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<ul class="summary-list"><li>Anthropic has emerged as one of the primary contenders in the AI arms race.</li><li>The company was founded by a group of former OpenAI employees.</li></ul>Founded by a group of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/former-openai-employees-who-left-launch-vc-backed-ai-startups-2024-1">former OpenAI employees,</a> Anthropic has emerged as a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-ai-company-amazon-betting-billions-on-anthropic-2024-3">serious contender in the race for AI dominance.</a> The flagship product is <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-models-can-learn-deceptive-behaviors-anthropic-researchers-say-2024-1">Claude</a>, an AI chatbot that rivals <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-chat-gpt-2023-1">OpenAI's ChatGPT</a>.Anthropic has <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-rivals-anthropic-perplexity-on-prowl-after-wave-exec-departures-2024-10">sought to position itself as the safer,</a> more stable alternative to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/openai">OpenAI,</a> and a company that risk-averse Fortune 500 companies can feel comfortable doing business with. That differentiation has only become more relevant as <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-implosion-investors-vcs-2024-9">OpenAI continues to be mired in chaos and infighting.</a>Anthropic has raised <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-invests-4-billion-in-anthropic-2023-9">over $7 billion</a> over the past year from tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Salesforce and is reportedly raising a new round of funding that could value the company at as much as $40 billion, <a target="_blank" href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=75da8b58b44035e03575c048e5e7b373edd291ccfea0018026509f4fae0f42b8&amp;postID=67055e480c43543ec7aec56d&amp;postSlug=here-are-the-executives-running-anthropic-right-now-2024-10&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theinformation.com%2Farticles%2Fopenai-rival-anthropic-has-floated-40-billion-valuation-in-early-talks-about-new-funding">according to The Information.</a>Business Insider has put together a list of the most important people running Anthropic right now. The list is by no means exhaustive, but it includes thought leaders and researchers who are contributing knowledge to the understanding of machine learning, as well as the business people working to build Anthropic into an AI behemoth.Dario Amodei, Co-Founder and CEOBefore leaving to start Anthropic, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-cost-10-billion-train-ai-years-language-model-2024-4">Amodei</a> served as vice president of research at OpenAI where he led the development of breakthrough large language models like GPT-2 and GPT-3. His foundational research on reinforcement learning and scaling laws helped revolutionize the AI industry. Since its founding, Amodei has helped <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-universal-basic-income-ubi-ai-inequality-2024-6">establish Anthropic</a> as the safer, more business-friendly alternative to his former employer, OpenAI.Dario holds a Ph.D. in biophysics and computational neuroscience from Princeton University, where he was a Hertz Fellow. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford University School of Medicine, focusing on applying machine learning to biomedical data.Daniela Amodei, Co-Founder and PresidentAfter her career in international development, Amodei was in charge of risk management and compliance at Stripe before serving as vice president of safety and policy at OpenAI. She's <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-cofounder-daniela-amodei-trust-safety-generative-artificial-intelligence-2023-4">been in the trenches</a> working to create sager, steerable, and reliable AI since the early days of this nascent industry.She, along with her brother Dario, was part of the team that left OpenAI with the goal of creating a more responsible AI company. Today, she oversees Anthropic's day-to-day operations and has been instrumental in shaping the company's defining ethos around safety and security.Jack Clark, Co-Founder and Head of PolicyClark made a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-cofounder-artificial-intelligence-newsletter-import-ai-2023-4">name for himself as a journalist at Bloomberg,</a> where he was quite possibly the world's first and, for a while only, neural networks reporter.He would go on to serve as policy director at OpenAI and now leads a team at Anthropic that produces research into AI bias and persuasion and conducts critical red-teaming that pushes the boundaries of understanding around AI-related risk. He has proven himself to be one of AI's most eloquent thought leaders, and his newsletter, Import AI, has become required reading for anyone interested in tackling big questions in machine learning.Jared Kaplan, Co-Founder and Chief Science OfficerKaplan, who boasts a PhD from Harvard, spent 15 years as a theoretical physicist in academia and continues to lecture on deep learning at Johns Hopkins University. While at OpenAI, he helped create GPT-3 and Codex, and his revolutionary work on AI scaling laws has been foundational for the entire AI industry.Kaplan helped pioneer Constitutional AI, an approach championed by Anthropic that aims to create AI systems that are constrained by and aligned with a set of predetermined