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Amazon Wants to be Everything to Everyone

The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
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Amazon Wants to be Everything to Everyone

The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Amazon is bolstering its e-commerce empire while continuing a march deeper into people's lives, from robots to healthcare and entertainment.
Innovations unveiled in recent days by the Seattle-based tech titan included a delivery van computer system to shave time off deliveries by its speed-obsessed logistics network, reported AFP.
Amazon Stores boss Doug Herrington said that the technology enables vans to recognize stops and signal which packages to drop off.
"When we speed up deliveries, customers shop more," Herrington said.
"For 2024, we're going to have the fastest Prime delivery speeds around the world," he added, referring to Amazon's subscription service.
On top of that, according to Herrington, Amazon last year managed to cut 45 cents off the cost per unit shipped, a huge savings when considering the massive volume of sales.
Prime is the 'glue'
Amazon last year recorded profit of more than $30 billion on revenue of $575 billion, powered by its online retail operation and its AWS cloud computing division.
"They have this whole flywheel model with Amazon Prime membership in the middle," said eMarketer analyst Suzy Davidkhanian.
"That's the glue that keeps everything together."
Businesses include retail, advertising, cloud computing and streamed movies and music.
But that very model has the 30-year-old company facing a US government lawsuit, accused of expanding an illegal monopoly and otherwise harming competition.
Amazon makes money from data gathered about consumers, either by targeting ads or through insights into what products they might like, Davidkhanian said.
That was why Amazon paid for expensive rights to stream NFL American football games on Prime Video in a move that promises to help it pinpoint fans of the sport.
Amazon's digital assistant Alexa can order items on command and has been even built into appliances such as washing machines to let them automatically buy supplies like laundry soap as needed.
A 'pocket pharmacy'
Amazon showed off enhancements to its virtual health care service called One Medical.
For $9 a month Prime members are promised anytime access to video consultations with health care professionals, along with record keeping and drug prescriptions.
An Amazon Pharmacy takes advantage of the company's delivery network to get prescriptions to patients quickly, striving for speeds of less than 24 hours for 45 percent of customers by the end of next year.
"We're building a pharmacy in your pocket that offers rapid delivery right to your door," Amazon Pharmacy chief Hannah McClellan said, referring to the option of using a smartphone app.
The healthcare market promises to be lucrative for Amazon, which is "trying to be the platform that has everything for everyone," said analyst Davidkhanian.
Real world wrinkles
Amazon has suffered setbacks when it comes to brick-and-mortar stores but it continues to strive for a winning strategy.
The company next year will open its first "automated micro warehouse" in Pennsylvania, next to a Whole Foods Market organic grocery shop, the chain it bought in 2017.
People will be able to pick up certain items selected online, with orders filled by robots, after shopping next door for fresh produce and groceries.
Meanwhile, Amazon is ramping up use of artificial intelligence at its online store with tools helping sellers describe and illustrate products.
Product labels will change according to the user, displaying terms likely to catch their attention such as "strawberry flavor" for some and "gluten-free" for others.
"The things that Amazon is doing with AI are to make sure that you go from researching something to making the purchase as quickly as possible," Davidkhanian said.
At the logistics center near Nashville, robotic arms deftly placed packages in carts that autonomously made their way to trucks.
Logistics center automation improves safety and frees up workers for more interesting tasks, according to Amazon robotics manager Julie Mitchell.
However, critics cite delivery speed pressure and other factors as making Amazon warehouses more dangerous than the industry average.

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Technology

SDAIA Showcases Saudi Arabia’s AI Governance Model at UN Session in Geneva

The Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence (SDAIA)
The Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence (SDAIA)
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SDAIA Showcases Saudi Arabia’s AI Governance Model at UN Session in Geneva

The Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence (SDAIA)
The Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence (SDAIA)

The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) participated in the 29th session of the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development, held in Geneva from April 20 to 24. Under the theme "Science, Technology, and Innovation in the Age of AI," the session gathered global representatives from governments, international organizations, and the private sector.

During the summit, SDAIA presented the Saudi model for regulating and developing the AI sector, highlighting the Kingdom's leadership in data governance and the creation of reliable AI systems. SDAIA emphasized Saudi Arabia's active role in shaping international governance frameworks and its commitment to utilizing AI to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030.

Coinciding with the Year of AI 2026, this participation reinforces the Kingdom’s position as a global hub for emerging technologies.

By sharing national expertise and expanding international cooperation, SDAIA continues to support the adoption of responsible AI practices, aligning with Saudi Vision 2030 to build an integrated national system driven by data and innovation.

Technology

China's DeepSeek Releases Long-awaited New AI Model

A man takes photos of a DeepSeek display at a shopping mall in Hangzhou, in China's eastern Zhejiang province on April 23, 2026. (Photo by CN-STR / AFP)
A man takes photos of a DeepSeek display at a shopping mall in Hangzhou, in China's eastern Zhejiang province on April 23, 2026. (Photo by CN-STR / AFP)
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China's DeepSeek Releases Long-awaited New AI Model

A man takes photos of a DeepSeek display at a shopping mall in Hangzhou, in China's eastern Zhejiang province on April 23, 2026. (Photo by CN-STR / AFP)
A man takes photos of a DeepSeek display at a shopping mall in Hangzhou, in China's eastern Zhejiang province on April 23, 2026. (Photo by CN-STR / AFP)

Chinese startup DeepSeek released a new artificial intelligence model with "drastically reduced" costs Friday, more than a year after it stunned the world with a low-cost reasoning model that matched the capabilities of US rivals.

