<div>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        Amazon has entered a strategic partnership with Embention, a drone component and autopilot provider, to enhance the safety of Amazon's Prime Air drone delivery initiative.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Embention will provide safety-centric software and hardware to Amazon's Prime Air drones.&nbsp;
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        <b>Analyst QuickTake: </b>
        Amazon's latest 
        <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14505">
          Prime Air drone, &ldquo;MK30,&rdquo;
        </a>
         is set to debut later this year, designed for dense suburban delivery areas. Currently, the company is conducting delivery flights in College Station, Texas, using its existing drone model. The company also had operations in Lockeford, California, but it was discontinued 
        <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28707">
          earlier this month
        </a>
        . It has planned to launch the service in Tolleson, Arizona, later this year and also to expand the service to Amazon Prime customers in 
        <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22843">
          the UK and Italy
        </a>
         once the MK30 model is live.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <p>
    <a href="https://dronedj.com/2024/05/01/embention-amazon-prime-air-drone/">
      DroneDJ
    </a>
  </p>
</div>


Last-mile Delivery Automation

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

INCUMBENTS_PRESENT

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 <p>Amazon has partnered with Embention, a provider of drone components and autopilot, to improve the safety of its Prime Air drone delivery service. Embention will supply safety-focused software and hardware to Amazon's Prime Air drones.</p>
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake:<br>
 </b> Amazon's latest <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/14505"> Prime Air drone, “MK30,” </a> is set to debut later this year, designed for dense suburban delivery areas. Currently, the company is conducting delivery flights in College Station, Texas, using its existing drone model. The company also had operations in Lockeford, California, but it was discontinued <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/28707"> earlier this month </a> . It has planned to launch the service in Tolleson, Arizona, later this year and also to expand the service to Amazon Prime customers in <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/22843"> the UK and Italy </a> once the MK30 model is live.</p>

Amazon partners with Embention to enhance safety of Prime Air drones

Exploring the limitless possibilities of AI

Generative AI Applications

<div>
 
 <p>Amazon Web Services (AWS) has unveiled "Amazon Q", an AI-based service designed to expedite software development and maximize the use of internal data. This service consists of two main components: Amazon Q Developer and Amazon Q Business.</p>
 <p>Amazon Q offers real-time coding advice, has agents that can autonomously perform a variety of tasks such as software upgrades and feature implementation, provides vulnerability scanning and remedial suggestions for security, and aids in improving the AWS environment by diagnosing issues, optimizing SQL queries, and suggesting best architectural practices.</p> 
 <p>In addition, Amazon introduced Amazon Q Apps, a feature of Amazon Q Business that enables employees to create their own GenAI apps for automating routine tasks, using natural language.</p>
 
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake:<br>
 </b> Amazon Q was <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/24426"> launched </a> in November last year in a public preview. AWS claims that the tool can considerably enhance developer productivity and aid business users in making faster decisions. The examples provided suggest that Amazon Q can increase employee productivity by more than 80%, minimize tedious tasks for developers and coders, and provide specific insights and recommendations to improve business operations.</p>

Amazon Web Services announces general availability of AI assistant 'Amazon Q'

More important now than ever, telehealth will long outlast the pandemic that drove its growth.

Telehealth

<div>
 
 <p>Walmart has recently announced the closure of its Walmart Health and Walmart Health Virtual Care divisions due to the lack of financial sustainability. Having started in 2019, Walmart Health operated 51 health centers across five states. The increasing operation costs and a challenging reimbursement environment have made the business unprofitable, leading to this decision.</p>
 
 <p>The closure's specifics, including the dates to shut down each center, have not been decided yet. Until then, the currently operational centers will continue to offer their services.</p>
  
 <p>In the meantime, Walmart will use the experiences gained from Walmart Health to continue providing health and wellness services through its almost 4,600 pharmacies and around 3,000 vision centers. The company also plans to introduce more services like the Walmart Healthcare Research Institute, among other health programs.</p>
 
