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Amazon Flex driver Ricardo Escalona works to deliver his same-day orders during Cyber Monday from an Amazon fulfillment center in Tampa, Florida, on Nov. 27, 2023.

Octavio Jones | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Amazon is shutting down a service that offers same-day delivery from mall and brick-and-mortar retailers, CNBC has learned.

The company has stopped any new development of the service, called Amazon Today, and will begin to wind it down, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The people asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

The bulk of the program will be shut down by Dec. 2, the people said. Select retail partners will be able to continue fulfilling orders with Amazon Today through Jan. 24, 2025, Amazon told CNBC.

A small amount of employees will be laid off and provided with severance, while others will be transitioned to other positions within Amazon, the company said.

Employees who work on Amazon Today learned the news in a meeting on Monday, where some staffers were informed they would be laid off, the people said. Roughly 300 employees were working on Amazon Today, the people said.

The closure of Amazon Today is the latest example of the company’s broader cost-cutting efforts.

Since 2022, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been on a campaign to cut costs across the company in order to meet rapidly changing macro conditions. Beginning in 2022 and extending through 2024, Amazon initiated the largest layoffs in its history, cutting more than 27,000 jobs. Jassy has taken a harder line on the company’s unproven, costlier bets than his predecessor, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Jassy has axed several projects, including a telehealth service, video-calling device for kids and a roving Treasure Truck.

Launched in 2022, Amazon Today allows retailers who sell on Amazon to offer speedy delivery from their brick-and-mortar stores and shopping malls in select cities. Amazon’s contracted Flex drivers, which make deliveries using their own vehicles, fetch the packages and drop them at customers’ doorsteps within hours of when the orders were placed.

Amazon Today was part of the company’s push to get online purchases to shoppers’ doorsteps at faster speeds. Amazon continues to add more facilities focused on same-day deliveries in a bid to boost sales and compete with other companies that provide ultrafast delivery. That includes Instacart and DoorDash, which have expanded beyond food and groceries and into retail.

The company had signed up several retailers to Amazon Today, according to the program’s website. That list included Office Depot; Staples; Petco; PacSun; vitamin and dietary supplement chain GNC; and Fabletics, the athletic-wear brand owned by actress Kate Hudson.

Amazon is working with the retailers it signed up for the service to ensure a smooth transition for them, the company said. Amazon added that it continues to prioritize and invest in fast delivery.

The decision to shutter Amazon Today comes as a surprise since Amazon was in the process of onboarding other retailers, one of the people said. The company was also pitching the service to more retailers at a conference last week.

The service skewed more costly than traditional delivery routes where Flex drivers can fill their cars up with packages from an Amazon warehouse, one of the people said. Amazon Today routes, which the company calls “retail deliveries,” did not usually fill up a driver’s trunk, making the program less worthwhile for the Flex contractors.

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Indonesia wants Apple to sweeten its $100 million proposal as tech giant lobbies for iPhone 16 sales

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Indonesia wants Apple to sweeten its 0 million proposal as tech giant lobbies for iPhone 16 sales

An iPhone 16 signage is seen on the window at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store on new products launch day on September 20, 2024 in New York City. 

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images

The Indonesian government expects Apple to increase its proposed $100 million investment into the country, according to state media, as the iPhone maker seeks clearance from Jakarta to sell its latest phones.

The American tech giant’s latest smartphone model doesn’t meet Indonesia’s 40% domestic content requirements for smartphones and tablets and hasn’t been granted clearance to be sold in the country. 

The purpose of the ban is to protect local industry and jobs, with officials asking Apple to increase its investments and commitments to the economy in order to gain greater access. 

According to a report from Indonesian state media, the country’s Ministry of Industry met with representatives from Apple on Thursday regarding its proposal to invest $100 million over two years. 

The funds would go toward a research and development center program and professional development academy in the country, as per the report.

The company also plans to produce accessory product components, specifically mesh for Apple’s AirPods Max, starting in July 2025, it added.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

While the new offer is 10 times larger than a proposal that was reported earlier, the government is still striving to sweeten the deal to get a “fair” commitment.

“From the government’s perspective, of course, we want this investment to be larger,” industry ministry spokesperson Febri Hendri Antoni Arif told state media on Thursday.

He said that a larger investment would help the development of Indonesia’s manufacturing sector, adding that its domestic industry was capable of supporting production of Apple devices such as chargers and accessories.

While Indonesia represents a small market for Apple, it also offers growth opportunities as it has the world’s fourth-largest population, according to Le Xuan Chiew, a Canalys analyst focusing on Apple strategy research.

“Its young, tech-savvy population with growing digital literacy aligns with Apple’s strategy to expand [global sales],” he said, noting that it also offers potential for manufacturing and assembly that supports Apple’s efforts to diversify its supply chain. 

Success in this market requires a long-term approach, and Apple’s investment offer demonstrates a commitment to complying with local regulations and paving the way for future growth, he added.

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Intuit shares drop as quarterly forecast misses estimates due to delayed revenue

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Intuit shares drop as quarterly forecast misses estimates due to delayed revenue

Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi speaks at the opening night of the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on Aug. 15, 2024.