principles.Chris Olah, Co-Founder and Research Lead, Mechanistic InterpretabilityOlah is a researcher in the field of mechanistic interpretability, which is essentially the science of translating neural networks into algorithms that are useful to humans. Olah's research focuses on mapping out the artificial "neurons" that are part of AI models. His team achieved a significant milestone earlier this year by successfully identifying distinct neuron clusters within Anthropic's most advanced models that are associated with specific concepts and tasks, such as detecting bias or identifying fraudulent emails.By selectively activating or deactivating these neuron groups, the team demonstrated the ability to modulate the model's behavior.Sam McCandlish, Co-Founder and Chief Technology OfficerMcCandlish oversees Anthropic's Large Language Model (LLM) Organization, which encompasses the Training, Inference, and Core Resources divisions. He also serves as the company's Responsible Scaling Officer, helping design and implement Anthropic's <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropics-responsible-scaling-policy">responsible scaling policy</a>.McCandlish was a former research lead at OpenAI, where he spearheaded AI Safety initiatives and pioneered scaling laws that influenced technological breakthroughs like GPT-3. He holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Stanford University, specializing in quantum gravity and tensor networks, and an MS in Physics from Brandeis University, where he explored active matter to quantum field theory.Tom Brown, Co-Founder and Head of Core ResourcesBrown was part of the technical staff at OpenAI and Google DeepMind, and, like Anthropic's other founders, his research, particularly his work on how computational power influences model performance, has helped lay the groundwork for the entire AI industry.At Anthropic, Brown is focused on the compute side of LLM development, overseeing the company's use of scarce, valuable GPUs and leading its strategic partnerships with cloud and chip providers. Brown is also an alum of the legendary tech incubator <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/y-combinator-startups-application-review-demo-day-yc-w22-2022-12">Y Combinator.</a>Krishna Rao, Chief Financial OfficerAs any emerging AI company can attest, conducting groundbreaking research isn't enough. Anthropic, like most of its competitors, is also tackling the challenge of building a viable, profitable global business. Rao, who was<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/krishna-rao-joins-anthropic"> hired in May</a> as the company's first CFO, is helping to formulate Anthropic's financial strategy during a period of explosive growth.He cut his teeth working at private equity giant Blackstone and management consultant Bain &amp; Company before becoming head of business development at Airbnb. In that role, he helped the company raise billions in private capital and steered the company through its <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-confidentially-filed-for-an-initial-public-offering-2020-8">high-profile IPO.</a>Mike Krieger, Chief Product OfficerA native of São Paulo, Krieger <a target="_blank" href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/mike-krieger-joins-anthropic">joined Anthropic</a> as Chief Product Officer in May 2024. He currently leads the global product team, collaborating closely with customers across industries to shape the product vision and strategy for Anthropic's flagship model, Claude.In this role, he's building deep relationships with users and helping to turn Anthropic's research into a mass-market product.He is a cofounder of Instagram and served as its CTO, where he grew the engineering organization to more than 450 employees across the company's offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, and New York.Brian Israel, General CounselAs generative AI opens up new avenues for technological innovation, it's also raising fraught questions about authenticity, creativity, and some of the core assumptions of our legal system.Like many of its competitors, Anthropic is deeply enmeshed in these questions, whether that's helping to guide the creation of new legal frameworks or <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/authors-sue-anthropic-copyright-infringement-over-ai-training-2024-08-20/">facing lawsuits</a> that could determine to future of the nascent AI industry. Israel is the point person helping Anthropic navigate this legal landscape. Before joining Anthropic, Brian spent nearly a decade in the US government, from the State Department to NASA, working to address the legal challenges created by emerging technologies.Sam Bowman, AlignmentBowman co-leads Anthropic's alignment team along with Jan Leike, a safety researcher <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-jan-leike-joins-rival-anthropic-days-after-leaving-2024-5">who recently left OpenAI.</a> The team is responsible for confronting some of the thorniest questions associated with the development of advanced AI models.It works on forecasting when AI models will develop potentially dangerous abilities like deception or scheming and how humans will be able to tell when they do. The alignment team is also developing evaluations that can flag when a model reaches a concerning level of skill and reliable techniques for controlling them when they get out of line. These capabilities are essential to Anthropic's positioning of itself as the safer AI company.