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake:<br>
 </b> This closure marks the latest downsizing of virtual healthcare operations by prominent digital health providers in the recent past. Just last week, UnitedHealthcare announced the <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/28844"> closure </a> of its virtual care business, a decision that was driven by business profitability concerns. In October 2023, Walgreens also announced the planned <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/22774"> closure of several of its VillageMD clinics </a> , and in August 2022, Amazon announced the <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/12594"> closure of its Amazon Care offering </a> in favor of pivoting toward its <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/11801"> acquisition of One Medical </a> for a more complete offering. This string of closures could suggest that big-name healthcare providers might reconsider their entries into the retail healthcare space and reassess strategies to maintain profitability.</p>

Walmart closes Health and Virtual Care Centers due to unprofitability

Empowering Tomorrow's Innovations with Generative AI Infrastructure

Generative AI Infrastructure

<div>
 
 <p>AI startup Cohere, based in Toronto, has established a partnership with Amazon to integrate Command R+ and Command R into Amazon's cloud platform, Bedrock. These models are crafted for extensive context assignments such as advanced retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with citations to reduce hallucinations and multi-step tool use to automate intricate business activities and worldwide business operations. Furthermore, these models offer multilingual support in 10 languages.</p>
 
</div>

Cohere partners with Amazon to incorporate Command R+ and Command R to Amazon Bedrock

Foundation Models

<div>
 
 <p>Cohere, a Toronto-based AI startup, has formed a partnership with Amazon to integrate Command R+ and Command R into Bedrock, Amazon's cloud platform. These models are developed for complex tasks such as advanced retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with citation support to lessen hallucinations, utilisation of multi-step tools for automating intricate business tasks, and worldwide business operations management. Additionally, these models support multiple languages, specifically ten languages.</p> 

</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake:<br>
</b> Cohere released a <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/27502"> Command R </a> model last month and a <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/28198"> Command R+ </a> model earlier this month targeting enterprise applications. Cohere has been particularly active this month with several other releases, including the launch of a private beta for embedding the model, <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/28509"> Cohere Compass </a> , the <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/28463"> Rerank 3 </a> model for enterprise search and retrieval, and a <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/28789"> developer toolkit </a> to build AI applications faster.</p>

<div>
 
 <p>The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is set to carry out investigations on the recent Artificial Intelligence (AI) takeovers by tech giants Microsoft and Amazon. The impending examination is the result of prevalent concerns about possible disruption of the competitive balance within the AI sector.</p>
 <p>Specifically, the probe will cast an eye into Microsoft's partnership with Mistral AI, an open-source originator of foundational models. It will also consider the software company's poaching of crucial staff from Inflection AI, which is the creator of the chatbot named Pi.&nbsp;</p>
 <p>The CMA will also delve into Amazon's mammoth investment, estimated to be around 4 billion dollars, in the AI newcomer, Anthropic. The decision regarding this inquisition is reliant on feedback from 'concerned third parties.' These pieces of input will dictate whether this preliminary examination will elevate into a full-scale antitrust investigation.</p>
 
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake:<br>
 </b> This month, EU antitrust regulators also looked into <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/28613"> Microsoft's USD 13 billion investment in OpenAI </a> and concluded that it is not an acquisition and does not require a formal investigation. Moreover, earlier this year, the European Commission initiated a competition investigation into Microsoft's multibillion-dollar <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/25468"> investment in OpenAI </a> . <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/27024"> Microsoft's partnership with Mistral AI </a> was also under scrutiny from the EU in February and <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/26068"> Italy's Data Protection Authority issued a warning to OpenAI </a> that its chatbot ChatGPT was supposedly breaching data protection rules in January.&nbsp;</p>

