Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) is under discussion with self-driving technology startup Zoox in an acquisition attempt that would value the company at less than the $3.2 billion it had when it raised funding in 2018. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the companies are still in talks, and a finalized agreement might not be reached for several weeks. Zoox was founded to develop software and hardware needed to create an ecosystem of electric-powered self-driving taxis, which users can call on via a smartphone application. Zoox's idea is built on three distinct trends within the transport industry – autonomous driving, vehicle electrification and on-demand cab-hailing. It is here that Zoox might have bitten off more than it could chew. All three trends have highly specialized and extremely well-funded startups, mobility businesses, and automakers fighting to gain space within individual markets. For a startup like Zoox, realizing its vision meant massive financial injections. But as investors understood the complexity and financial burden of developing self-driving technology, they increasingly shifted their investment towards established market leaders like Alphabet Inc's (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) Waymo and General Motors' (NYSE: GM) Cruise, leaving early- and mid-stage startups in the lurch. Amazon's interest in Zoox is in line with its investment in self-driving startup Aurora Innovation; it was part of the company's $530 million investment in 2019. Amazon also invested heavily in electric car manufacturer Rivian, while also placing an order for 100,000 delivery vans from the company by 2030. For Amazon, investing in transport-related innovation is crucial as a bulk of its operational expenses are shipping-related costs. In 2019, Amazon's shipping costs were roughly 12% of its gross merchandise value (GMV). The company is also expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 24% till 2023. Without any noticeable improvement in shipping operations, Amazon's shipping costs will amount to $90 billion by 2023.Morgan Stanley's Brian Nowak believes that Amazon could save over $20 billion in annual recurring shipping costs if the company continues to focus on self-driving technology. "We think autonomous technology is a natural extension of Amazon's efforts to build its own third-party logistics network," said Nowak.Though vehicles with SAE Level 5 automation are still under development, existing Level 4 automation can be used by long-haul trucks to move freight. This is because highways are generally less chaotic than city roads, providing an easier-to-navigate driving environment that can be handled by technology's current level of sophistication.That said, Amazon's involvement in the autonomous vehicle (AV) space would not necessarily stop at providing for its own logistics needs. If Amazon can perfect self-driving technology, it can essentially create its own on-demand cab-hailing platform and deploy robo-taxis as direct competition to the likes of Uber and Lyft. Running robo-trucks on American highways could also be a starting point for Amazon to expand into the logistics forwarding market.The market leaders within the AV segment have been Waymo and Cruise, both profiting from being one of the earliest to the business. Extensive simulated driving tests and a large number of pilot runs on city roads have helped the companies incrementally improve their technology.As of 2019, Waymo vehicles clocked 13,219 miles on average before they required human intervention, while Cruise vehicles clocked 12,221 miles on average before taking assistance. No other competitor in the market has yet crossed 5,000 miles on average without needing human intervention in an actual physical driving environment. See more from Benzinga * Many SMEs Unsure How To Benefit From New USMCA Trade Pact With Mexico And Canada * Canada Turns To Maritime To Help Move 1.6 Billion Pieces Of PPE * Forty Containers Fall Off APL England(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

HBO Max wants to give consumers choice which is why it will roll out an ad-supported version of its streaming service next year.

If Facebook could capture roughly 2% of global e-commerce revenue by 2023, the company could see some $7 billion in incremental net income from Shops, Citi’s Jason Bazinet estimates.

Restrictions on sales of non-essential items during the COVID-19 lockdown hurt the two e-commerce giants in India.

The Dow and S&P 500 rose on Wednesday, powered by banks stocks, as optimism for an economic recovery as lockdowns continued to ease overshadowed worries of simmering U.S.-China tensions. Declines in technology shares limited the advance, with the Nasdaq underperforming the other major indexes. In contrast, heavyweights Amazon.com, Microsoft Corp and Facebook Inc, which have led the recent rally, were down.

The company has long been an innovator in artificial intelligence. Now it wants to add additional autonomous vehicle technology to its portfolio.

(Bloomberg) -- Adobe Inc., the maker of Photoshop, said some of its applications were knocked offline Wednesday by “major” technical issues.There were four major issues, down from 13 earlier, and 12 minor issues affecting Creative Cloud, Experience Cloud, Adobe Services and the Adobe Experience Platform as of 2 p.m. in New York, the San Jose, California-based company said. Adobe’s engineers were also trying to resolve other potential issues in progress.“We’re working urgently to get back online as soon as possible,” Adobe told users in a tweet. A spokesman said the technical issues aren’t security related.Major public-cloud vendors Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google reported no service issues, so the problems appear to be isolated with the software company. Adobe’s shares declined 1.6% to $370.76. The stock gained 14% this year through Tuesday’s close.Millions of people rely on Adobe’s creative and document apps. The company said its Creative Cloud apps have been downloaded 376 million times, and users opened 250 million PDFs with an Adobe program in the last year. Many businesses use Adobe’s marketing, advertising and analytics tools, which were disrupted by the technical problems.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Yahoo Finance catches up with HP's CEO Enrique Lores fresh off its second fiscal quarter earnings report.

What if Amazon.com decided to enter the ride-sharing market? Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak floated that idea in response to a report that Amazon is in “advanced talks:” to acquire Zoox, a company working on autonomous vehicles.

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The S&P 500 edged higher in choppy trading on Wednesday as optimism over a pick up in business activity helped offset worries over simmering U.S.-China tensions, although gains were capped by losses in technology stocks. Bank stocks, which typically track improvements in the economic outlook, provided the biggest boost to the benchmark index, sending it past the psychologically important mark of 3,000 points in intraday trading for the second day. In contrast, heavyweights Amazon.com, Microsoft Corp and Facebook Inc, which have led a recent rally, were down between 1% and 2%, while healthcare and technology - outperformers in the coronavirus-led market slump - were among the S&P 500 sectors in the red.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared Hong Kong to be no longer autonomous from China Wednesday, a move that further increases U.S.-China tensions and could pave the way for changes to U.S. policy toward Hong Kong that could have massive ramifications for the Hong Kong, Chinese and American economies.

