Catherine Perloff
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Articles by Catherine Perloff
How Amazon Rewired Its Data Centers After Mississippi Power Warning
Earlier this year, officials at Mississippi electric utility Entergy had some worrisome news for Amazon: It was going to have to start kicking the company’s Mississippi-based data centers off the grid during peak times to ensure it could support other customers, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
Amazon Lays Off Hundreds in Stores Division
Source: The Information Amazon laid off hundreds of people in its retail division today, a spokesperson confirmed. “We’ve adjusted parts of our Stores business because we believe this structure will better enable us to deliver on our priorities,” a spokesperson said, adding Amazon is always looking at its team structures as it looks for ways to innovate for customers. “As part of these changes, we’ve made the difficult decision to eliminate a small number of roles.
Pinterest Names New CFO
Source: The Information Pinterest named Amazon executive James Dibbo as chief financial officer. It’s the fourth C-suite shakeup for the social media firm this year. Dibbo, who will start at Pinterest on October 26, previously led finance at Amazon’s media and retail divisions, most recently serving as vice president and CFO for global entertainment, advertising and corporate development.
Amazon Pledges To Give Up NDAs, Give Back $1 Billion To Communities In Data-Center Buildout
Source: The Information Amazon Web Services pledged to spend $1 billion over the next five years upgrading heat and water systems in schools, homes and other municipal buildings, among other projects, as part of an effort to win over local communities who fear data centers. AWS also promised to stop requiring local governments to sign nondisclosure agreements covering the company’s data center arrangements.
Google Is Paying About 100 Digital Publishers for AI Overviews
Google has been paying roughly 100 digital publishers for how much their content contributes to AI-powered answers to search and other products, according to people familiar with tests. The pilot program signals a further shift by the company toward paying publishers for content that shows up in its powerful search engine.
Amazon Looks to Further Automate Media Buying With New Agentic Tools
Source: The Information Amazon introduced new AI-powered tools to help marketers buy ad inventory across the vast variety of media it sells, as it steps up its effort to strengthen its position in the ad tech world. One of these tools, full-funnel campaigns, is designed for advertisers who already sell on Amazon’s shopping site, and allows them to buy spots on Prime Video and other types of media as well.
Amazon Gives Merchants Tools to Manage Walmart, Shopify Inventory
Source: The Information Merchants that sell on Amazon can now use Amazon’s software tools to manage their inventory at rival retailers, including Walmart, Shopify, eBay and TikTok, Amazon announced Thursday at its annual conference for sellers. Merchants will be able to update their product listings and track orders for all retailers from their Amazon Sellers Central dashboard.
Amazon Gives Sellers 12 Months of AI Software Quick Plus For Free
Source: The Information Amazon is giving the merchants that sell goods on Amazon’s site 12 free months of Quick Plus, an AWS AI workplace assistant, Amazon announced Wednesday at its annual conference for sellers, Amazon Accelerate. Quick Plus normally costs users $20 a month. Amazon is also letting sellers integrate Seller Assistant, another AI assistant which helps merchants understand their Amazon sales data, with Quick and Anthropic’s Claude.
Google Must Make Tech More Compatible With Rivals, Judge Rules
Source: The Information Google must improve the ability of its advertising technology to integrate with the products of competitors, according to the decision of a federal judge made public Wednesday. The opinion follows a ruling last year that Google operated an illegal monopoly in parts of the market for advertising technology, in part because Google illegally tied different products together.
Amazon Is Helping Advertisers Buy Ads on ChatGPT
Source: The Information Amazon is letting advertisers test buying ads on ChatGPT via Amazon’s advertising technology platform, Amazon said on Sept. 10. ChatGPT started selling ads earlier this year, which it has let advertisers buy through its own interface and via partnerships with smaller advertising technology firms like Criteo and Kargo.