The AI race has intensified the rivalry between China and the United States, with the White House on Thursday accusing Chinese entities of a massive effort to steal artificial intelligence technology. Beijing called the claim "baseless".

Hangzhou-based DeepSeek burst onto the scene in January last year with a generative AI chatbot, powered by its R1 reasoning model, that upended assumptions of US dominance in the strategic sector.

DeepSeek-V4 "features an ultra-long context", the company said in a statement on social media platform WeChat, hailing it as "world-leading... with drastically reduced compute (and) memory costs" in a separate announcement on X.

V4 supports a context length of one million "tokens" -- small components of text including words or punctuation -- putting it on par with Google's Gemini.

Context length determines how much input a model is able to absorb to help it complete tasks.

The new V4 is released as two versions, DeepSeek-V4-Pro and DeepSeek-V4-Flash, with the latter being "a more efficient and economical choice" because it has smaller parameters.

In terms of "world knowledge", a benchmark for reasoning, V4-Pro trails only the latest Gemini model, DeepSeek said.

A "preview version" of the open source model is now available, the company said, without indicating when a final version would be released.

Experts say V4's arrival marks an "inflection point" in terms of hardware and cost.

"This addresses the long-standing issues of slower performance and higher costs associated with long context lengths, marking a genuine inflection point for the industry," Zhang Yi, the founder of tech research firm iiMedia, told AFP.

"For end users, this will bring widespread, accessible benefits. For instance, if ultra-long context support becomes a standard feature, long-text processing is expected to move beyond high-end research labs and enter mainstream commercial applications," he said.

V4-Pro has 1.6 trillion parameters while the V4-Flash has 284 billion parameters, which refine models' decision-making ability.

The model has also been "optimized" for popular AI Agent products such as Claude Code, OpenClaw, OpenCode and CodeBuddy, the DeepSeek statement said.

It can also run on chips manufactured by Chinese tech giant Huawei, the company added.

Huawei -- sanctioned by the US since 2019 over national security -- said in a statement Friday that the full range of its Ascend SuperPoD products are supporting DeepSeek's V4 series.

DeepSeek's latest release is a "milestone" for Chinese firms, said veteran AI industry analyst Max Liu.

"It's a good thing for the entire domestic AI industry. It can provide better models for domestic users and we can now expect a lot more things -- more products (and a) more competitive market," he told AFP.

"This is no less shocking than when DeepSeek first came out" if its new model indeed matches the performance of leading models from Western labs, he added.

Last year's so-called "DeepSeek shock" sparked a sell-off of AI-related shares and a reckoning on business strategy in what was also described as a "Sputnik moment" for the industry.

The chatbot performed at a similar level to ChatGPT and other top American offerings, but the company said it had taken significantly less computing power to develop.

However, its sudden popularity raised questions over data privacy and censorship, with the chatbot often refusing to answer questions on sensitive topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

DeepSeek's AI tools have been widely adopted by Chinese municipalities and healthcare institutions as well as the financial sector and other businesses.

This has been partly driven by DeepSeek's decision to make its systems open source, with their inner workings public -- in contrast to the proprietary models sold by OpenAI and other Western rivals.

But the White House has accused Chinese firms of vying to "steal" American technology, ahead of an expected summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing next month.

"The US has evidence that foreign entities, primarily in China, are running industrial-scale distillation campaigns to steal American AI," Trump's science and technology chief advisor Michael Kratsios said in a post on X.

Distillation is a common practice within AI development, often used by companies to create cheaper, smaller versions of their own models.

"The US claims are entirely baseless," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a news conference in Beijing. "They are a slanderous smear against the achievements of China's artificial intelligence industry."

Technology

Meta Slashes 8,000 Jobs, or 10% of its Workforce, as Microsoft Offers Buyouts

Meta co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg (Reuters)
Meta co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg (Reuters)
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Meta Slashes 8,000 Jobs, or 10% of its Workforce, as Microsoft Offers Buyouts

Meta co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg (Reuters)
Meta co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg (Reuters)

Meta is laying off about 8,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, the company said Thursday as it continues to ramp up spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure and highly paid AI-expert hires.

The company said it was making the cuts for the sake of efficiency and to allow new investments in parts of its business, as first reported by Bloomberg, which also said the company will leave about 6,000 jobs unfilled.

Also Thursday, Microsoft said it was offering voluntary buyouts to thousands of its US employees, The Associated Press reported.

The software giant plans to make the offers in early May to about 8,750 people, or 7% of its US workforce, according to two people familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

While an alternative to the sudden layoffs removing tech workers from peers like Meta and Oracle, the savings are likely tied to a similar industry upheaval that is requiring huge spending on the costs of artificial intelligence.

Meta has already warned investors that its 2026 expenses will grow significantly — to the range of $162 billion to $169 billion — driven by infrastructure costs and employee compensation, particularly for the artificial intelligence experts it’s been hiring at eye-popping pay levels.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives welcomed Meta’s cuts in a note to investors Thursday.

He said he sees it as part of a strategy of using AI tools to “automate tasks that once required large teams, allowing the company to streamline operations and reduce costs while maintaining productivity driving an increased need for a leaner operating structure.”

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, has spent billions of dollars operating an ever-expanding global network of data centers powering cloud computing services, AI systems and its own suite of productivity tools, including the AI assistant Copilot.

CNBC reported earlier Thursday on a memo from Microsoft's chief people officer, Amy Coleman, announcing the voluntary retirement plan.

“Our hope is that this program gives those eligible the choice to take that next step on their own terms, with generous company support,” Coleman wrote, according to CNBC.