Anthropic's power players: Here are the 11 leaders helping shape the future of the Amazon-backed AI company

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Amazon wants to expand its use of nuclear power to meet rising AI energy needs.</li><li>The company's energy strategy team recently pitched CEO Andy Jassy on the benefits of nuclear power.</li></ul>In June, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-big-tech-cash-king-wall-street-wants-a-piece-2024-10">Amazon's</a> Global Energy Strategy team pitched CEO Andy Jassy the idea of doubling down on <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-google-microsoft-openai-big-tech-investment-nuclear-ai-race-2024-10">nuclear power</a> to support its growing network of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-data-energy-centers-water-energy-land-2023-10">data centers</a>.The group argued that nuclear can be more reliable and cost-efficient than other clean energy sources, such as wind and solar. Jassy agreed, according to an internal Amazon document from the third quarter that was obtained by Business Insider."We have strong conviction that nuclear power is the most economical and credible path to scale carbon free energy to meet the next decade's rapid capacity growth," the company's energy strategy team wrote. "We took this conviction to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-wooed-wall-street-overhauled-bloated-tech-giant-2024-7">Andy Jassy</a> in June 2024, and received approval to execute against our proposed expansion to the carbon free energy strategy through new nuclear generation."<div type="image" title="Andy Jassy onstage at an event." height="1293" width="1940" msid="114563910" hostid="261" sizebytes="57026"></div>Fast forward a few months and Amazon's nuclear ambitions are becoming clearer. Last week, Amazon <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-invests-in-nuclear-for-aws-following-google-and-microsoft-2024-10">led</a> a $500 million investment in X-energy to develop small modular reactors, following <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/data-centers-amazon-ai-nuclear-power-grid-2024-5">an earlier deal</a> to buy power from a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/servicenow-ceo-bill-mcdermott-ai-software-2024-10">Generative AI</a> is the main reason for this sudden interest in nuclear energy. Running these new AI workloads in data centers requires <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-data-centers-energy-cloud-microsoft-chatpgt-amazon-google-2023-7">way more electricity</a> than traditional computing tasks. Burning <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/data-centers-energy-demand-utilities-green-renewable-2023-10">more coal</a> and other fossil fuels is bad for the environment, so nuclear is an attractive alternative, despite its checkered safety record.Amazon sees nuclear as a key part of dealing with this AI-driven <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-data-centers-delays-costs-power-labor-shortages-aws-ai-2024-10">surge in energy demand</a>. The company considered tapping into at least four additional existing nuclear power plants and sought even more small modular reactor deals. It also looked at other energy sources, such as geothermal, to meet long-term renewable energy goals, according to the internal document."Machine Learning, GenAl and commercial capacity demand continues to significantly outpace available power capacity globally and requires new solutions that are reliable, cost-effective and carbon free," the document explained, while noting that success in this space would help Amazon Web Services meet customer needs for sustainable data center capacity.<h2 id="9f054fc5-4a26-481d-81e9-4ebeece00b52">Amazon considers all solutions</h2>An Amazon spokesperson said the final details of the company's plans could be "very different from the preliminary ideas," and cautioned against drawing conclusions from an "outdated" document.The cloud giant supports more than 500 solar and wind projects, and has been the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for four years in a row. It's also investing in emerging technologies through a Climate Pledge Fund, the spokesperson added."There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for transitioning to carbon-free energy and we believe all viable and scalable options should be considered, so we frequently consider a wide range of projects before deciding which ones we move forward with," the spokesperson wrote in a statement.<h2 id="e4e8b6a9-955c-4738-a29e-1533eb23b75f">Big Tech's embrace</h2><div type="image" title="three mile island" height="1343" width="2000" msid="114563911" hostid="261" sizebytes="136424"></div>Amazon isn't the only big tech company embracing nuclear to meet AI's insatiable hunger for power.Google recently <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-nuclear-power-ai-data-centers-2024-10">unveiled</a> a partnership with Kairos Power to build small modular nuclear reactors. