The limits are “arbitrary” and suggest the AWS doesn’t have enough server capacity or is reserving some of it for large customers, The Information said Monday (April 21) in a report that cited four AWS customers and two consulting firms who customers use AWS.

Some customers using AWS’ Bedrock application programming interface (API) service have seen error messages with growing frequency over the past year and a half, according to the report. The report also quoted an AWS enterprise customer that said it hasn’t experienced any constraints.

AWS Senior PR Manager, Emerging Tech Kate Vorys told The Information that the company has tens of thousands of customers using Anthropic models through Bedrock and that the rate limits in Bedrock ensure customers can get “fair access” to AI models.

“The Information’s suggestion that rate limits are a response to capacity constraints, or that Amazon Bedrock is not equipped to support customers’ needs, is false,” Vorys said, per the report.

AWS launched Bedrock in April 2023, saying the service gives customers access to foundation models developed by AWS and other companies so they can choose the model that it best suited to their needs and use it to build their own generative AI application.

In September 2023, Amazon said it planned to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic as part of a larger collaboration between the two companies. The partnership would see Anthropic use chips from AWS, make AWS its primary cloud provider for “mission-critical workloads” and offer AWS customers access to its future generations of its foundation models.

In November, Amazon and Anthropic announced an expanded partnership that included Amazon investing another $4 billion in the AI company — bringing its total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion — and Anthropic making AWS its primary training partner.

In February, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy described AI as “the biggest opportunity since cloud and probably the biggest technology shift and opportunity in business since the internet,” adding that the company was doubling down on AI investments with a $26 billion capital expenditure for Q4 2024 dedicated to developing AI capabilities for AWS and an expectation to keep that level of spending consistent throughout 2025.

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Interviewed on CNBC, which shared the video on its website, Jassy said sellers may not have the margin to absorb the tariffs themselves.

“So, I think they’ll try and pass the cost on,” Jassy said.

Asked about reports that Amazon has cut back on its purchases from China, Jassy said the company is doing everything it can to keep prices as low as possible for its customers.

“We’ve done some strategic forward inventory buys, to get as many items as makes sense for customers at lower prices,” Jassy said. “There are some cases where we have deals that were negotiated that weren’t done, where we’ll renegotiate terms to make it easier for customers to have lower prices. So, we’re going to do everything we can to keep prices as low as possible.”

Because the tariffs are still new and are in flux, Amazon hasn’t seen any meaningful change in consumer behavior, Jassy said. Customers have not stopped buying, and in some cases may be buying ahead to avoid tariffs, but it’s hard to tell yet.

In its AWS cloud computing business, the company purchases parts from all over the world, and that business “very significantly” diversified its supply chain, starting five years ago, Jassy said.

“We have components from everywhere, it’s not just one country, but we have such high demand right now for AWS and AI, growth is so significant that we don’t see any attenuation in demand and we’re going to keep building,” Jassy said.

It was reported Wednesday (April 9) that Amazon cancelled orders from multiple vendors in China and other Asian countries after President Donald Trump’s April 2 announcement that the United States planned to levy tariffs on goods from more than 180 countries.

It was also reported Wednesday that China is home to roughly half of Amazon merchants and that because of the new tariffs, these sellers are faced with a choice between hiking their prices or leaving the platform.

Among five sellers interviewed by Reuters, three said they would look at hiking prices for their exports to the U.S., while two planned to exit the market.

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The tech giant outfitted delivery vans in Europe with defibrillators to see whether those drivers could provide faster aid to heart attack victims, Bloomberg News reported Thursday (April 10), citing company documents.

According to the report, Amazon piloted the program, known as Project Pulse, in Amsterdam in 2023 before expanding it to London and the Italian city of Bologna.

The company confirmed that more than 100 drivers took part in the experiment, in which they would get alerts from citizen responder apps and arrive on site, where emergency services were already at work on the victims.

The drivers had been trained to use automatic defibrillator devices as part of a first aid course. They also enrolled in local citizen responder networks which alerted them to suspected cases of cardiac arrest nearby.

The experiment lasted several months, and Amazon is “evaluating the feedback and exploring additional opportunities for future programs,” said company spokesperson Anneliese Hellwig-Schuster.

The most immediate goal of the program, the company documents said, was to give everyone — Amazon customer or not — a better chance of surviving a heart attack, as Amazon vans are typically closer than professional first responders in many residential communities.

However, the company also recognized a PR benefit to the program, as Amazon’s drivers have been blamed for congestion, pollution and traffic accidents.

The effort is happening at a time when Amazon is using its consumer base and technological reach to become a key competitor to chief rival Walmart in the healthcare space, as PYMNTS wrote earlier this year.