Mandiant Founder Kevin Mandia Joins Amazon’s Board
Source: The Information Kevin Mandia, a cybersecurity expert who founded Mandiant, is joining Amazon’s board of directors, increasing the board’s size to 12. The board had shrunk briefly after Keith B. Alexander left the board in the spring. Like Mandia, Alexander had a security background—he served as a general in the US Army and was director of the National Security Agency. Mandia founded Mandiant in 2004 and eventually sold the company to Google for $5.4 billion.
How Six AWS Engineers Rebuilt Bedrock to Challenge Microsoft
Apple Store 1 hour ago Apple to Make First Big Change to iPhones in Years The New York Times - Kalley Huang • 1h Fans of the company’s products widely believe it will unveil a folding smartphone at its annual launch event on Wednesday. The iPhone has not changed much since Apple introduced it in 2007.
Google Avoids Break-Up in Ad-Tech Anti-Trust Case
Source: The Information A federal judge ruled that Google does not need to divest parts of its ad-tech business, despite her earlier ruling that the company monopolized parts of that market, the second time it has avoided an antitrust-inspired breakup. In April 2025, US District Court judge Leonie Brinkema found Google guilty of monopolizing parts of the market for advertising technology, through which Google helps independent websites sell advertisements.
FTC Sues Amazon, Alleging Ad Price Manipulation
Source: The Information The Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from 22 states sued Amazon for overcharging its advertising customers by allegedly manipulating ad auctions. Advertisers promoting their products on Amazon’s marketplace buy ad spots where the price is set in auctions.
Amazon Becomes Vital Sales Outlet For Independent Merchants
When Lauren Wang started Flex in Los Angeles a decade ago, she wanted to create a new type of menstrual care product that wasn’t already on the market—a disposable disc that lasts longer than traditional tampons or pads. Flex sold through its own website early on; it was one of a number of brands going the direct-to-consumer route at the time. That approach proved fruitful: The business grew to $20 million in revenue in a few years on its website alone.
Nebius and CoreWeave Tout Short-Term Cloud Deals, While AWS Goes Long
This week, Nebius and CoreWeave both pitched investors on a new business opportunity—shorter-term contracts. The neoclouds said these deals would allow them to cash in on surging prices for AI compute capacity amid a crunch for GPUs, and investors seemed to agree, with shares in both companies moving sharply higher.
AWS Tells Engineers to Cut CPU Waste Amid Crunch
Amazon Web Services leaders met with engineers in May and delivered a sobering message: To ensure AWS has enough capacity for all its customers at its popular EC2 cloud server business in the future, engineers should save capacity however they can, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting. That includes capacity on servers that run on central processing units, as well as those running on AI chips, which have long been in short supply, the person said.
Pinterest Hires New Content Executive Amid C-Suite Shakeup
Source: The Information Pinterest tapped David Brinker to serve as global head of content, the latest shakeup in a string of executive changes this year. Brinker’s appointment follows last month’s news that Pinterest chief content officer Malik Ducard was leaving the company. Brinker will report to Lee Brown, who took over as global business officer earlier this year after longtime chief revenue officer Bill Watkins left the company.
AWS Revenue Growth Accelerates Sharply to 37% in Q2
Source: The Information Amazon stock surged in after hours trading after the ecommerce-and-cloud firm reported that revenue from its cloud division Amazon Web Services soared 37% in the second quarter, nine percentage points faster than the first quarter, bringing the division’s revenue to $42.2 billion. AWS’ operating margin also improved to 39% compared with 37% in the first quarter.
Amazon’s Zoox Wins Federal Approval to Charge for Rides
Source: The Information Amazon Zoox won approval to put its cars into robotaxi service commercially. Zoox has been offering free rides of its steering wheelless autonomous cab in San Francisco and Las Vegas, but hasn’t been able to charge for them without federal approval. Zoox won the approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Authority, which limited Zoox to charging for rides on up to 2,500 vehicles annually for two years.