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman loves talking about nuclear and has backed projects. Microsoft <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/three-mile-island-nuclear-plant-reopens-power-microsoft-ai-push-2024-9">struck a deal</a> to get power from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant.That last deal highlights the nuclear industry's troubled past. In 1979, Three Mile Island <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-happened-three-mile-island-worst-us-nuclear-disaster-2019-8">experienced</a> a major disaster that stalled the US nuclear sector for decades. There have been even worse events in <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/chernobyl">Chernobyl</a> and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/haunting-photos-of-the-fukushima-disaster-zone-2017-3">Fukushima</a>.<h2 id="991ea7a5-102b-4e4a-bbbd-ca9c560c342b">"Piano Man"</h2>Prior to the June meeting with Amazon's Global Energy Strategy team, Jassy approved another nuclear plan in December 2023, according to the internal document obtained by BI.Under that plan, codenamed "Piano Man," Amazon targeted existing nuclear plants that had spare capacity. The company wanted to sign agreements that gave it access to "dedicated, reliable power" in the future. The first project within this strategy was announced in March, when Amazon <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/data-centers-amazon-ai-nuclear-power-grid-2024-5">agreed</a> to pay $650 million to purchase energy from a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, the internal document showed.Amazon considered at least 4 other similar nuclear projects, the document stated. One was in Maryland for an option to use up to 0.88 gigawatt of energy. Another was in Texas for 1.2 gigawatts. There were two other arrangements in Pennsylvania for 0.96 gigawatt and 0.9 gigawatt of power each. In general, a one gigawatt plant is estimated to have enough capacity to power roughly 876,000 households for a year.It is unclear whether Amazon is still looking into these types of "Piano Man" deals."There are limited pipeline opportunities after these projects, but we will continue to develop all feasible options," the document explained.<h2 id="8dc1cc69-aec8-4677-aef7-89452bc1e7b2">Learning curve</h2><div type="image" title="The cooling towers of a nuclear power plant against a blue sky." height="1414" width="2121" msid="114563912" hostid="261" sizebytes="98642"></div>Amazon has also been "actively conducting due diligence" on more than a dozen opportunities in the small modular reactor space. As part of this, the company has developed relationships with utilities, nuclear construction companies, and the US Department of Energy, according to the document.Nuclear power can be safer, more reliable, and more cost-efficient in the long term compared to other power sources, according to Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear engineering professor at MIT. However, he said some of the new advanced small modular reactors are still being tested and often use different designs and systems, making them a relatively riskier option."There will be a learning curve because some of these technologies are not mature yet," Buongiorno told BI.<h2 id="1b22c795-2c48-4282-8e9c-8728dc854c1e">Prioritize 'earlier access to power'</h2>The internal Amazon document described the company's nuclear initiatives as part of a broader "non-standard" energy plan. The company also looked into power arrangements for natural gas plants and geothermal energy."As we drive development of first of a kind, non-standard energy sources within the industry, our scope is primarily medium to long term, supplying power in large amounts beyond 2030," the document stated.In 2024, Amazon's goal is to deliver 8 gigawatts of incremental renewable energy, the document said. Amazon reached 4.1 gigawatts of renewable energy in 2023 and 10.2 gigawatts in 2022, it noted.The internal document listed the main "tenets" that the Global Energy Strategy team follows. It emphasized delivering "highly reliable, cost-effective" power on time, and making bets on technologies that are "on the cusp of scaling and mass adoption."It also stressed the need to find the earliest available power options."While we target obtaining large amounts of power over time, we will prioritize opportunities with the earlier access to power," it said.Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip?Contact the reporter, Eugene Kim, via the encrypted-messaging apps Signal or Telegram (<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="c-link">+1-650-942-3061</a>) or email (<a target="_blank" href="mailto:ekim@businessinsider.com">ekim@businessinsider.com</a>). Reach out using a nonwork device. Check out Business Insider's <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/insider-guide-to-securely-sharing-whistleblower-information-about-powerful-institutions-2021-10">source guide</a> for other tips on sharing information securely.

