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Supermarket Sweep

Grocery purchases on Amazon have more than doubled in 10 years

37% of US Amazon customers included traditional grocery store items in their most recent order.

Rani Molla

Getting people to buy grocery items online has long been a tall order. But it’s one that Amazon may be on the cusp of cracking.

Last week, the e-commerce giant sent fear through the hearts of grocery store investors when it announced that Prime subscribers across the country could access free same-day delivery for perishable grocery items for the first time. “This marks one of the most significant grocery expansions for Amazon,” the company said.

New data shared by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) shows that 37% of US Amazon customers purchased traditional grocery store items — perishable and nonperishable — in their latest order. That’s up 7 percentage points from five years ago and is more than double what it was a decade ago, according to the firm’s surveys.

While only a small percentage of those grocery items likely included perishables — the share of grocery shoppers on Amazon who used Amazon Fresh as a delivery method was just 3% — any headway into the grocery category is major.

“It’s not easy to persuade US consumers to change grocery buying habits, much less to persuade them to buy that stuff online and get it delivered, so that’s quite an achievement,” CIRP partner and cofounder Michael Levin told Sherwood News.

Amazon’s latest announcement will only send its portion of the grocery store market up.

“Since the early days of supermarkets, premium perimeter offerings bring in customers who then shop the center-of-the-store,” the CIRP report reads, noting that Amazon has taken the opposite approach with perishables. “Amazon is gaining center-of-the-store market share to tee up its ultimate perimeter business.”

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FT: Meta considering “tens of billions” in new capital to fund AI

Just days after Google announced a monster $85 billion upsized equity raise, the extremely profitable Meta is seeking to sell “tens of billions of dollars” in stock, according to a new report from the Financial Times.

Meta is planning on spending between $125 billion and $145 billion on AI capital expenditure this year alone.

Shares dropped more than 5% on the news.

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FT: Anthropic staff helping the NSA use Mythos for offensive cyberattacks

Anthropic’s Mythos AI model was deemed too dangerous to release to the public, with the company citing its ability to orchestrate novel cyberattacks.

And that’s just what the National Security Agency is doing, with the help of Anthropic staff embedded at the agency, according to a report from the Financial Times.

Only a small number of companies and US allies have been given access to the advanced model, which means America’s adversaries have not had the chance to shore up their defenses against the AI model’s new offensive capabilities.

The arrangement is especially unusual as the Pentagon has deemed Anthropic’s AI a national security supply chain risk — effectively blacklisting it for defense work — in response to the company’s refusal to allow its technology to be used for any legal application, which could include autonomous killing or mass surveillance. Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the determination.

Only a small number of companies and US allies have been given access to the advanced model, which means America’s adversaries have not had the chance to shore up their defenses against the AI model’s new offensive capabilities.

The arrangement is especially unusual as the Pentagon has deemed Anthropic’s AI a national security supply chain risk — effectively blacklisting it for defense work — in response to the company’s refusal to allow its technology to be used for any legal application, which could include autonomous killing or mass surveillance. Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the determination.

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Longtime Tesla bear JPMorgan upgraded Tesla and raised its price target to $475 from $145

For more than a decade, JPMorgan was Wall Streets most stubborn Tesla skeptic, anchored by auto analyst Ryan Brinkman’s strict focus on traditional car fundamentals and near-term delivery numbers.

But JPM recently handed coverage of the stock to a new analyst, Rajat Gupta, who is throwing that playbook out the window. In a note Friday, the firm upgraded Tesla to neutral from underweight and raised its price target 228% to $475 from $145. (The analyst consensus on FactSet is $403.) Instead of focusing on the company’s struggling vehicle business, the new analyst is orienting himself more toward Tesla’s idea of the future, now modeling Tesla’s physical AI and robotaxi fleets all the way out to the year 2040.

Here are the main reasons for the capitulation:

  • Looking past the car lot: Gupta argues that Tesla is at the forefront of physical AI, entering uncharted TAMs” and therefore deserves the benefit of the doubt to be valued on LT earnings potential rather than near-term speed bumps.

  • Unmatched vertical integration: Teslas control over everything from battery cells to custom silicon gives it a massive moat. JPM notes this starting point advantage is unmatched at an industrial level scale” and “still somewhat under-appreciated and misunderstood.

  • The AWS flywheel effect: Deploying Optimus robots inside its own factories should not only lower COGS for the base automotive business, but more importantly, help validate the product at an industrial scale.” Gupta called it “a classic flywheel effect, somewhat analogous to AWS and Kiva at AMZN.

For Tesla bulls who have argued for years that this is an AI company and not a carmaker, JPM’s sudden $3.9 trillion valuation model is the ultimate validation.

skynet terminator

Anthropic ponders self-improving AI

Anthropic says Claude already writes 80% of its code. A new post asks what happens when the models can improve themselves — and whether anyone could stop them.

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