Amazon Files FCC Application to Provide Direct Cell Service
Source: The Information Amazon asked the Federal Communications Commission for approval to create a direct-to-device satellite service globally, in a step towards expanding the goals of its burgeoning Leo satellite business. Amazon Leo became a player in the satellite mobile cell service earlier this year when it agreed to acquire Globalstar, which specializes in satellite cell service. Previously, Leo has focused on building a satellite service to provide Internet service.
Amazon Shuts AI Agent Research Lab In AGI Layoffs
Source: The Information Amazon this week closed its AGI Lab, a San Francisco-based research and product team that was developing software to improve the usefulness of AI agents, according to an Amazon spokesperson. The lab was shuttered as part of Amazon’s layoffs in its artificial general intelligence unit earlier this week.
Amazon Cuts Staff to Division Working on Homegrown Models
Source: The Information Amazon cut staff today from the division working on building its own large language models, according to a spokesperson. The spokesperson said that while AI models “remain one of the most important things we’re working on,…we’re sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts.
Department of Energy Partners with American Open-Weight Model Provider Arcee
Source: The Information Arcee, an American open-weigh AI provider, announced a partnership with the Department of Energy, in which the DOE will use Arcee’s AI models to advance scientific research. Arcee AI will help government researchers “automate a lot of the more mundane, but tricky and nuanced workflows that they do on a day-to-day basis,” Arcee CTO Lucas Atkins said in an interview.
Nobody is Immune From the Nvidia GPU Crunch
Earlier this week, I wrote about startups moving some of their workloads from Amazon Web Services and other traditional cloud providers to young challengers such as Nebius. That’s in part because startups are having trouble getting the Nvidia chips they need on AWS, sometimes because those chips are only available in too expensive packages.
Senior AWS Exec Dave Brown Departs
Source: The Information Longtime Amazon Web Services executive Dave Brown is leaving the cloud provider, AWS chief Matt Garman told staff Wednesday. Brown is going to a “new role outside the company,” Garman said. Brown had been running AWS’ compute and machine learning services, and he also ran the company’s Trainium AI chip business that has become increasingly important. Dave Treadwell, a current senior executive at Amazon’s commerce group, is taking Brown’s place, Garman said.
AWS Is Overloaded. These Cloud Startups Are Picking Up the Slack.
Arcee, an open-source AI developer, in 2024 committed to spend $8 million over three years with Amazon Web Services to store data and run AI models. But the startup hasn’t been able to get access to enough Nvidia-powered servers on AWS to handle its work. So Arcee has ended up running most of its models on cloud upstarts including Hugging Face, Together and others, according to Arcee CEO Mark McQuade. Arcee’s experience isn’t unusual.
Exclusive: Behind Google’s TPU Ground War to Lure Nvidia’s Most Loyal Customers
Google is kicking off a ground war with Nvidia. While Google is one of the biggest buyers of Nvidia AI server chips, it has also been developing its own competing AI chip business that represents a threat to Nvidia’s dominant market share. Before this year, Google’s tensor processing units were housed almost entirely in Google facilities and could only be rented from Google Cloud.
Amazon Looks to Raise $25 Billion in US Bonds
Source: Bloomberg Amazon is seeking to raise at least $25 billion from a US bond sale, Bloomberg reported, continuing a wave of borrowing underway by the company this year. Big tech peers including Google and Meta Platforms have also tapped the bond markets this year as the sector looks to fund a massive AI infrastructure build-out. Amazon sold $36.8 billion in US bonds and around $16.8 billion in European bonds in March, and around $10 billion in Canadian bonds in June.
Walmart’s Amazon-Sized Ads Opportunity
Walmart isn’t generally thought of as an advertising business, but the retail giant now makes more money selling ads than small social media firms like Snap or Pinterest do. And judging by the growth of its ad business in recent years, along with its acquisition of companies aimed at bolstering that business, it’s positioned to become an even more important presence in the industry. Walmart’s ad revenue hit nearly $6.4 billion in fiscal 2026, ending Jan. 31, the company has said.