Inside Amazon's nuclear ambitions, its 'Piano Man' project, and CEO Andy Jassy's support

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Electricity and labor headwinds slow Amazon's data center buildout.</li><li>The company's predicament highlights challenges faced by the broader cloud industry.</li></ul><a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-big-tech-cash-king-wall-street-wants-a-piece-2024-10">Amazon</a> is spending heavily on <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-data-energy-centers-water-energy-land-2023-10">data centers</a> to support booming <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ai-sales-machine-aws-google-microsoft-pressure-pay-speed-2024-9">AI</a> workloads, putting it on pace to build 240 new facilities by 2040, according to one estimate.These plans are increasingly running into physical constraints that are slowing the buildout, according to an internal document, people familiar with the matter, and emails obtained through a public-records request."Across the AMER region, we are experiencing headwinds in power, zoning and permitting, water, and workforce/labor that are providing challenges to our long-term capacity growth," the internal document stated, referring to the Americas market, Amazon's largest.As the biggest cloud provider, Amazon's predicament highlights broader <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-data-energy-centers-water-energy-land-2023-10">problems</a> facing the tech industry as generative <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ai-sales-machine-aws-google-microsoft-pressure-pay-speed-2024-9">AI</a> upends the status quo. While more companies want access to cloud computing for AI initiatives, there's only so much power, water, and labor available to support these services.It's not just an Amazon problem. Sequoia Capital general partner David Cahn recently predicted data center delays across the sector."The need for more power and a better functioning grid was clear before AI," he wrote in a blog post. "Now, it is becoming urgent."<h2 id="4e19455f-0a20-458d-a775-e305cc9aed23">Energy demand is growing</h2>It may be natural for a company like Amazon, one of the largest and fastest-growing data center operators, to face these challenges when it is expanding at breakneck speed.Marc Wulfraat, president of consulting firm MWPVL, told BI that Amazon is probably rolling out even more than 240 data centers in coming years. That's because the cloud giant also leases space in buildings shared with other companies. Collectively, this building spree amounts to almost 75 million gross square feet of space, according to his estimates. That's the equivalent of roughly 27 Empire State Buildings.In an email to BI, Amazon's spokesperson said customers' energy demand "continues to grow," and the company is continuously working on ways to "efficiently build and operate data centers" to meet their needs."Nobody knows better than we do that building data centers is exceptionally complex, and by embracing that challenge, we've become really good at it over the years," the spokesperson added. "We're confident we can continue to build at a rapid pace to provide the cloud capacity our customers will need."<h2 id="3ffef594-735b-4945-a7b0-176832400209">Doubts about electricity supply</h2>Power might be the most scarce resource. US data center electricity consumption is forecast to triple by 2030, according to <a target="_blank" rel=" nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bcg-on-energy_the-impact-of-genai-in-electricity-activity-7112787574032674816-uDEX/">Boston Consulting Group</a>, much of it to power generative AI. Bernstein Research recently <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-data-centers-us-power-grid-gpu-nvidia-cerebras-amazon-2024-7">estimated</a> that electricity demand for AI data centers could exceed supply in just two years without action.At Amazon, electricity shortages have been a major concern and a topic of almost every leadership meeting in recent years, according to the people familiar with the matter.Amazon is experiencing power-supply issues in Oregon, Ohio, and Northern Virginia, according to the internal document from May. For example, it noted that PacifiCorp, Amazon's Portland-based utility partner, has electricity shortfalls and generation constraints forecasted until 2030.This is leaving Amazon with unpredictable energy supply in some markets and a possible loss of "bridging" solutions that help maintain power during the early stages of construction."With the utility power headwind, we are seeing continued risk driven by transmission constraints as well as unexpected changes to committed/available generation, gaps in promised vs delivered incremental power, and potential loss of bridging power as utility infrastructure projects are delayed," the document explained.