Amazon

Amazon’s lofty ambitions across retail, cloud computing and now AI remain in place as it continues to be among the biggest players in e-commerce. The company, like many others, is deploying AI features and services across its offerings like hosting generative AI models within AWS or adding AI voice search to its smart devices, with TechCrunch particularly covering its efforts within the cloud computing and enterprise spaces.

Amazon is bringing its generative AI listing smarts to more sellers, revealing today that those in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. can now access tools designed to improve…

Amazon extends generative AI-powered product listings to Europe

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Can quick commerce leapfrog e-commerce in India?

Even as quick commerce startups are retreating, consolidating or shutting down in many parts of the world, the model is showing encouraging signs in India. Consumers in urban cities are embracing the convenience of having groceries delivered to their doorstep in just 10 minutes. The companies making those deliveries —…

4 days ago
Can quick commerce leapfrog e-commerce in India?

To sweeten the pot, Amazon is pledging that startups in this year’s Generative AI Accelerator cohort will gain access to experts and tech from Nvidia, the program’s presenting partner.

Amazon says it’ll spend $230 million on generative AI startups

The British retailers association also takes aim at Amazon’s “Buy Box,” claiming that Amazon manipulated which retailers were selected for the coveted placement.

Amazon slammed with £1.1B data abuse lawsuit from UK retailers

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Amazon buys Indian video streaming service MX Player

Amazon has agreed to acquire key assets of Indian video streaming service MX Player from the local media powerhouse Times Internet, the latest step by the e-commerce giant to make its services and brand popular in smaller cities and towns in the key overseas market.  The two firms reached a…

1:19 am PDT • June 6, 2024
Amazon buys Indian video streaming service MX Player

Zoox, Amazon’s self-driving unit, is bringing its autonomous vehicles to more cities.  The self-driving technology company announced Wednesday plans to begin testing in Austin and Miami this summer. The two…

Zoox to test self-driving cars in Austin and Miami 

Amazon has received approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly its delivery drones longer distances, the company announced on Thursday. Amazon says it can now expand its…

Amazon gets FAA approval to expand US drone deliveries

Amazon is rolling out its AI voice search feature to Alexa, which lets it answer open-ended questions about content.

Amazon is rolling out AI voice search to Fire TV devices

Microsoft, Meta, Intel, AMD and others have formed a new group to design next-gen interconnects for AI accelerator hardware.

Tech giants form an industry group to help develop next-gen AI chip components

Scale AI has raised a $1 billion Series F round from a slew of big-name institutional and corporate investors including Amazon and Meta.

Data-labeling startup Scale AI raises $1B as valuation doubles to $13.8B

It’s tough to say that a $100 billion business finds itself at a critical juncture, but that’s the case with Amazon Web Services, the cloud arm of Amazon, and the…

Matt Garman taking over as CEO with AWS at crossroads

AWS has confirmed its European “sovereign cloud” will go live by the end of 2025, enabling greater data residency for the region.

AWS confirms it will launch European ‘sovereign cloud’ in Germany by 2025, plans €7.8B investment over 15 years

Adam Selipsky is stepping down from his role as CEO of Amazon Web Services, Amazon has confirmed to TechCrunch.  In a memo shared internally by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and…

AWS CEO Adam Selipsky steps down

Meesho, a leading e-commerce startup in India, has secured $275 million in a new funding round.

Meesho, an Indian social commerce platform with 150M transacting users, raises $275M

In a post on Werner Vogels’ personal blog, he details Distill, an open-source app he built to transcribe and summarize conference calls.

Amazon’s CTO built a meeting-summarizing app for some reason

Amazon is launching a new tool, Bedrock Studio, designed to let organizations experiment with generative AI models, collaborate on those models, and ultimately build generative AI-powered apps. Available in public…

Bedrock Studio is Amazon’s attempt to simplify generative AI app development

AI is coming for audiobooks, and that is not an entirely bad thing. But it is a cause of concern in the realm of audio titles and the folks who…

TechCrunch Minute: Audible deploys AI-narrated audiobooks. Can it replace the human touch?

Two years after announcing plans, Amazon’s highly awaited e-commerce entry into sub-Saharan Africa has finally come to pass. On Tuesday, the tech giant launched its marketplace in South Africa. South…

Amazon launches a Prime-free marketplace in South Africa, its first in sub-Saharan Africa

Amazon has historically operated audiobook marketplace Audible as a separate entity, unconnected to the retailer’s broader goals and ambitions. Today, that’s changing a bit with the launch of a test…

Audible to test using Prime Video data for audiobook recommendations as Spotify competition heats up

Pour one out for CodeWhisperer, Amazon’s AI-powered assistive coding tool. As of today, it’s kaput — sort of. CodeWhisperer is now Q Developer, a part of Amazon’s Q family of…

Amazon CodeWhisperer is now called Q Developer and is expanding its functions

The UK is launching initial enquiries into Amazon and Microsoft over partnerships with AI companies Mistral, Anthropic, and Inflection.

UK probes Amazon and Microsoft over AI partnerships with Mistral, Anthropic and Inflection

AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing business, wants to become the go-to place companies host and fine-tune their custom generative AI models. Today, AWS announced the launch of Custom Model Import (in…

Amazon wants to host companies’ custom generative AI models

Amazon said Tuesday that it has launched a new unlimited grocery delivery subscription for Prime members and customers with an EBT card (Electronic Benefit Transfer) in the U.S. if you’re…

Amazon launches a new grocery delivery subscription in the US

Amazon confirmed it is ending Prime Air drone delivery operations in Lockeford, California. The Central California town of 3,500 was the company’s second U.S. drone delivery site, after College Station,…

Amazon ends California drone deliveries

The NPCI plans to meet various fintech startups this month to develop a strategy to address the market dominance of PhonePe and Google Pay in the UPI ecosystem.

India scrambles to curb PhonePe and Google’s dominance in mobile payments

Amazon is trying to keep live shopping relevant with the launch of an “Amazon Live” FAST (free ad-supported TV) channel on Prime Video and Freevee. Previously only available as a…

Amazon brings its ‘Amazon Live’ shoppable livestreams to Prime Video and Freevee

Amazon Music is now testing Maestro, an AI playlist generator, that lets U.S. customers on iOS and Android create playlists using spoken or written prompts.

Amazon Music follows Spotify with an AI playlist generator of its own, Maestro

If the decisions made by corporate boards of directors can indicate where a company wants to be focusing, Amazon’s board just made an interesting move. The company announced on Thursday…

Amazon, eyeing up AI, adds Andrew Ng to its board — ex-MTV exec McGrath to step down

Amazon has quietly introduced a “special store” called Bazaar in India, featuring affordable and trendy fashion and lifestyle products, as it ramps up efforts against Walmart-owned Flipkart and Reliance’s Ajio,…

Amazon takes on India rivals with Bazaar, a low-cost fashion store

On Tuesday Amazon launched a new service called Deadline Cloud that lets customers set up, deploy and scale up graphics and visual effects rendering pipelines on AWS cloud infrastructure. The…

AWS unveils new service for cloud-based rendering projects