UK regulators to investigate AI deals by Microsoft and Amazon

<div>
 
 <p>Cloud-based data platform Snowflake has launched Arctic LLM, an AI model for generating database code. This model, available for both research and commercial use under the Apache 2.0 license, uses a mixture of experts (MoE) architecture and is capable of focusing only on 17 billion of its 480 billion parameters at any given time, generating 128 expert models.</p>
 <p>Arctic LLM model can be accessed through Snowflake Cortex and AWS. Snowflake's data platform serves for data management and analytics, and is engineered to operate efficiently in the cloud. The platform allows organizations to explore, share and utilize their data effectively within a global "Data Cloud".</p>
 <p>Arctic LLM, the flagship model of Snowflake, caters to enterprise needs like developing SQL co-pilots and high-quality chatbots. Additionally, Snowflake asserts that Arctic LLM can be trained on open public web datasets at about one-eighth of the cost of similar models.</p>

</div>

Snowflake releases Arctic LLM, an enterprise-grade GenAI model

<div>
 <p>Amazon has ended its drone delivery services in Lockeford, California, yet will still operate in College Station, Texas and plans to expand to Tolleson, Arizona later this year. The reasons for discontinuing the service in Lockeford haven't been explicitly stated; however, assurance is given that all affected employees will be provided with other roles within the company. </p> 
 <p>The next location for these drone delivery services is Tolleson, a city with a population of more than 7,000. This move is just a fragment of Amazon’s larger strategy of enabling same-day deliveries. The approach combines hybrid fulfillment centers and delivery stations in specific areas to achieve this goal.</p> 
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake:<br>
</b> Amazon Prime Air has been developing drones for years and first conducted delivery trials <a href="https:<br>
//techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/amazons-prime-air-delivery-uk/"> in Cambridge, UK </a> , in late 2016 before officially expanding the service to the US market later. It commenced drone-based delivery services for Amazon Prime customers in the US in <a href="https:<br>
//thehill.com/homenews/3786630-amazon-begins-drone-deliveries-in-2-u-s-cities/"> December 2022 </a> and was available in <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/11672"> College Station </a> and <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/11050"> Lockeford. </a></p>

Amazon ends drone-based delivery services in Lockeford, California; to launch service in Tolleson, Arizona

<div>
 <p>Amazon Bedrock is partnering with Anthropic, universally supporting Anthropic's Claude 3 AI model (Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku). This addition to Bedrock allows users to build and implement GenAI applications, fitting Amazon's three-tier strategy for AI, which includes providing tools for developers and creating AI applications for end-users.</p>
 <p>Under the partnership, Anthropic uses AWS as its main cloud provider and plans to offer future versions of its foundation models on Bedrock. Amazon believes this collaboration will enhance customer experience by advancing GenAI technology.</p>
</div>

Amazon Bedrock incorporates all versions of Anthropic’s Claude 3 AI model to improve GenAI capabilities

<div>

 <p>The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has expressed concern over the dominant control of large tech firms, Google, Amazon, and Meta, in the area of foundation models (FMs). The CMA suggests this concentration of control could lead to negative implications on competition, consumer option, and innovation in AI-related sectors. The agency has highlighted the chance of these monopolies unfavorably influencing the FM markets by potentially reducing consumer choice and quality while driving up prices.</p>
 <p>In addition, the British Government and the Republic of Korea have publicized the dates for the second AI summit, scheduled to occur on May 21 and 22 in Seoul. The UK Government is focused on establishing binding requirements for FMs and has committed to injecting EUR 100 million (approximately USD 107 million) into research hubs and frameworks centered around AI.</p>

</div>

All Updates

Amazon partners with Embention to enhance safety of Prime Air drones

Amazon Web Services announces general availability of AI assistant 'Amazon Q'

Walmart closes Health and Virtual Care Centers due to unprofitability

Cohere partners with Amazon to incorporate Command R+ and Command R to Amazon Bedrock

Cohere partners with Amazon to incorporate Command R+ and Command R to Amazon Bedrock

UK regulators to investigate AI deals by Microsoft and Amazon

Snowflake releases Arctic LLM, an enterprise-grade GenAI model

Amazon ends drone-based delivery services in Lockeford, California; to launch service in Tolleson, Arizona

Amazon Bedrock incorporates all versions of Anthropic’s Claude 3 AI model to improve GenAI capabilities

UK watchdog issues warning on AI foundation models market dominance