<h2 id="e085ef5b-5190-4456-935c-6cab05b23795">'Zombie' data centers</h2>In some markets, so-called "zombie" data centers exist. That's a term used by some Amazon employees who spoke with Business Insider about the electricity-supply problems.These facilities are also described internally as "operationally blocked" because the data centers can sometimes sit idle as they don't have access to enough power to run them, according to the people familiar with the matter.Amazon's spokesperson told BI the company is not familiar with these terms, but said there are a "very small number of cases" where the company decides to complete data center construction before building power is available. "These situations are all managed as part of the standard course of business," the spokesperson added.<div type="image" title="AWS CEO Matt Garman" height="4320" width="6751" msid="114502575" hostid="261" sizebytes="742626"></div>Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman recently spoke publicly about challenges related to AI data center buildouts, including accessing enough GPUs and power.During a podcast interview in August, he said customer demand is "mind boggling," which is requiring "a lot of investment.""We're probably going to be tight for the next little bit of time," Garman added.<h2 id="d47a3f17-b6c1-4c0c-91d9-5918b3a4761f">'Mosquitoes to light'</h2>The company is on the hunt for more energy. It's conducting "power studies" with utility partners to evaluate additional transmission capacity, which could result in more power allocation, according to the internal document.The company is also working on ways to reclaim stranded and retired power, the document said, likely in reference to the practice of redeveloping old power plants that have become inactive for economic or sustainability reasons.Amazon has been more actively seeking partnership opportunities with third-party colocation data center providers, one of the people said. At these facilities, Amazon would simply lease space, transferring the need to secure power to the data centers' owners.Additionally, Amazon has started looking beyond well-established data center markets, such as Northern Virginia and Arizona, and is expanding into newer regions like Indiana. Crowded data center regions are running out of power and other resources, making newer locations <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-data-centers-energy-cloud-microsoft-chatpgt-amazon-google-2023-7">more appealing</a>.The company is also more aggressively pursuing alternative energy sources. Last week, Amazon <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-invests-in-nuclear-for-aws-following-google-and-microsoft-2024-10">unveiled</a> a plan to lead a $500 million funding round to develop small modular nuclear reactors, following an earlier announcement to purchase a nuclear power plant in rural Pennsylvania."It's almost like mosquitoes to light — we are attracted to power," one of the people familiar told BI.Amazon's spokesperson said the company's data center expansion strategy considers several factors, including system resiliency and latency, the availability of renewable energy, and the local government's long-term commitment. Amazon is also constantly seeking ways to make its data centers more energy efficient by using carbon-free resources, in-house processors, and natural air cooling systems, the spokesperson said.<h2 id="82c2fbef-48d1-4af8-8635-cf74ee12697d">Higher costs in Silicon Valley</h2>In some cases, Amazon is paying higher prices to get its new data centers up and running.One example is an Amazon facility in Santa Clara, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. For the last 2 years, Amazon has held talks with the city of Santa Clara to secure power for a new data center located near Levi's Stadium, the home of the San Francisco 49ers, according to a <a target="_blank" href="https://santaclara.granicus.com/player/clip/2140?view_id=1&amp;meta_id=190407&amp;redirect=true">city council meeting</a> held in July.Amazon is in talks for a 15-year, 20-megawatt proposal for this facility under the condition that the company pays the full cost of the energy, whether it uses the power or not, Manuel Pineda, the chief electric utility officer of the City of Santa Clara, said during the meeting. Amazon will have to pay up to 50% higher rates than normal and will be entitled to additional "financial assurances" to cover any contractual risks, Pineda added.As part of the deal, Amazon also plans to use the 20-megawatt power agreement for a second building on-site, which currently has no electric capacity, according to Pineda.Amazon's spokesperson told BI that this arrangement has not been finalized, and the project is progressing as expected.