, analysts were largely upbeat about Amazon's cloud prospects, with about 17 raising their price targets on the stock, compared with the 10 that lowered their view. "Amazon is the clear market share leader in cloud computing and they will remain that way," Sundaram said.

☆ Wall Street analysts say Amazon is still a buy, but investors should ‘stay patient’ on AWS
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Sarah Min | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon is still a buy after its latest earnings results, even with some weakness in Amazon Web Services, according to Wall Street analysts. The online retail stock initially jumped Thursday night after Amazon reported better-than-expected revenue in its first quarter . Amazon shares were last down about 1% in the premarket. AMZN 1D mountain Amazon shares 1-day However, analysts stayed bullish long term on Amazon, citing continued upside in retail, but they urged investors to "stay patient" on AWS and look toward the long-term opportunity in cloud services. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs' Eric Sheridan reiterated his buy rating on Amazon, and raised his 12-month price target to $165 from $145.

☆ Amazon stock sinks after its warning on AWS growth erases a post-earnings rally
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( George Glover | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon shares fell 5% Friday after the company warned about future revenue growth in its cloud division. That erased an earlier rally after-hours Thursday that could've added $135 billion in valuation to the tech giant. CFO Brian Olsavsky said some Amazon Web Services customers were cutting their costs in preparation for a potential economic slowdown. But shares slumped during a post-earnings conference call where executives warned of a likely slowdown in revenue growth at Amazon Web Services. "We are seeing these optimizations continue into the second quarter with April revenue growth rates about 500 basis points lower than what we saw in Q1," he added.

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