Amazon Adds Grubhub Food Delivery to its Website, App in the US

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics center in Boves, France, May 13, 2019. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics center in Boves, France, May 13, 2019. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo
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Amazon Adds Grubhub Food Delivery to its Website, App in the US

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics center in Boves, France, May 13, 2019. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics center in Boves, France, May 13, 2019. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File Photo

Amazon.com on Thursday said its customers in the US can now order from Grubhub directly on its shopping app and the website, extending a deal that already offers its Prime members a no-fee access to Grubhub+ membership.
As part of the agreement, Amazon Prime members will continue to be eligible to avail a free Grubhub+ membership worth $120 a year, which includes free delivery on orders above $12, Reuters said.
Amazon already offers no-fee access to Grubhub, which is owned by Just Eat Takeaway.com, to US Prime members. The initial deal was struck for a year in 2022 and then the companies extended it for a year in 2023.
The new deal bundles the Grubhub membership with Prime and integrates it on its app and the website. It will remain available to the loyalty users "every year thereafter as long as they remain with Prime," Amazon said.
Prime membership in the US costs $139 a year and includes free delivery, gaming benefits, savings and discounts on medical prescriptions at nearly 60,000 pharmacies, access to Amazon Music, Prime Video and Prime Reading.
Amazon had secured the right to buy a 2% stake in Grubhub in July 2022.
In a separate statement, JustEat Takewaway said Amazon has received warrants representing 4% of Grubhub's equity and may also receive warrants up to a further 10% of Grubhub’s equity based on certain performance conditions.
"The important impact of this deal is that it makes GrubHub more attractive to a potential buyer, as Just Eat Takeaway has been attempting to sell it for some time now – since shortly after it made the initial acquisition," Sean Kealy, an analyst at Panmure Gordon, said.
About 167 million Amazon customers in the US subscribed to Prime in 2023, representing approximately 71% of all users in the country, according to data platform Statista.



AI Cloud Provider SMC Plans Global Rollout

People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
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AI Cloud Provider SMC Plans Global Rollout

People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

Singapore-headquartered AI cloud provider Sustainable Metal Cloud (SMC) is planning to expand globally as its sees fast-growing demand for its energy saving technology, its CEO said on Thursday.

"Due to client demand, we’re looking to expand in EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) and North America," CEO and co-founder Tim Rosenfield said, Reuters reported.

The startup, a partner of AI chip giant Nvidia, already operates what it calls "sustainable AI factories" in Australia and Singapore and is set to launch in India and Thailand.

Its clients in Singapore, where it operates over 1,200 of Nvidia's high-end H100 AI chips, include Facebook owner Meta who uses SMC's cloud to run its Llama 2 AI model.

While most data centres depend on air cooling technology, SMC uses immersion technology, submerging servers from Dell fitted with GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia in a synthetic oil called polyalphaolefin to draw heat away faster.

The technology behind the approach reduces energy consumption by up to 50% compared to traditional air cooling, according to the CEO.

Demand for AI is expected to increase 10-fold compared with 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The electricity consumption of data centres globally is expected to top 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026, roughly equivalent to Japan's total annual consumption, the IEA said in March.

SMC is currently raising $400 million in equity and $550 million in debt according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The company declined to comment. The fundraising was first reported by Bloomberg.