<div type="image" title="AWS Santa Clara data center planning slide" height="586" width="1056" msid="114502585" hostid="261" sizebytes="101810"></div><h2 id="5e7acce5-2a9c-4e0c-873a-74b683e1b0a3">Amazon escalates Santa Clara delays</h2>Amazon appears to be dealing with further delays in Santa Clara. On August 28, an AWS employee wrote to a city official about another facility, a former Owens Corning factory the company purchased in 2023. The email discussed delays at the site and noted that the problems are raising concerns internally at Amazon."Delays as significant as this unfortunately impact our ability to serve our customers which has resulted in escalation," said the email, which was obtained by BI through a public-records request.The next day, another Amazon employee wrote to a Santa Clara city official. "This is time sensitive," the staffer said. "AWS executives are highly concerned about the constant push in the results."<h2 id="a5ae3cc3-4484-42c7-a232-b1135b2bd3e0">'Straining' water infrastructure</h2>Another problem is water supply. A growing number of data centers rely on water instead of air to cool the servers and other equipment inside the facilities. This liquid-cooling technology <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/arizona-running-out-of-water-data-centers-blame-microsoft-google-2023-6">requires a lot of water</a>.Amazon is "straining local jurisdictions' existing infrastructure" for water in some regions and is "dependent on long-term infrastructure upgrades or building our own solutions" to mitigate the issue, the internal document stated.There are zoning and permitting problems, too. Some local jurisdictions are not supporting the re-zoning of industrial property for data center use and have stricter environmental regulations, the document explained. Amazon is "working proactively" with local municipalities to solve these challenges, as they can impact its "future capacity options," the document added.Amazon is "one of the world's most water efficient operators" and its data centers are much more water efficient than the industry average, the company's spokesperson told BI.<h2 id="74b62895-25bd-411f-8890-035613989c55">'Lack of available skilled labor'</h2>An even bigger problem may be a lack of skilled electricians to build and run these data centers, according to the internal document and people directly involved in these Amazon projects.Electrical work is a major part of data center construction. But Amazon has struggled to find enough people to do the jobs, especially in rural areas, these people said. Amazon has talked to local colleges, general contractors, and labor unions in certain markets to increase the supply of electricians, one of the people said.<div type="image" title="amazon data center oregon" height="3072" width="4608" msid="114502582" hostid="261" sizebytes="883326"></div>A <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/27/americas-demand-skilled-electricians-boom.html">shortage of skilled electricians</a> is a growing industry problem. According to last year's <a target="_blank" href="https://datacenter.uptimeinstitute.com/rs/711-RIA-145/images/2023StaffingSurvey.Report.12152023.pdf">Uptime Institute Data Center Staffing Survey</a>, more than half of respondents said they struggled to fill open positions due to demand outstripping supply."For workforce/labor, we are seeing a lack of available skilled labor," Amazon's internal document stated. "Which requires us to prioritize where we allocate these resources, and we are becoming increasingly reliant on more expensive travelling [primarily] electricians."Amazon's spokesperson shared <a target="_blank" href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/our-upskilling-2025-programs">blog posts</a> detailing its <a target="_blank" href="https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/workforce-development/aws-fiber-optic-fusion-splicing/">training programs</a> in this space, adding, "AWS has established a number of workforce development programs and collaborations with education institutions to help ensure a strong pipeline of talent."Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip?Contact the reporter, Eugene Kim, via the encrypted-messaging apps Signal or Telegram (<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="c-link">+1-650-942-3061</a>) or email (<a target="_blank" href="mailto:ekim@businessinsider.com">ekim@businessinsider.com</a>). Reach out using a nonwork device. Check out Business Insider's <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/insider-guide-to-securely-sharing-whistleblower-information-about-powerful-institutions-2021-10">source guide</a> for other tips on sharing information securely.

