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It’s been a brutal week when it comes to layoffs. On Monday, shoe giant Nike announced it would lay off 775 employees, and on Tuesday, Pinterest announced it would lay off around 15% of its workforce. The same day, UPS announced 30,000 job cuts. Now Amazon is also joining their ranks with the announcement today of mass layoffs. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Wednesday, Amazon announced that it was eliminating 16,000 positions across its workforce. The company has around 1.5 million workers worldwide. In an unfortunate event, on Tuesday, Amazon accidentally sent an email to employees referencing the layoffs before they had been commu…

The Bezos vs. Musk battle for satellite internet service is heating up In what’s rapidly becoming the new space race: Amazon will start testing its high-speed internet service that it’s building out to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink service. With a broader rollout planned for next year, Amazon announced on Monday some updates to its Leo network—including a new program that will see select businesses taking part in an “enterprise preview” of the forthcoming service. In turn, Amazon can collect feedback to tailor services for specific industries. “Amazon Leo represents a massive opportunity for businesses operating in challenging environments,” Chris Weber, vic…

Amazon reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday over whether the e-commerce giant used “deceptive methods” to sign up consumers for Prime subscriptions, then made it “exceedingly difficult” to cancel. The agency argued Amazon enrolled millions of customers in Prime subscriptions without their consent, and knowingly made it difficult for consumers to get out of the agreement. That settlement, which comes just three days into the civil trial in federal court in Seattle, included a whopping $1 billion civil penalty, the highest in history, and a $1.5 billion fund to refund Prime users harmed by the deceptive enrollment pra…

Amazon is expanding its same-day delivery services for its Pharmacy. In an announcement Wednesday the company said plans to bring Amazon Pharmacy to nearly 4,500 locations around the country, which is an addition of around 2,000 cities and towns by the end of 2026. Amazon Pharmacy was first launched in 2020 in 45 U.S. states. By 2023, it served some locations in all 50. But the service has been continuously expanding to cover a growing number of locations since its launch while offering same-day delivery in more cities. Per Amazon’s announcement, the most recent expansion will now offer same-day delivery to its newly served customers in Idaho and Massachusetts. “…

If you signed up for an Amazon Prime membership between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2025, Amazon might owe you as much as $51. This comes after the online retail giant entered into a settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over allegations that the company used deceptive practices to enroll customers in its Prime membership. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Amazon and the FTC have agreed to a settlement over allegations that the online retailer used deceptive practices to enroll people in its Amazon Prime membership, while also making it difficult for those same individuals to cancel the membership. The settlement was rea…

Amazon leaned into the advertising funnel in a big way during its 2025 Upfront event at the Beacon Theater in New York City on Monday night. Perhaps the most notable product enhancement the company unveiled was the use of AI to generate contextual advertising on its Prime Video platform—meaning that ads can and will be created on the fly, using AI, depending on the specific scene of a TV show or movie that is on the screen at any given time. For instance, if a viewer is watching a scene involving a loving phone call between a mother and daughter, pausing the show could result in an ad for mobile phone service, with AI-generated text dynamically created, right the…

Amazon.com was sued on Wednesday by consumers who accused the retailing giant of secretly tracking their movements through their cellphones, and selling data it collects. According to a proposed class action in San Francisco federal court, Amazon obtained “backdoor access” to consumers’ phones by providing tens of thousands of app developers with code known as Amazon Ads SDK to be embedded in their apps. This allegedly enabled Amazon to collect an enormous amount of timestamped geolocation data about where consumers live, work, shop and visit, revealing sensitive information such as religious affiliations, sexual orientations and health concerns. “Amazon has e…

Up in the Cascade Mountains, 90 miles east of Seattle, a group of high-ranking Amazon engineers gather for a private off-site. They hail from the company’s North America Stores division, and they’re here at this Hyatt resort on a crisp September morning to brainstorm new ways to power Amazon’s retail experiences. Passing the hotel lobby’s IMAX-like mountain views, they filter into windowless meeting rooms. Down the hall, the off-site’s keynote speaker—Byron Cook, vice president and distinguished scientist at Amazon—slips into an empty conference room to have some breakfast before his presentation. Cook is 6-foot-6, but with sloping shoulders that make his otherwi…

The first 27 satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband internet constellation were launched into space from Florida on Monday, kicking off the long-delayed deployment of an internet-from-space network that will rival SpaceX’s Starlink. The satellites are the first of 3,236 that Amazon plans to send into low-Earth orbit for Project Kuiper, a $10 billion effort unveiled in 2019 to beam broadband internet globally for consumers, businesses and governments—customers that SpaceX has courted for years with its powerful Starlink business. Sitting atop an Atlas V rocket from the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint-venture United Launch Alliance, the batch of 27 satellites was…

Amazon has agreed to pay nearly $4 million to settle charges that the e-commerce company subsidized its labor costs by taking tips its delivery drivers received from customers, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb said Friday. The settlement came four years after Amazon forked over $61.7 million to resolve a complaint the Federal Trade Commission brought over similar accusations. In 2022, the office of D.C.’s attorney general at the time followed up with a lawsuit alleging Amazon violated the District’s consumer protection laws by misleading residents about how tips paid digitally were used. According to the lawsuit, the affected drivers were…

