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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc.; from left, Lauren Sanchez; Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Inc.; Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc.; and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc., during the 60th presidential inauguration in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Donald Trump used to refer to Jeff Bezos as “Jeff Bozo.” Now, after more drama between the two men, Trump is calling the Amazon founder a “good guy.”

Amazon’s earnings report, scheduled for Thursday, already had investors on edge due to the president’s sweeping tariffs and the potential impact they’ll have across the tech giant’s numerous businesses. With its stock price down 17% this year, Amazon is expected to report its slowest rate of revenue growth for any period since 2022, and that doesn’t reflect the levies announced in early April.

The tension got amped up early this week.

The White House on Tuesday criticized Amazon for reportedly planning to display on its site how much the new tariffs on top U.S. trading partners are driving up prices for consumers. After the story was published by Punchbowl News, Trump called Bezos to complain.

Amazon swiftly responded and said no such change was coming.

“This was never approved and is not going to happen,” Amazon wrote in a blog post that totaled 31 words.

President Trump frequently hurled insults at Bezos during his firm term in the White House, largely because of the Amazon founder’s ownership of the Washington Post. Bezos has recently gone out of his way to try and mend the relationship, traveling to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration in January.

The president said he was pleased with their latest phone call.

“Jeff Bezos was very nice,” Trump told reporters later on Tuesday. “He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly and he did the right thing. He’s a good guy.”

Amazon clarified that it was only considering displaying the import fees on products sold on its discount storefront, Amazon Haul, which competes with ultra-cheap Chinese retailer Temu. Products on Haul cost $20 or less and many of them are sold direct from China using the de minimis trade exemption. That loophole is set to go away next month after Trump signed an executive order, making it more expensive to ship those products to the U.S.

Temu, Shein raising prices ahead of Trump administration ending 'de minimis' rule: Report

The clash with Trump highlights the pressure Amazon is under to blunt the impact of Trump’s aggressive tariffs on Chinese imports, which total 145%. The company faces significant exposure to the tariffs, primarily through its retail unit. Amazon sources some products from China, while many sellers on its third-party marketplace rely on the world’s second-largest economy to make or assemble their products.

The topic of tariffs will hover over Amazon’s first-quarter earnings report. Investors will want to know how higher import costs could impact its margins, and whether uncertainty around the tariffs has caused shoppers to be more cautious with their spending.

For the quarter, Amazon is expected to report earnings per share of $1.37 and revenue of $155.04 billion, according to LSEG, which would represent annual growth of just over 8% and would be the slowest rate of expansion since the second quarter of 2022.

‘Difficult choices’

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC earlier this month that the company hasn’t seen a drop-off in consumer demand. Amazon is “going to try and do everything we can” to keep prices low for shoppers, including renegotiating terms with some of its suppliers, Jassy said. But he acknowledged some third-party sellers will “need to pass that cost” of tariffs on to consumers.

Analysts at UBS said in a note to clients on Tuesday that at least 50% of items sold on Amazon are subject to Trump’s tariffs and could become more expensive as a result.

“Consumers therefore might have to make more difficult choices on where to allocate their dollars,” wrote the analysts, who have a buy rating on Amazon shares.

Amazon has reportedly pressured some of its suppliers to cut prices to shrink the impact of Trump’s tariffs, according to the Financial Times.

Some sellers have already raised prices and cut back on advertising spend as they contend with higher import costs. Others are looking to secure new suppliers in countries like Vietnam, Mexico and India, where tariffs are increasing under Trump, but are mild compared with the levies imposed on goods from China.

Mahaney: Amazon will either 'eat price' or lose market share if tariffs persist

Temu and rival discount app Shein implemented price hikes on many items last week. Temu has since added “import charges” ranging between 130% and 150% on some products.

Wall Street will likely be focused on Amazon’s commentary surrounding business conditions going forward. The third quarter will include the results of Amazon’s Prime Day shopping event, typically held in July across two days. Amazon sellers previously told CNBC they may run fewer deals for this year’s Prime Day to conserve inventory or because they can’t afford to mark down products any further.

Bank of America analysts said in a note to clients this week that it sees the potential for Amazon to give a “wider guidance range” in its earnings report on Thursday, “though the impact may be bigger in the third quarter.”

Analysts at Oppenheimer said investors are “highly uncertain” as to the impact of tariffs on Amazon’s e-commerce business. The firm has an outperform rating on Amazon’s stock.

“We are assuming Q3 is the quarter most impacted as sellers should still have pre-tariff inventory through May and therefore don’t need to raise prices yet,” the analysts wrote.

Amazon didn’t provide a comment beyond its short statement on Tuesday.

WATCH: Trump spoke with Bezos

Trump says he spoke with Jeff Bezos and solved the Amazon 'problem' very quickly

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OpenAI’s Sora hit 1 million downloads in less than five days

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OpenAI's Sora hit 1 million downloads in less than five days

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

OpenAI’s short-form artificial intelligence video app Sora hit 1 million downloads less than five days after its launch in late September, according to an executive.

Bill Peebles, head of Sora at OpenAI, shared the milestone in a post on X late Wednesday. He said Sora reached 1 million downloads even faster than ChatGPT, the company’s popular AI chatbot that supports 800 million weekly active users.

Sora allows users to generate short videos for free by typing in a prompt. The app is only available on iOS devices and is invite-based, which means people need a code to access it. Despite these restrictions, Sora has climbed to the No. 1 spot in Apple’s App Store.

“Team [is] working hard to keep up with surging growth,” Peebles wrote.

