Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during the GeekWire Summit in Seattle on Oct. 5, 2021.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon has discontinued a secretive effort to develop an at-home fertility tracker, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter.
The company had been working to launch a fertility monitoring device and companion smartphone app for the past four years as part of a project codenamed “Encore,” said the people, who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press. The team sat within Amazon’s Grand Challenge, also known as its Special Projects division, the sources said.
Last month, Amazon told people working on the tracker that it was disbanding the team. Those being laid off will remain on Amazon’s payroll until Dec. 27, but won’t be expected to work during that time, according to documents reviewed by CNBC.
If staffers don’t secure another job by that date, Amazon will provide them with a “lump sum” severance payment equal to one week of salary for every six months of tenure at the company, the documents said.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been reeling in costs companywide since late 2022, when inflationary pressures and rising interest rates led to a slowdown across the tech and consumer markets. In addition to slashing more than 27,000 jobs, Jassy has shuttered several projects, ranging from a roving sidewalk robot to a telehealth offering and a rapid delivery service.
The wave of frugality marks a distinct departure from the approach taken by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Jassy’s predecessor, who was known for greenlighting experimental projects and giving employees extended runway to develop them, even if they burned cash along the way. Grand Challenge was one of the hallmarks of that era.
Bezos launched Grand Challenge in 2014 as a way for Amazon to tinker with riskier projects that may or may not see the light of day. Grand Challenge was the brains behind a pair of connected eyeglasses equipped with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant and a machine learning tool for analyzing medical records.
On the morning of Oct. 28, employees working on the fertility tracker were told to join a videoconference where a director of the team informed them that the project was ending. The call lasted about two minutes, one of the people said.
A layoff notice viewed by CNBC was signed by Doug Weibel, who took over as the head of Grand Challenge after its founding leader, Babak Parviz, left in 2022 and joined Madrona Venture Group.
Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed the layoffs and the existence of the project in a statement to CNBC. Roughly 100 employees will be laid off, Callahan confirmed.
“Following a recent review, we’ve decided to discontinue this project within Grand Challenge, and we’re working directly with employees whose roles are impacted to support them through the transition and help them find other opportunities within Amazon,” Callahan said.
Predicting fertility with saliva
The project was born out of the company’s 2020 acquisition of Wisconsin-based startup bluDiagnostics, the sources said.
BluDiagnostics was founded in 2015 by Weibel, Katie Brenner and Jodi Schroll, all of whom joined Grand Challenge following the purchase. The startup had developed a thermometer-like device, called FertilityFinder, to help women track their fertility from home by testing their saliva and measuring two key hormones, estradiol and progesterone. The results of the test were viewable through a corresponding app.
Business Insider reported on aspects of the fertility device in 2022, when its codename was Project Tiberius.
The team was working to develop its own saliva collection device and mobile app, which could predict when a user might be in the fertile window. Users could also log their period symptoms, sexual activity and other data to assist with tracking their fertility.There are similar offerings on the market from companies including Inne, Oova, Ava and Mira, along with fertility and ovulation tracking apps like Flo, Clue and Max Levchin’s Glow.
Amazon initially aimed to release the product this year, but the timing was pushed out after the team encountered technical issues with the device, one of the people said. It was a costly endeavor and required significant upfront investments for lab research and development, in addition to the high salaries for scientists and engineers, the sources said, adding that the team’s weekly overhead was roughly $1.5 million. Amazon didn’t comment on the figure.
Only one project now remains active within Grand Challenge. Its focus is on health tech, the people said.
A worker delivers Amazon packages in San Francisco on Oct. 24, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon on Thursday announced Prime members can access new fixed pricing for treatment of conditions like erectile dysfunction and men’s hair loss, its latest effort to compete with other direct-to-consumer marketplaces such as Hims & Hers Health and Ro.
Shares of Hims & Hers fell as much as 17% on Thursday, on pace for its worst day.
Amazon said in a blog post that Prime members can see the cost of a telehealth visit and their desired treatment before they decide to proceed with care for five common issues. Patients can access treatment for anti-aging skin care starting at $10 a month; motion sickness for $2 per use; erectile dysfunction at $19 a month; eyelash growth at $43 a month, and men’s hair loss for $16 a month by using Amazon’s savings benefit Prime Rx at checkout.
Amazon acquired primary care provider One Medical for roughly $3.9 billion in July 2022, and Thursday’s announcement builds on its existing pay-per-visit telehealth offering. Video visits through the service cost $49, and messaging visits cost $29 where available. Users can get treatment for more than 30 common conditions, including sinus infection and pink eye.
Medications filled through Amazon Pharmacy are eligible for discounted pricing and will be delivered to patients’ doors in standard Amazon packaging. Prime members will pay for the consultation and medication, but there are no additional fees, the blog post said.
Amazon has been trying to break into the lucrative health-care sector for years. The company launched its own online pharmacy in 2020 following its acquisition of PillPack in 2018. Amazon introduced, and later shuttered, a telehealth service called Amazon Care, as well as a line of health and wellness devices.
The company has also discontinued a secretive effort to develop an at-home fertility tracker, CNBC reported Wednesday.
Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning says censorship is still “a dominant threat,” advocating for a more decentralized internet to help better protect individuals online.
