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An Amazon delivery drone is on display at Amazon’s BOS27 Robotics Innovation Hub in Westborough, Massachusetts, on Nov. 10, 2022.

Joseph Prezioso | AFP | Getty Images

On a recent weekday morning, John Case heard a familiar buzzing outside his quiet suburban home in College Station, Texas. He recognized it immediately as one of Amazon‘s Prime Air drones, whizzing by on its delivery route to unload small packages of batteries, vitamins and dog treats.

“It sounds like a giant hive of bees,” Case, a semi-retired orthodontist, said in an interview. “You know it’s coming because it’s pretty loud.” 

Case has lived in College Station for the past 40 years. The drones are a common sight when he and his wife go on their regular walks around the neighborhood. Nurses, police officers and firefighters who work the nightshift talk about it disrupting their sleep during the day, Case said.

Noise complaints are just the latest challenge for Amazon’s drone program that’s been struggling to get off the ground since the company started testing deliveries in 2022. A mix of regulatory hurdles, missed deadlines and layoffs last year, coinciding with widespread cost-cutting efforts by CEO Andy Jassy, has halted progress of the ambitious service, which was conceived of by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos more than a decade ago.

College Station, located about 100 miles northwest of Houston, has been the main testing ground for Prime Air, as Amazon tries to show it can ferry packages by unmanned aircraft to residents’ homes in under an hour. Lockeford, California, south of Sacramento, was supposed to be another test market, but Amazon shuttered its operation there in April. The company is seeking approval from regulators to start deliveries in Tolleson, Arizona, west of Phoenix.

As Amazon prepares to scale up Prime Air and expand it to more areas, it’s encountering another reason why that won’t be so easy. In a July letter to the Federal Aviation Administration, College Station Mayor John Nichols wrote that residents in his city, home to Texas A&M University, have grown tired of the drones loudly buzzing near their homes.

“Since locating in College Station, residents in neighborhoods adjacent to Prime Air’s facility have expressed concern to the City Council regarding drone noise levels, particularly during take-off and landing, as well as in some delivery operations,” Nichols wrote.

Nichols’ letter followed a proposal from Amazon to the FAA to allow the company to increase deliveries to 469 flights per day, up from its current level of 200 flights per day. Amazon is asking for the ability to operate between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., rather than being limited to daylight hours as the program is today, and to expand its delivery area to up to 174 square miles surrounding the company’s drone port, up from its current operating range of 44 square miles.

Amazon's new delivery drone will start flying packages this year

A month before Amazon’s request to the FAA, residents appealed to local legislators to intervene in the company’s expansion plans. At a city council meeting in June, Ralph Thomas Moore, whose neighborhood is “less than 500 feet away from the launch pad,” played a recording of a chainsaw to illustrate the noise level of the drones.

If Amazon gets its wish, there would be up to 940 combined takeoffs and landings, all so the drones can deliver one package at a time, weighing no more than five pounds, Moore said at the meeting.

“This is what Amazon is asking the FAA to approve,” he said. “This is a huge invasion of our personal space and has significant impact on everyone in the neighborhood.”

Bryan Woods, College Station’s city manager, said at the meeting that city officials ran tests of a Prime Air drone and found it had noise levels between 47 and 61 decibels. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, chainsaws are typically measured at 125 decibels and heavy equipment at 95 to 110 decibels.

Prime Air is part of Amazon’s effort to find a quicker, more cost-effective solution for the so-called last mile, or the part of the delivery that gets the package from the warehouse to the customer’s doorstep. Proponents say drone delivery can potentially offset the cost of maintaining a fleet of delivery drivers, while cutting down on the need for gas-guzzling delivery vans. That’s assuming Amazon can ever turn it into a service for the masses.

In May, Amazon notched a key milestone when the FAA said it would allow the company to fly its delivery drones over longer distances and without staffers on the ground observing each flight. Amazon heralded the announcement and said it “lays the foundation” for the service to reach new markets. 

Sam Stephenson, an Amazon spokesperson, told CNBC in a statement, “We appreciate the community of College Station and take local feedback into account wherever possible when making operational decisions for Prime Air. We’re proud of the thousands of deliveries we’ve made and the hundreds of customers we deliver to.”