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Cheap planes and a need for more capacity could be a perfect opportunity for Amazon to snatch up new jets for its delivery services.

Click here to read the full article. WarnerMedia's HBO Max is now live, packing in twice the content of legacy HBO for the same $14.99 monthly price. But for now, it's unavailable on Roku and Amazon's streaming platforms, which represent more than 80 million TV households.Currently, you can't access HBO Max on Roku or Amazon Fire TV devices, and if you've subscribed to HBO through Roku Channels or Prime Video Channels you're also out of luck. That's frustrating for customers who use those platforms, and it obviously will inhibit HBO Max's initial uptake. Talks between WarnerMedia and the two companies continue, but there's no indication when the parties may come to any agreements.Pre-launch, WarnerMedia had secured a dozen distribution deals for HBO Max. Then on Wednesday the company announced that it also sealed a pact with Comcast for the streaming service.But the absence of Roku and Fire TV platforms represents a huge gap in HBO Max's reach: Roku had 39.8 million active user accounts at the end of March (and that's higher now). In January, Amazon said Fire TV had over 40 million active users; the company says that number is higher now but isn't providing an updated figure.According to Amazon, nearly 5 million HBO subscribers currently access the premium service through Prime Video Channels.Others offering HBO Max include AT&T (WarnerMedia's parent), Apple, Google and YouTube TV, Hulu, Charter, Samsung, Altice USA, Cox, Verizon and the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC), as well as for Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4.What's the stumbling block for Roku and Amazon?According to sources, besides haggling over revenue-sharing terms, a key objection the OTT companies have with HBO Max is the shift to an app-based distribution model, in which all of the content is funneled through WarnerMedia's walled garden -- instead of through the Roku and Amazon channel platforms. Meanwhile, there are issues to be resolved about how advertising will be divvied up for an ad-supported, lower-cost version of HBO Max that WarnerMedia plans to launch in 2021.John Stankey, AT&T's incoming CEO and former head of WarnerMedia, spoke about the lack of HBO Max deals with Roku and Amazon in an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box" earlier Wednesday."Roku and Amazon at this point have elected to not be distributors," he said. "We must be doing something right if somebody believes we are now starting to be more in conflict with their business, so I don't necessarily take that as a bad sign."Despite the absence of Roku and Amazon, he added, "We have a broad list of distributors who are working with us."Stankey said that the irony in the current standoffs, from where he sits, is that when the U.S. government sued to block AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, the concern was that the telco would withhold content from distributors. "What we have now is we have new distributors, new technology distributors, who are electing to not distribute the product," Stankey said. He also complained that the antitrust challenge to AT&T's Time Warner bid set back the company's ability to pursue its bigger direct-to-consumer strategy for a year and a half.In a statement about HBO Max, a Roku spokesman told Variety, "We are focused on mutually positive distribution agreements with all new OTT services that will deliver a quality user experience to viewers in the more than 40 million households that choose Roku to access their favorite programs and discover new content. Unfortunately we haven’t reached agreement yet with HBO Max. While not on our platform today, we look forward to helping HBO Max in the future successfully scale their streaming business."Amazon, for its part, said in a statement: “AT&T is choosing to deny these loyal HBO customers access to the expanded catalog. We believe that if you’re paying for HBO, you’re entitled to the new programming through the method you’re already using. That’s just good customer service and that’s a priority for us."HBO Max, in which WarnerMedia plans to invest $4 billion over the next three years, launched early Wednesday with 10,000 hours of premium content (although that's less than one-third the lineups of Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime)."Our goal, frankly, is not to be Netflix -- it's to be something different," Stankey said on CNBC. "Our goal isn't to crush Netflix. It's to meet customer needs."Content on HBO Max includes all the programming on HBO; all eight "Harry Potter" movies; a slate of new originals; full seasons of “Friends,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Rick and Morty,” “Sesame Street” and “Pretty Little Liars”; all films from iconic animation house Studio Ghibli; and movies from Warner Bros., New Line and DC like “Wonder Woman,” “The Matrix,” “Joker,” “Suicide Squad,” “Casablanca,” “Crazy Rich Asians” and “The Wizard of Oz.”WarnerMedia announced additional TV shows and movies coming to HBO Max in June, including all seasons of "South Park." In addition, HBO Max has content from other WarnerMedia brands, including CNN, TNT, TBS, truTV, Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Crunchyroll, Rooster Teeth and Looney Tunes.

Berkshire Hathaway’s (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE:BRK.B) owner Warren Buffett is the most popular investor who built his $89.9 billion net worth by investing in value companies. He was among the few who profited from the 2008 crisis. In the current Covid-19 crisis, he is holding a lot of cash as most companies are not prepared for […]

Post coronavirus it's all about location. Location, Location.

A selloff in technology stocks dragged on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq on Wednesday, with investors also cautious about brewing U.S.-China tensions at a time when policymakers are attempting to revive the global economy from a coronavirus-driven slump. Index heavyweights Amazon.com, Microsoft Corp and Facebook Inc, which have led a recent rally, were down more than 2%, while healthcare and technology - outperformers in the coronavirus-led market slump - were among the S&P 500 sectors in the red.

The latest streaming service in the fray offers ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Joker,’ ‘Friends’ and ‘The Sopranos.’

The newest entrant to the streaming wars isn't available in a wide swath of homes across the country.