Her comments come amid ongoing tension linked to online safety rules, with some tech executives recently seeking to push back over content moderation concerns.
Speaking to CNBC’s Karen Tso at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, Manning said that one way to ensure online privacy could be “decentralized identification,” which gives individuals the ability to control their own data.
“Censorship is a dominant threat. I think that it is a question of who’s doing the censoring, and what the purpose is — and also censorship in the 21st century is more about whether or not you’re boosted through like an algorithm, and how the fine-tuning of that seems to work,” Manning said.
“I think that social media and the monopolies of social media have sort of gotten us used to the fact that certain things that drive engagement will be attractive,” she added.
“One of the ways that we can sort of countervail that is to go back to the more decentralized and distribute the internet of the early ’90s, but make that available to more people.”
Nym Technologies Chief Security Officer Chelsea Manning at a press conference held with Nym Technologies CEO Harry Halpin in the Media Village to present NymVPN during the second day of Web Summit on November 13, 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Asked how tech companies could make money in such a scenario, Manning said there would have to be “a better social contract” put in place to determine how information is shared and accessed.
“One of the things about distributed or decentralized identification is that through encryption you’re able to sort of check the box yourself, instead of having to depend on the company to provide you with a check box or an accept here, you’re making that decision from a technical perspective,” Manning said.
‘No longer secrecy versus transparency’
Manning, who works as a security consultant at Nym Technologies, a company that specializes in online privacy and security, was convicted of espionage and other charges at a court-martial in 2013 for leaking a trove of secret military files to online media publisher WikiLeaks.
She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was later released in 2017, when former U.S. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.
Asked to what extent the environment has changed for whistleblowers today, Manning said, “We’re at an interesting time because information is everywhere. We have more information than ever.”
She added, “Countries and governments no longer seem to invest the same amount of time and effort in hiding information and keeping secrets. What countries seem to be doing now is they seem to be spending more time and energy spreading misinformation and disinformation.”
Manning said the challenge for whistleblowers now is to sort through the information to understand what is verifiable and authentic.
“It’s no longer secrecy versus transparency,” she added.
LISBON, Portugal — British online lender Zopa is on track to double profits and increase annual revenue by more than a third this year amid bumper demand for its banking services, the company’s CEO told CNBC.
Zopa posted revenues of £222 million ($281.7 million) in 2023 and is expecting to cross the £300 million revenue milestone this year — that would mark a 35% annual jump.
The 2024 estimates are based on unaudited internal figures.
The firm also says it is on track to increase pre-tax profits twofold in 2024, after hitting £15.8 million last year.
Zopa, a regulated bank that is backed by Japanese giant SoftBank, has plans to venture into the world of current accounts next year as it looks to focus more on new products.
The company currently offers credit cards, personal loans and savings accounts that it offers through a mobile app — similar to other digital banks such as Monzo and Revolut which don’t operate physical branches.
“The business is doing really well. In 2024, we’ve hit or exceeded the plans across all metrics,” CEO Jaidev Janardana told CNBC in an interview Wednesday.
He said the strong performance is coming off the back of gradually improving sentiment in the U.K. economy, where Zopa operates exclusively.
Commenting on Britain’s macroeconomic conditions, Janardana said, “While it has been a rough few years, in terms of consumers, they have continued to feel the pain slightly less this year than last year.”
The market is “still tight,” he noted, adding that fintech offerings such as Zopa’s — which typically provide higher savings rates than high-street banks — become “more important” during such times.
“The proposition has become more relevant, and while it’s tight for customers, we have had to be much more constrained in terms of who we can lend to,” he said, adding that Zopa has still been able to grow despite that.
A big priority for the business going forward is product, Janardana said. The firm is developing a current account product which would allow users to spend and manage their money more easily, in a similar fashion to mainstream banking providers like HSBC and Barclays, as well as fintech upstarts such as Monzo.
“We believe that there is more that the consumer can have in the current account space,” Janardana said. “We expect that we will launch our current account with the general public sometime next year.”
Janardana said consumers can expect a “slick” experience from Zopa’s current account offering, including the ability to view and manage multiple account bank accounts from one interface and access to competitive savings rates.
IPO ‘not top of mind’
Zopa is one of many fintech companies that has been viewed as a potential IPO candidate. Around two years ago, the firm said that it was planning to go public, but later decided to put those plans on ice, as high interest rates battered technology stocks and the IPO market froze over in 2022.
Janardana said he doesn’t envision a public listing as an immediate priority, but noted he sees signs pointing toward a more favorable U.S. IPO market next year.
That should mean that Europe becomes more open to IPOs happening later in 2026, according to Janardana. He didn’t disclose where Zopa would end up going public.
“To be honest, it’s not the top of mind for me,” Janardana told CNBC. “I think we continue to be lucky to have supportive and long-term shareholders who support future growth as well.”
Last year, Zopa made two senior hires, appointing Peter Donlon, ex-chief technology officer at online card retailer Moonpig, as its own CTO. The firm also hired Kate Erb, a chartered accountant from KPMG, as its chief operating officer.
The company raised $300 million in a funding round led by Japanese tech investor SoftBank in 2021 and was last valued by investors at $1 billion.