Amazon Web Services Creates Forward Deployed Engineer Organization
Source: The Information Amazon Web Services said it would invest $1 billion to create a unit of staffers with the title of forward deployed engineers, which would help business customers use AI. Francessca Vasquez, vice president of AWS’ Frontier AI Engineering and Services, said in an interview that the FDEs will help customers test new AI products and AWS will educate outside companies on how to talk about AWS services.
Amazon Could Pay More for Anthropic Technology Under New Deal
As Anthropic grows to become a leading AI model used by enterprises, it’s been flexing its power with customers—including one of its most important early backers, Amazon. Earlier this year, Anthropic renegotiated an aspect of its partnership with Amazon, making it more expensive for the cloud and e-commerce giant to use Anthropic models in its products, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions between the two firms.
AWS Raises Prices for Some Nvidia Compute by 20%
Source: The Information Amazon Web Services is raising the price for its AI workload rental service by 20%, the company said on Friday. The move comes as the global compute crunch is increasing costs throughout the tech supply chain. AWS’s price increase affects its EC2 Capacity Blocks, which is a service that lets businesses rent out space to run AI workloads in advance, on Nvidia GPUs. Prices won’t be increased for Capacity Blocks using Amazon’s Trainium chips.
AWS Introduces New Cybersecurity, Coding Tools at NY Summit
Source: The Information Amazon Web Services unveiled several new AI products at its annual New York Summit, some of which are designed to solve novel problems created by the new era of AI-driven software engineering. These include AWS Continuum, which helps identify code vulnerabilities to prevent companies from cybersecurity threats. In announcing the product, AWS specifically called out new threats from AI models like Mythos. AWS is also building new tools to adapt to the challenges of AI coding.
Amazon’s Lower Cost AI Chip Offerings Hold Appeal for Businesses
For companies debating which AI server chips to use in their data centers, Amazon appears to have one advantage over Nvidia: price. The cost of using Amazon’s Inferentia2 and Trainium’s second generation chips to run existing AI models, known as inference, can be 80% lower than Nvidia’s H100 chips, for comparable workloads, according to Karol Piatek, who advises companies on their AI infrastructure at Ireland-based consultancy Co Driver Labs.
Pinterest Commits to Using Trainium Chips, Spend $4 Billion with AWS
Source: The Information Pinterest said it would spend $4 billion on Amazon Web Services infrastructure through 2031, the largest infrastructure commitment in the company’s history. As part of the deal, Pinterest will use AWS’ Trainium chips for AI workloads and expand its use of Amazon’s CPU Graviton. Pinterest has been an AWS customer since 2010, paying for AWS services under long term deals.
Amazon’s Media Empire Quietly Taps Outside Ad Sales Help
Amazon has been pitching its advertising business as an “everything store” for media—where brands can buy ads that run on everything from Thursday Night Football and streaming site Twitch to media it does not own, like Netflix and Spotify. Despite that united front, behind the scenes the company has been relying on an increasing number of outside firms to help sell ads in parts of its sprawling global media business.
Snowflake Inks $6 Billion Deal with AWS Tied to Graviton Chips
Source: The Information Database firm Snowflake said it has committed to spending $6 billion on Amazon Web Services over the next few years, including using Amazon’s Graviton chips and AI infrastructure. Graviton is a CPU, a chip designed for general computing. CPUs are becoming increasingly important as businesses need to use resource-intensive AI models. Last month, AWS announced a multi-billion dollar deal with Meta for Graviton chips.
Amazon Launches Service to Put AI Shopping Assistants on Other Retailers’ Sites
Source: The Information Amazon is marketing a new service to let other retailers take advantage of its AI shopping assistant technology. For the past two years, Amazon has offered an AI shopping chatbot on its main retail site, which was originally called Rufus, but earlier this month was rebranded to Alexa for Shopping. Amazon is now offering the Alexa for Shopping technology to other retailers through Amazon Web Services. The new product is called AWS Agentic Shopping Assistant.