Rodin Eckenroth | Filmmagic | Getty Images

Intuit shares fell 6% in extended trading Thursday after the finance software maker issued a revenue forecast for the current quarter that trailed analysts’ estimates due to some sales being delayed.

Here’s how the company performed in comparison with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $2.50 adjusted vs. $2.35 expected
  • Revenue: $3.28 billion vs. $3.14 billion

Revenue increased 10% year over year in the quarter, which ended Oct. 31, according to a statement. Net income fell to $197 million, or 70 cents per share, from $241 million, or 85 cents per share, a year ago.

While results for the fiscal first quarter topped estimates, second-quarter guidance was light. Intuit said it anticipates a single-digit decline in revenue from the consumer segment because of promotional changes for the TurboTax desktop software in retail environments. While that will affect revenue timing, it won’t have any impact on the full 2025 fiscal year.

Intuit called for second-quarter earnings of $2.55 to $2.61 per share, with $3.81 billion to $3.85 billion in revenue. The consensus from LSEG was $3.20 per share and $3.87 billion in revenue.

For the full year, Intuit expects $19.16 to $19.36 in adjusted earnings per share on $18.16 billion to $18.35 billion in revenue. That implies revenue growth of between 12% and 13%. Analysts polled by LSEG were looking for $19.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $18.26 billion in revenue.

Revenue from Intuit’s global business solutions group came in at $2.5 billion in the first quarter. The figure was up 9% and in line with estimates, according to StreetAccount. Formerly known as the small business and self-employed segment, the group includes Mailchimp, QuickBooks, small business financing and merchant payment processing.

“We are seeing good progress serving mid-market customers in MailChimp, but are seeing higher churn from smaller customers,” Sandeep Aujla, Intuit’s finance chief, said on a conference call with analysts. “We are addressing this by making product enhancements and driving feature discoverability and adoption to improve first-time use and customer retention.”

Better outcomes are a few quarters away, Aujla said.

CreditKarma revenue came in at $524 million, above StreetAccount’s $430 million consensus.

At Thursday’s close, Intuit shares were up about 9% so far in 2024, while the S&P 500 has gained almost 25% in the same period.

On Tuesday Intuit shares slipped 5% after The Washington Post said President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” had discussed developing a mobile app for federal income tax filing. But a mobile app for submitting returns from Intuit is “already available to all Americans,” CEO Sasan Goodarzi told CNBC’s Jon Fortt.

Goodarzi said on CNBC that he’s personally communicating with leaders of the incoming presidential administration.

On the earnings call, Goodarzi sounded optimistic about the economy.

“Our belief, which is not baked into our guidance, is that we will see an improved environment as we look ahead in 2025, particularly just with some of the things that I mentioned earlier around just interest rates, jobs, the regulatory environment,” he said. “These things have a real burden on businesses. And we believe that a better future is to come.”

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Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is ‘billionaire proof’

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Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is 'billionaire proof'

Bluesky has surged in popularity since the presidential election earlier this month, suddenly becoming a competitor to Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads. But CEO Jay Graber has some cautionary words for potential acquirers: Bluesky is “billionaire proof.”

In an interview on Thursday with CNBC’s “Money Movers,” Graber said Bluesky’s open design is intended to give users the option of leaving the service with all of their followers, which could thwart potential acquisition efforts.

“The billionaire proof is in the way everything is designed, and so if someone bought or if the Bluesky company went down, everything is open source,” Graber said. “What happened to Twitter couldn’t happen to us in the same ways, because you would always have the option to immediately move without having to start over.”

Graber was referring to the way millions of users left Twitter, now X, after Musk purchased the company in 2022. Bluesky now has over 21 million users, still dwarfed by X and Threads, which Facebook’s parent debuted in July 2023.

X and Meta didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Threads has roughly 275 million monthly users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in October. Although Musk said in May that X has 600 million monthly users, market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates 318 million monthly users as of October.

Bluesky was created in 2019 as an internal Twitter project during Jack Dorsey’s second stint as CEO, and became an independent public benefit corporation in 2022. In May of this year, Dorsey said he is no longer a member of Bluesky’s board.

“In 2019, Jack had a vision for something better for social media, and so that’s why he chose me to build this, and we’re really thankful for him for setting this up, and we’ve continued to carry this out,” said Graber, who previously founded Happening, a social network focused on events. “We’re building an open-source social network that anyone can take into their own hands and build on, and it’s something that is radically different from anything that’s been done in social media before. Nobody’s been this open, this transparent and put this much control in the users hands.”

Part of Bluesky’s business plan involves offering subscriptions that would let users access special features, Graber noted. She also said that Bluesky will add more services for third-party coders as part of the startup’s “developer ecosystem.”

Graber said Bluesky has ruled out the possibility of letting advertisers send algorithmically recommended ads to users.

“There’s a lot on the road map, and I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do for monetization,” Graber said. “We’re not going to build an algorithm that just shoves ads at you, locking users in. That’s not our model.”

Bluesky has previously experienced major growth spurts. In September, it added 2 million users following X’s suspension in Brazil over content moderation policy violations in the country and related legal matters.

In October, Bluesky announced that it raised $15 million in a funding round led by Blockchain Capital. The company has raised a total of $36 million, according to Pitchbook.

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