“With strategic partnerships, including those with Teladoc and mental health providers, Amazon is expanding its healthcare offerings such as virtual care and chronic condition management,” that report said. “By integrating these services into its larger ecosystem, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its Health Benefits Connector, Amazon seeks to redefine healthcare access and challenge Walmart’s established position in the industry.”

Meanwhile, AWS partnered with General Catalyst to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-driven healthcare solutions, centered around personalized care, diagnostics and improving patient outcomes to allow for more accessible healthcare.

“Amazon’s 2018 acquisition of PillPack marked its strategic move into disrupting traditional pharmacy services by offering personalized, tech-enabled care,” PYMNTS added. “The company has since launched Amazon Care and Amazon Pharmacy, positioning itself to integrate healthcare services into its retail and technology infrastructure.”

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The company’s cancellations of the orders came without warning and didn’t mention tariffs, but their timing suggests they came in response to the tariffs, Bloomberg reported Wednesday (April 9), citing unnamed sources and a document it had seen.

It’s not known how widespread Amazon’s cancellations of orders are, according to the report. The report cited one vendor who said the company canceled a $500,000 order, and an eCommerce consultant who said Amazon canceled orders from “several” clients.

Amazon did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comments.

About 40% of the products sold on the company’s website are purchased by Amazon directly from vendors, while the remainder are listed on its site by third-party sellers, according to the report.

Tariffs were one of several factors that led Amazon and rival retailer Walmart to lower their first-quarter outlooks in February, PYMNTS reported at the time. The companies said other factors contributing to the weak guidance included inflation, weak consumer demand, foreign exchange challenges and a shift in consumer focus toward essentials.

On Wednesday, Walmart retracted its first-quarter operating income outlook due in part to tariff-related concerns. The company said in a press release that it wants to “maintain flexibility to invest in price as tariffs are implemented.”

The announcement came on the same day that Trump’s tariffs went into effect, impacting some of the nations that Walmart relies on to source its goods.

It was reported April 2 that Walmart was pushing suppliers in China to reduce prices to mitigate new tariffs. The retailer reportedly requested that suppliers lower their prices by up to 10% for each round of tariffs.

Executives at Levi Strauss & Co. said during a Monday (April 7) earnings call that the apparel company has dealt with tariffs by importing to the U.S. most of the product it needs for the spring and early summer before the tariffs took effect, and by using its “agile global supply chain” and deep vendor relationships.

The post Report: Amazon Cancels Orders From ‘Multiple Vendors’ After Tariffs Announcement appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The fund, which was launched in 2015 to provide venture capital funding for voice and smart devices, has also been investing in startups focused on AI-enabled hardware, generative media, smart agents, AI architectures and other projects in the AI field, according to a Wednesday (March 26) blog post from Amazon.

Amazon Alexa Fund Director Paul Bernard said in the post that Amazon and Alexa have already been at the forefront of AI, that the company sees opportunities for AI to make customers’ lives better, and that fund has expanded its focus without changing its commitment to advance the state of the art.

“Some areas we think are really exciting include next-generation assistant experiences with autonomous agents that have specialized expertise and deeper personalization; on-the-go experiences utilizing new sensors and innovative devices beyond smartphone capabilities; emerging AI architectures that will deliver improvements in cost, speed and accuracy; AI-powered media that enable new-to-world experiences across media types and interaction modes; and embedded AI technologies, which have the potential to change how machines interact with the physical world through multimodal perception, advanced reasoning systems and new sensors,” Bernard said in the post.

Four of the Amazon Alexa Fund’s latest investments include NinjaTech AI, which is working on an agentic generative AI assistant; Hedra, which is developing tools for producing video, images and audio; Ario, which has a personal AI assistant designed for parents; and HeyBoss, which has built an AI agent that can design and develop websites and apps, according to the post.

“In addition to equity capital, we build a close working relationship between portfolio companies and the many Amazon businesses and technologies that could help advance their vision,” Bernard said in the post.

Amazon has been deploying AI throughout its own operations.

The company said Wednesday that it has been adding AI-powered tools to identify counterfeit items and to help brands and sellers protect their products globally.

Amazon also plans to invest over $100 billion in capital expenditures in 2025, with the majority directed toward enhancing AI capabilities in its AWS cloud division.

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The company’s AI tools that proactively block infringements stopped more than 99% of suspected infringements before a brand had to find and report them, Amazon told PYMNTS in an email sharing highlights from its fifth Brand Protection Report.

These tools have also enabled the company to reduce by 35% the number of valid notices of infringement submitted by brands, compared to 2020, even as the number of products available in its store has continued to grow.