Amazon’s Nvidia Alternative Starts Winning Over AI Developers
Amazon’s yearslong effort to build a serious alternative to Nvidia’s dominant AI chips is starting to gain traction. Anthropic and OpenAI, which have struck multibillion-dollar investment and infrastructure deals with Amazon, have already committed to renting large amounts of current and future Trainium capacity. Now, recent software improvements are prompting smaller developers to consider moving more workloads to Trainium, half a dozen people who use or work with the chips said.
Shopify Shares Slide on Predicted Revenue Slowdown
Source: The Information Shopify projected a slowdown in revenue growth in the second quarter and said that AI costs had offset efficiency gains in its software business. Shares in the commerce software company fell 9% following the results on Tuesday. Shopify’s overall first-quarter revenue grew 34% year over year to $3.2 billion, benefitting in part from growing international adoption of its payments services as well as foreign exchange.
Amazon Weighs ‘Hybrid Mode’ AI Searches on Retail Site
Amazon has so far kept its Rufus AI shopping assistant largely separate from its main commerce search bar. But the retail giant is leaving the door open to adding AI commentary to search results, bringing browsing and researching more seamlessly into the buying process.
Amazon’s Up to $20 Billion Anthropic Investment Will Be Convertible Financing
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Amazon’s Up to $20 Billion Anthropic Investment Will Be Convertible Financing
Source: The Information Amazon has disclosed new details on its recently announced investment of up to $20 billion in Anthropic. The deal will take the form of a convertible financing facility, the company said in a filing on Thursday, which Anthropic can start drawing down on once Amazon starts delivering certain compute milestones. Anthropic will receive cash in exchange for issuing convertible notes to Amazon, the filing said.
AWS Revenue Grows 28% in First Quarter
Source: The Information Amazon Web Services’ revenue rose 28% in the first quarter to $37.6 billion, the cloud giant’s fastest growth rate in nearly four years. Amazon’s overall net sales increased 17% to $181.5 billion in the first quarter, an acceleration in growth from 14% in the fourth quarter. Growth also accelerated in Amazon’s retail division and advertising business.
OpenAI Models, Codex Now Available in AWS Bedrock
Source: The Information OpenAI models will finally be available on Amazon Web Services, the companies said Tuesday, a day after OpenAI and Microsoft announced new terms in their long-standing partnership that freed other cloud providers to sell OpenAI’s models with fewer restrictions. OpenAI’s 5.4 model is now available in limited preview on AWS and 5.5, the latest model, will be available in the coming weeks, AWS CEO Matt Garman said at a San Francisco event.
OpenAI’s AWS Push Comes As Customers Embrace Rivals
Amazon has touted a deal to finally bring OpenAI to its Amazon Web Services cloud unit with a new offering geared toward running AI agents. But some AWS customers have shrugged at the announcement, in part because they’ve come to rely on other model makers in the three years since OpenAI set off the AI boom.
Meta Signs Deal to Use Amazon’s CPUs for Agentic Workloads
Source: The Information Meta and Amazon announced a deal on Friday for Meta to use Amazon’s Graviton chips. The deal, which a spokesperson said will total several billion dollars over multiple years, comes as Meta has been spending heavily on chips and cloud storage as it tries to turn itself into an AI powerhouse. Amazon’s Graviton chips are a CPU designed for general computing, unlike GPUs which are specific for training AI models.
The ‘Tokenmaxxing’ Tide May Already Be Turning
At tech giants like Meta Platforms, employees may have embraced the idea of “tokenmaxxing” as a way to show off how dedicated they are to using AI in their jobs. Don’t expect businesses beyond the deepest-pocketed tech giants to follow their lead, though.
Amazon Considers Selling AI Chips Beyond AWS
Source: The Information Amazon’s chip business has reached an annual revenue run rate of more than $20 billion, CEO Andy Jassy said on Thursday in his annual shareholder letter, up from the more than $10 billion Jassy disclosed on an analyst call in February. Amazon sells access to standard Graviton CPU chips as well as Trainium chips, which are custom-built for AI, through its Amazon Web Services cloud business.
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