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Amazon extends generative AI-powered product listings to Europe

Paul Sawers — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 11:31:01 +0000

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 product listings by generating product descriptions, titles and associated details. Additionally, sellers can “enrich” existing product listings by automatically adding missing information. The launch comes […]

Can quick commerce leapfrog e-commerce in India?

Manish Singh — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 22:01:00 +0000

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 — Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy’s Instamart […]

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

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 15:43:11 +0000

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 slammed with £1.1B data abuse lawsuit from UK retailers

Ingrid Lunden — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 16:14:57 +0000

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 buys Indian video streaming service MX Player

Manish Singh — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 08:19:02 +0000

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 definitive agreement for the deal […]

Zoox to test self-driving cars in Austin and Miami

Rebecca Bellan — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 17:59:29 +0000

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 cities mark Zoox’s fourth and fifth test cities, following Las Vegas, San Francisco and Seattle. The news comes as federal regulators increase their scrutiny of […]

Amazon gets FAA approval to expand US drone deliveries

Aisha Malik — Thu, 30 May 2024 13:31:59 +0000

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 Prime Air service, which uses delivery drones to fly individual packages, to more customers. The FAA requires that operators maintain a line of sight to […]

Amazon is rolling out AI voice search to Fire TV devices

Lauren Forristal — Thu, 30 May 2024 13:00:00 +0000

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

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

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 30 May 2024 12:00:00 +0000

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

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

Paul Sawers — Tue, 21 May 2024 11:11:03 +0000

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

Matt Garman taking over as CEO with AWS at crossroads

Ron Miller — Wed, 15 May 2024 19:02:48 +0000

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 clear market leader in the cloud infrastructure market. On Tuesday, the company announced that CEO Adam Selipsky was stepping down to spend more time with […]

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

Paul Sawers — Wed, 15 May 2024 06:17:20 +0000

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

AWS CEO Adam Selipsky steps down

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 14 May 2024 13:34:39 +0000

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 published this morning to the company’s blog, Jassy said that AWS sales chief Matt Garman will be promoted to CEO. Garman previously headed AWS’ EC2 […]

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

Manish Singh — Sat, 11 May 2024 06:36:28 +0000

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

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

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 09 May 2024 16:18:10 +0000

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

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

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 07 May 2024 18:36:00 +0000

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 preview starting today, the web-based Bedrock Studio — a part of Bedrock, Amazon’s generative AI tooling and hosting platform — provides what Amazon describes in […]

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

Alex Wilhelm — Tue, 07 May 2024 16:00:00 +0000

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 make them today. Audible is making it easy for authors to generate AI-narrated audiobooks, and as in many cases of AI showing up in an […]

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

Tage Kene-Okafor, Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 07 May 2024 10:27:00 +0000

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 Africa is the e-commerce giant’s first marketplace in the sub-Saharan region (it already has an operation out of Egypt following the acquisition of Souq in […]

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

Sarah Perez — Wed, 01 May 2024 13:28:03 +0000

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 that will allow Audible users to receive recommendations about what to listen to next based on their Prime Video viewing behavior. The company says this […]

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

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 18:38:32 +0000

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 business-oriented generative AI chatbots that also extends to the newly announced Q Business. Available through AWS, Q Developer helps with some of the tasks developers […]