Sora’s launch has also sparked intense backlash, namely around whether the app infringes on copyrights. CNBC viewed videos on the platform that included characters from shows like “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Rick and Morty” and “South Park,” and was able to generate many characters independently.

Read more CNBC tech news

The Motion Picture Association, which advocates on behalf of the television, motion picture and home video industries, said in a statement Monday that “videos that infringe our members’ films, shows, and characters have proliferated on OpenAI’s service.”

“OpenAI needs to take immediate and decisive action to address this issue,” Charles Rivkin, CEO of the MPA said in the statement. “Well-established copyright law safeguards the rights of creators and applies here.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company will soon give rights holders more granular control over character generation, according to a blog post last week.

During a briefing with reporters at the company’s DevDay event on Monday, Altman said some users have complained that Sora is too restrictive. He asked for patience as the company irons out best practices.

“Please give us some grace,” Altman said. “The rate of change will be high.”

WATCH: Hollywood backlash grows against OpenAI’s new Sora video model

Hollywood backlash grows against OpenAI's new Sora video model

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Intel gives first look at next-gen chips, says Arizona fab is fully operational

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Intel gives first look at next-gen chips, says Arizona fab is fully operational

An Intel manufacturing technician holds an Intel Core Ultra series 3 processor (code-named Panther Lake) built on Intel 18A, inside Intel’s new Fab 52 in Chandler, Arizona, in September 2025.

Courtesy: Intel

Intel on Thursday announced its new PC chips slated to debut in laptops next year as the chipmaker battles to turn around its struggling business.

The company said the new Panther Lake processor is made with its 18A technology and is the most advanced node made on U.S. soil.

The new generation of chips will be made at Intel’s Fab 52 facility in Arizona, which the company said is now fully operational and set to ramp production.

“The United States has always been home to Intel’s most advanced R&D, product design and manufacturing – and we are proud to build on this legacy as we expand our domestic operations and bring new innovations to the market,” CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a release announcing the news.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan holds a wafer of CPU tiles for the Intel Core Ultra series 3, code-named Panther Lake, outside the Intel Ocotillo campus in Chandler, Arizona. Panther Lake is the first client system-on-chips (SoCs) built on the Intel 18A process node.

Courtesy: Intel

Intel’s latest reveal comes during a critical stretch for the beleaguered chipmaker that has lagged in recent years and struggled to keep up with cutting-edge chip demands spurred by the artificial intelligence revolution.

In August, the U.S. government took a 10% stake in the company in an effort to beef up U.S. manufacturing capabilities. Intel has also received investments from SoftBank and AI chipmaking giant Nvidia.

Since taking the helm of Intel in March, Tan has faced massive pressure to deliver.

This summer, President Donald Trump called Tan “highly CONFLICTED” and demanded his resignation, but later changed his tone.

Intel shares have bounced 87% this year.

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Intel year-to-date stock chart.

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AI worries have climbed but demand is off the charts, says Bernstein's Rasgon

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Google launches Gemini subscriptions to help corporate workers build AI agents

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Google launches Gemini subscriptions to help corporate workers build AI agents

Thomas Kurian CEO of Google Cloud, speaks at the Google Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas on April 8, 2025.

Candice Ward | Google Cloud | Getty Images

Google is taking another shot at selling businesses on artificial intelligence agents by introducing subscriptions featuring agents that perform specific work tasks.

Gemini Enterprise targets large organizations, starting at a monthly fee of $30 per person. Gemini Business, for smaller clients, costs $21 per person each month. The offerings enable corporate workers to build agents that draw on data from Box, Microsoft and Salesforce products.

Premade Google agents for software development, data science and customer engagement also come with the new Gemini subscriptions, along with access to agents from Workday and other companies. They include the capabilities of Agentspace, an agent building product Google announced in December. Google will upgrade current Agentspace clients to Gemini Enterprise or Gemini Business free of charge through the course of their contracts, a spokesperson said.

Gemini subscriptions come with Model Armor, a feature for inspecting and blocking requests and responses in AI chats, so organizations don’t need to fuss with setting it up.

The launch comes three days after OpenAI showed how people can access tools from third-party apps in ChatGPT. Google and Microsoft, meanwhile, are looking to get enterprises hooked on agents that take care of some processes, so employees can do other things. Both companies sell services aimed at developers and at nontechnical workers. Neither Gemini Enterprise nor Gemini Business require coding.

Read more CNBC tech news

“We’ve seen people from consulting services companies, telecommunications companies, software companies, hospitality companies and a variety of different manufacturing companies all using these, and in a variety of scenarios,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google’s cloud group, in a media briefing.

Kurian, who accelerated the unit’s year-over-year revenue growth back above 30% in the second quarter, named cruise line Virgin Voyages as a Gemini Enterprise early adopter.

Firms are more likely to be exploring or testing AI agents than putting them into production, said Chirag Dekate, an analyst at technology industry researcher Gartner. But Google’s handling of security and governance should ease concerns among big companies evaluating agent systems, Dekate said.

Google’s new Gemini subscriptions depend on the company’s Gemini AI models for working with text, images and videos. Google and other model makers regularly release new versions, and enterprises want to avoid getting stuck with lagging models when selecting agent software, Dekate said.

“How Google is able to leverage this unified messaging in the Gemini 3.0 launch sequence, which is coming soon, I think, will also be a crucial litmus test,” he said. “In other words, will they be able to offer a same-day sort of innovation cycle, or is this going to be staggered in terms of adoption patterns?”

WATCH: Box CEO on AI monetization: Agents offer new monetization for existing software companies

Box CEO on AI monetization: Agents offer new monetization for existing software companies

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