Amazon on Monday launched its latest AI model, designed to take over a user’s web browser and perform simple tasks. The move places the e-commerce giant in more direct competition with artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which are also developing AI “agents.” The model, called Nova Act, is currently available as a “research preview” for developers, meaning it’s not yet open to the general public. It can complete tasks such as browsing the web and making purchases without supervision. For instance, the company demonstrated Nova Act searching for apartments within biking distance of a specific train station. It can also handle more nuanced instr…

Amazon is rolling out a new feature in hopes of retaining, or perhaps attracting, new Prime members. The tech giant announced Wednesday that Alexa+, its AI-powered assistant, is now available for free to all Prime members. Last March, Amazon began offering an “early access” preview for the new voice assistant that saw an “inspiring” response, with tens of millions of customers requesting access, according to a statement. The company has revamped its legacy Alexa product to handle more complex interactions—offering examples of how users can engage in “deep conversations” with Alexa+ that may be ongoing over the course of potentially several days, as the technology …

A growing number of Amazon employees have signed onto an open letter issuing some dire warnings about the company’s sprint toward AI. The letter, signed by more than 1,000 workers and published this week, calls out Amazon for pushing its AI investments at the expense of the climate and its human workforce. The letter’s supporters come from a wide array of roles at the company, including many software engineers, and even employees focused on building AI systems. “We believe that the all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development will do staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth,” the letter’s authors wrote. “We’re the workers who de…

Amazon on Wednesday unveiled a generative-AI infused Alexa that it says will allow the popular voice assistant to have more personality, check a user’s tone and even plan romantic dates. But unlike before, when Alexa was offered for free on any Alexa-enabled devices, customers will have to pay Amazon a monthly fee of $19.99 for the revamped voice assistant, which it calls “Alexa+”. However, the generative-AI powered Alexa will be free for Prime members, who pay the company a monthly or annual fee for free delivery and other perks. At a media event held in New York City, Amazon executives showed off the update to the ten-year old digital assistant with the new feat…

Amazon is set to release its long-awaited—and delayed—Alexa generative artificial intelligence voice service, said three people familiar with the matter, and has scheduled a press event for later this month to preview it. Once released, it would mark the most significant upgrade to the product since its initial introduction accelerated a wave of digital assistants more than a decade ago. Amazon on Wednesday sent press invites to an event to be held on February 26 in New York featuring the head of its devices and services team, Panos Panay. A spokesperson said the event is Alexa-focused, while declining to elaborate. The new generative AI-powered Alexa represen…

Independent bookstores have long been champions of community, curiosity, and culture—and on Saturday, April 26, they get their moment in the spotlight. Independent Bookstore Day, a nationwide celebration of indie bookstores, invites readers to shop locally and support the spaces that keep storytelling vibrant. But this year, the festivities come with a wrinkle: Amazon is holding a major book sale at the same time, and many booksellers and readers aren’t having it. Independent bookstores and users on BookTok are expressing their frustration with Amazon while encouraging readers to stay off of the online shopping site and instead make the trek to their local bookstore f…

Amazon and Grubhub are entering the second year of a five-year commercial agreement that gives Amazon Prime members access to the food delivery platform’s subscription program at no extra cost. As part of the deal, Grubhub’s ordering tab was integrated directly into the Amazon app and website, allowing users to order burritos while shopping for face wash or streaming a show. That seamless experience appears to be paying off, say company executives. “Amazon Prime customers are a very engaged customer cohort,” says Jamil Ghani, Amazon’s worldwide vice president of Prime. More than nine out of 10 orders on Amazon.com or in the app are coming from Prime members retur…

Amazon’s Fire TV lineup has gone from a perfectly simple concept—a stick that streams video—to a corporate naming convention nightmare. There’s the HD, the 4K Select, the 4K Plus, the 4K Max, and the Cube. Clear as mud. Let’s try to make sense of this lineup, shall we? The Budget Basement: Fire TV Stick HD The Fire TV Stick HD is your entry point. It handles 1080p, and that’s pretty much the whole story. It works fine for an older TV—the kind you put in the guest room or the garage. At $25, it’s cheap, it’s simple, and it’s a little slow, both performance-wise and thanks to its aging Wi-Fi 5 chipset. If you have a 4K television, walk past this one a…

The next time you’ve got an itchy throat and a stuffy nose, Amazon wants you to describe your symptoms to an AI chatbot deputized to do medicine. On Wednesday, Amazon announced the launch of the new feature, inviting users who subscribe to its healthcare service to interact with an AI assistant for personalized medical advice. The chatbot is available now in the One Medical app, which patients can use to schedule appointments, message their primary care provider and access their medical records. “The U.S. health care experience is fragmented, with each provider seeing only parts of your health puzzle,” Amazon Health Services Senior Vice President Neil Lindsay sai…

Amazon sales surged 14% during the fourth quarter, helped by strong holiday spending and a better-than-expected growth in its prominent cloud computing unit. But shares fell 11% in after hours trading on Thursday as investors appeared to be spooked by the Seattle-based tech company’s plans to increase capital spending by nearly 60% to $200 billion from last year’s $128 billion as it sees opportunities in artificial intelligence, robots, semiconductors and satellites. The company’s fourth-quarter profits also were slightly below analysts’ projections. Wall Street analysts were expecting capital spending to rise to around $147 billion this year, according to FactSet. Ama…