‘Fantastic technology, wrong location’

Amina Alikhan likened the drones to “a fly coming by your ear over and over and you can’t make it stop.”

“It is waking us up and disrupting our ability to enjoy both our outdoor and even our indoor spaces,” said Alikhan, an internal medicine doctor who lives with her husband in a neighborhood a few hundred feet from Amazon’s drone airport in College Station.

Case said his neighbors have complained that the sound of the drones makes it hard to enjoy working in the yard or sitting on the patio. Sometimes it’s loud enough to be heard inside. Case said he wrote a letter to the College Station mayor and city council about the matter.

When the city agreed to be a test market for Amazon, “I think nobody really knew how noisy and annoying it was going to be” Case said.

Others said the drones fly alarmingly low. One resident, who serves as the head of a local homeowners association, said Amazon told those in the neighborhood that the drones would fly 400 feet or higher while in operation.

But the drones fly over residential properties at 100 feet or less, which can make it uncomfortable to even lounge by the pool, said the person, who asked not to be named to preserve her privacy.

Amazon unveiled its latest delivery drone at the re:MARS conference in Las Vegas on June 5, 2019.

Amazon

The current iteration of Amazon’s delivery drone typically cruises at an altitude of 160 to 180 feet, according to data submitted by the company to the FAA.

Amazon has said it plans to introduce a smaller, quieter drone, called the MK30, which is expected to start running in College Station and Phoenix once the company receives approval from the FAA.

Stephenson said the MK30 is “designed to reduce the drone’s perceived noise by almost half.” It will also fly at a higher cruising altitude of between 180 to 377 feet above ground level, except when descending to drop a package, according to the FAA.

But many residents wanted Amazon to go a step further and get out of their neighborhoods altogether. As concerns grew louder, leaders from Prime Air held a Zoom meeting on July 24 with College Station residents.

Matt McCardle, head of regulatory affairs and strategy for Prime Air, said at the meeting that the company would not renew its lease in College Station and move elsewhere by October 2025, according to a recording obtained by CNBC.

Amazon’s Stephenson confirmed that the company is “considering a variety of potential paths forward,” including the possibility of an alternate drone site.

The company has also agreed to reduce the number of flights per hour, said Bob Yancy, a College Station City Council member. He plans to propose that Amazon move its drone port to the site of a former Macy’s store that’s now owned by the city and located in a nearby shopping mall.

In April, Amazon said it plans to integrate Prime Air into its same-day delivery network, instead of building standalone drone facilities. That’s what the company is aiming to do in the Phoenix area, where its launchpad is expected to be on the same site as an Amazon warehouse known as SAZ2. A couple hundred feet from the facility is a major neighborhood called Roosevelt Park.

Yancy said at the meeting that he still likes the program, and appreciates that he’s been able to have toothbrushes, cookies and bottles of aspirin delivered to his house within an hour.

He wants Prime Air to stay in College Station. But for it to work, he said, Amazon will have to make its drones less noisy or get them far away from residents.

“I think the headline on the program is — fantastic technology, wrong location,” Yancy said.

WATCH: A decade in, Amazon’s made 100 drone deliveries.

Amazon drones make 100th delivery, lagging far behind Alphabet's Wing and Walmart partner Zipline

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How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

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How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.

Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.

TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.

“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”

Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.

“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.

But there may a dark side to this growth.

As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.

“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”

Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.

“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”

Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.

While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.

Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.

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Elon Musk’s xAI Holdings in talks to raise $20 billion, Bloomberg News reports

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Elon Musk's xAI Holdings in talks to raise  billion, Bloomberg News reports

The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.

Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.

The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.

Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.

Faber Report: Elon Musk held call with current xAI investors, sources say

The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

— CNBC’s Samantha Subin contributed to this report.

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Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

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Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.

GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”

The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.

Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.

Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.

Read more CNBC tech news

Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.

During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.

Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.

Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.

Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.

“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.

WATCH: Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital’s Chris Ballard

Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital's Chris Ballard

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

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