To hold counterfeiters accountable, Amazon has worked with brands and law enforcement on civil litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement organizations, according to the email. Since the launch of its Counterfeit Crimes Unit in 2020, Amazon has taken those actions against more than 24,000 bad actors.

In 2024, Amazon also identified, seized and disposed of more than 15 million counterfeit products.

The company has also seen increased use of its brand protection features, per the email. These includes its anti-counterfeiting tool called Project Zero, which has been used by 35,000 brands since its launch in 2019, and its Transparency program, which has enrolled more than 88,000 brands and verified as genuine more than 2.5 billion product units.

“Additionally, throughout 2024 Amazon helped brands and sellers protect their products globally with new AI-powered tools and a wide expansion of our brand protection programs to make it more difficult for bad actors to evade our detection systems, enabling us to scan our store with more nuance and understanding of context rather than just literal matches,” Amazon said in the email.

Amazon is not the only eCommerce marketplace cracking down on counterfeit products, PYMNTS reported in March 2024. A Michigan State University study released in 2023 found that nearly 7 in 10 consumers had unknowingly bought counterfeit items via eCommerce channels at least once in the previous year.

When Amazon launched its Counterfeit Crimes Unit in 2020, the company said it brought together former federal prosecutors, experienced investigators and data analysts in hopes of ensuring no counterfeit item makes it onto the eCommerce site in the first place.

The company introduced Project Zero in 2019 to detect counterfeit products by deploying advanced technology, machine learning and the knowledge brands have of their own intellectual property.

The civil litigation Amazon pursued in 2024 included a lawsuit against companies and individuals the company alleged obtained invalid trademarks or filed fake complaints to have Amazon remove their competitors from its store.

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The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in January found that Amazon was responsible for the recalls of items sold on its site. The commission had found last year that Amazon was a “distributor” of faulty products.

But as The Associated Press (AP) reported, Amazon’s suit — filed March 14 — argues that it acts as a “third-party logistics provider” and thus should not be held liable for recalls of products made and sold by those third parties.

The CPSC filed a complaint against Amazon in 2021, alleging the company was  distributing unsafe third-party products through its logistics network.

The company countered by saying the commission had no legal standing to bring the suit, arguing in a court filing that federal law does not allow the CPSC to sue a company “if it is acting as a third-party logistics provider rather than a distributor.”

In its new suit, Amazon said it had issued recall notices and some refunds shortly after the CPSC raised safety concerns years ago. The suit also argues the regulator is an “unconstitutionally structured agency” that overstepped its authority with its January directive.

“The remedies ordered by the CPSC are largely duplicative of the steps we took several years ago to protect customers, which are the same steps we take whenever we learn about unsafe products,” Amazon said in a statement sent to the AP, declining to comment further.

The suit comes one month after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would no longer support the independent status of the CPSC and two other regulators: the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The DOJ is challenging a Supreme Court precedent set nearly 90 years ago, giving certain independent agency commissioners job security, so that they can only be removed for cause rather than at the president’s discretion. The department plans to ask the high court to overturn that ruling.

However, the DOJ now intends to ask the Supreme Court to overturn that ruling as it applies to regulators who exercise “substantial executive power,” Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In other Amazon news, PYMNTS wrote last week about efforts by the company — and rival Walmart — to employ artificial intelligence (AI).

“Amazon is focusing on customer engagement and automation while Walmart leverages AI for merchant efficiency and product sourcing,” that report said. “Meanwhile, Amazon’s privacy changes in its smart device lineup underscore the broader debate surrounding consumer data rights in an AI-driven world.”

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Speaking on the Tuesday (March 18) episode of the Automotive News Daily Drive podcast, Jin said that adding used inventory for dealers is “really our next biggest milestone here.”

Amazon wants to make sure dealers can sell as much of their inventory as they want through Amazon Autos channel, Jin said.

Asked how the company plans to compete against the existing sites on which dealers can list their used vehicles, Jin said Amazon sees its offering as a way for dealers to have “a fully online eCommerce channel,” as opposed to a strictly lead generation site.

“We think that’s valuable because demographic customer data tells us that more and more customers are very much comfortable with a fully online car transaction, even though that’s a very big purchase,” Jin said. “Customers want an omnichannel experience. It takes folks a while to make a decision, so they may start online, they’re going to go to the dealer maybe to look and have a test drive, they’ll come back, think about it and then finish the purchase online. We see that a lot.”

Amazon aims to enable the online transaction and make it very smooth, Jin said.

The company began rolling out the Amazon Autos offering in December, saying in a press release that it was partnering with automotive dealers and brands to bring the Amazon experience to the car-buying process.

Amazon launched this digital shopping experience in partnership with Hyundai, enabling shoppers in 48 U.S. cities to buy new Hyundai vehicles from local participating dealers on Amazon.

