Nathan Stirk/Getty Images

AI AI AI

Why Amazon is now spending more on data centers than on e-commerce warehouses

AI is where the growth is.

7/1/24 9:51AM

Amazon, the company known quickly shipping goods to consumers from its online marketplace, is now spending more money on data centers than e-commerce warehouses, according to The Wall Street Journal. Why? In short: AI.

ISO its next “pillar” of growth

For years the company has been searching for its next “pillar of growth” to add to its first three pillars: its online marketplace, Amazon Prime membership program, and cloud-computing business Amazon Web Services. It’s hoping artificial intelligence will be a big part of that growth.

Build your own instead of competing for space

Access to data centers is a key battleground for those hoping to compete in AI, because the tech requires so much computing power.

According to a new report by real estate services company CBRE, “Large corporations face increasing difficulty securing data center capacity.” An astonishing rate of data center space is being leased before it’s even built.

So Amazon is spending even more on its own data centers in order to compete. Amazon plans to add at least 216 new data-center buildings in the next several years, according to WSJ reporting.

Everyone else is doing it

Amazon is clearly not the only one looking to AI for growth. A number of major tech companies are investing record sums on capital expenditure thanks to AI. (Companies in general can’t stop talking about AI and the topic reeks of FOMO)

Jon Keegan18h

WSJ: OpenAI IPO filing could be coming as soon as this week

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI could file for an IPO as soon as this week. The company is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the IPO, which is widely expected to be one of the largest ever. OpenAI is racing against rival Anthropic to be the first startup of the current generative-AI boom to go public.

OpenAI is targeting an IPO as soon as September, per the report.

Exclusive | OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Very Soon

Claire Yubin Oh

Git gud

20h

GitHub may have fumbled one of the biggest first-mover advantages in history

Rivals like Cursor and Claude Code are eroding GitHub’s Copilot user base, and Microsoft execs are sounding the alarm about the platform itself.

Tom Jones

hitcoin

24h

Physical attacks on cryptocurrency holders keep ticking up

Conferences, exchange chiefs, and even rumored bitcoin creators are all spending on security.

Google announces new models, glasses, agents, but investors are not impressed

At Google’s I/O developer conference, the company announced a bevy of new products, but none of it helped the stock one bit.

Jon Keegan5/19/26

Rani Molla5/19/26

Report: Tesla to build solar factory near Houston

Tesla is planning to build its solar panel manufacturing plant — an endeavor that could add up to $50 billion in value to its energy business — near Houston, Texas, Electrek reports. The plant would be located on the same site as its Megafactory, which builds Megapack battery systems.

The solar plant is part of Tesla and SpaceX’s goal of eventually putting solar-powered data centers in space.

On the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said Tesla was “going to work towards getting 100 gigawatts a year of solar cell production, integrating across the entire supply chain from raw materials all the way to finished solar panels.”

At the time, the news had sent shares of First Solar down, but subsequent reports suggest Tesla is unlikely to compete directly with the country’s leading photovoltaic panel maker, instead using much of that production internally.