The company said at the time that Amazon Autos planned to add more Hyundai dealers as well as other manufacturers, brands and cities.

Amazon Autos allows car shoppers to browse, order, finance and schedule pickup of the vehicle from their local participating dealer, all within the familiar Amazon store. They can also get an instant valuation and trade for their existing vehicle.

For dealers, this offering provides a new sales channel and a way to streamline the steps involved in the process, Amazon said.

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As CNBC reported Wednesday (March 12), attorneys for the regulator have asked a judge to hold off on the start of a trial into whether Amazon had tricked customers into signing up for the company’s Prime program.

The reason? Staging and budget shortfalls, Jonathan Cohen, an attorney for the FTC, told Judge John Chun during a status hearing in federal court in Seattle ahead of the trial, which had been scheduled to begin Sept. 22.

“We have lost employees in the agency, in our division and on our case team,” Cohen said, asking the judge for a two-month continuance.

As the CNBC report noted, the agency’s request is happening as the White House’s new Department of Government Efficiency is pushing to reduce spending, an effort that has included layoffs of tens of thousands of federal employees.

The judge asked Cohen how the FTC’s situation “will be different in two months” if the regulator is “in crisis now, as far as resources.”

Cohen replied by saying that he “cannot guarantee if things won’t be even worse.” He even said it’s possible that the FTC may have to move to another office “unexpectedly,” which could hinder its ability to prepare for the trial.

“But there’s a lot of reason to believe … we may have been through the brunt of it, at least for a little while,” Cohen said.

As PYMNTS reported last month, the FTC has of late made moves that suggest that the business world’s hopes that the Trump administration would take a more relaxed approach to regulation may be unfounded.

For example, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said last month the agency would continue to use the merger guidelines established by the commission and Department of Justice in 2023.

The same day, Ferguson named David Shaw as the FTC’s principal deputy director, describing him as “an experienced antitrust lawyer with expertise in high-stakes litigation and contentious merger review.”

The FTC sued Amazon in June of 2023, alleging that the tech giant had employed practices that “tricked and trapped” customers into signing up for Prime recurring subscriptions.

The suit argued that Amazon has used “dark patterns” to dupe consumers into enrolling into the program, while also making it difficult to cancel their subscriptions.

The regulator also alleged that while Amazon had revamped its cancellation process for at least some subscribers, “the primary purpose of the Prime cancellation process was not to enable subscribers to cancel, but rather to thwart them.”

Amazon has said the FTC’s case has no merit, and — per the CNBC report — also opposed the agency’s request to delay the trial.

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As the Financial Times (FT) reported Wednesday (Feb. 26), the tech giant is expected to spend $35 billion on its retail network — which includes robotics-powered warehouses — to drive efficiencies and improve delivery speeds amid rising competition from the likes of Temu.

Although most of the $100 billion the company will spend this year will go to artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives, roughly a quarter will be earmarked for automation in Amazon’s eCommerce business, the report added, citing analyst estimates.

“We’re seeing today how fruitful this technology is in transforming our everyday,” Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, told the FT, adding that the company plans to “continue to invest” in automation.

The report notes that Amazon’s Shreveport, LA fulfillment center has already shown the types of savings automation can bring.

At this six-month-old, 3 million square foot facility, robots are involved at every stage of fulfillment, helping the company cut costs by 25% after a tenfold increase in robotics compared with its last generation of warehouses.

As PYMNTS wrote earlier this month, Amazon plans to spend $26 billion this quarter developing AI capabilities for Amazon Web Services (AWS), a level of spending expected to remain consistent throughout this year.

That type of spending is in line with Amazon’s Big Tech counterparts, which are collectively set to spend $320 billion in 2025 as they embark on — as Microsoft President Brad Smith put it in a recent blog post — a new industrial revolution.

“However, AI requires hefty investments,” PYMNTS wrote recently. “Training large language models uses thousands of GPUs (each Nvidia GPU costs about $10,000 or more) or specialized AI chips for a total of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Running these AI models at scale also requires high-performance data centers, which need more servers and require more cooling and maintenance.”

In other robotics/AI news, PYMNTS this week examined the potential of household robots following the debut of new robots from AI startup Figure.

Jenny Shern, general manager at robot builder NexCOBOT, told PYMNTS humanoid robots face more complex challenges than their industrial cousins.

“Traditional industrial robotic arms with vision systems primarily rely on preprogrammed instructions to execute tasks. This works well in factory environments where applications are repetitive and goal-oriented,” she said

However, “implementing humanoid robots into household settings is a more complex advancement because, unlike factories, household environments are highly dynamic, and tasks will vary significantly from one home to another,” Shern added.

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