Amazon's AI data center dream runs into the reality of 'zombie' facilities, higher costs, and labor shortages 

<ul class="summary-list"><li>'The Legend of Vox Machina' season 3's final batch of episodes dropped on Thursday.</li><li>Critical Role's eight cofounders gave BI insight into how their hobby game became an Amazon show.</li></ul><a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/critical-role-amazon-nerdworld-legend-of-vox-machina-season-three-2024-10">"The Legend of Vox Machina,</a>" a Critical Role animated series on Prime Video, aired the last set of episodes from its third season on Thursday at midnight.What started as a game played by a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/critical-role-dungeons-dragons-sold-out-live-show-wembley-arena-2023-9">group of voice actors</a> looking for things to do in their downtime has morphed into a mega nerdworld business. Critical Role, the company by the same name, has its own streaming platform, an <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/critical-role-daggerheart-preorders-2024-9">independent game publishing arm</a>, and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/critical-role-liam-obrien-moonward-podcast-book-publishing-comics-media-2024-8">investments in the audio drama business</a>.The founders, meanwhile, are now big names in geek country — <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/international-countries-live-show-critical-role-ceo-travis-willingham-wishlist-2024-9">in the US and beyond</a>. They're working on <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/matt-mercer-critical-role-tease-legend-of-the-mighty-nein-2024-4">two Amazon-backed series</a> — a deal they secured with Prime Video after a $11.3 million Kickstarter fundraising round to create their show.Business Insider sat down with all eight cofounders, who discussed how their "D&amp;D" campaign's hundreds of hours of streamed content was rewritten and converted into an animated series."The writers' room collaboration was all of us getting on a whiteboard what the most important moments were to each of us," chief creative officer Matthew Mercer told BI."The Legend of Vox Machina" has had three seasons of 12 episodes apiece so far. But it was based on a 115-episode-long "D&amp;D" campaign, where each livestreamed episode clocked runtimes of three to four hours.<div type="image" title="The cast of Critical Role gathers around a table at their studio." height="1080" width="1920" msid="114603935" hostid="261" sizebytes="251904"></div>This third season, CR co-founders Liam O'Brien and Marisha Ray joined their colleagues — Sam Riegel and CEO Travis Willingham — in the writers' room, taking the lead in crafting one episode apiece.Mercer said the CR team wanted the story to develop "in a way that feels true to the original campaign, but also leaving room for some fresh new things."And the crew also made "some slight changes to keep everyone on their toes," Mercer added."It can be hard at times to decide what things don't make it in, but that doesn't mean they never will," Mercer said. "Some things, we hold on to for later. We get to play with time and the timeline a little bit." <h2 id="6f53fbf2-fb26-4e92-8e60-2c8e2bed80bc">The plot thickens</h2>At the end of "Vox Machina's" third season, the star-crossed lovers Vax'ildan (voiced by O'Brien) and Keyleth (voiced by Ray) finally get together — seemingly for a happy ending — after two and a half seasons of slow burn.But the show also covers a tragic plot point: The death and resurrection of Percival de Rolo, a gunslinger played by CR cofounder Taliesin Jaffe.Jaffe told BI he had some fun with what was, essentially, planning his own funeral."I wanted pomp and circumstance," Jaffe said.He added that the season allowed another side of Whitestone — a city he helped create at the crew's "D&amp;D" campaign table — to be brought to life."Whitestone is my baby," Jaffe said. "I love seeing any moment spent in a new location in that city that has haunted my dreams for a decade plus.""Vox Machina" also features original music, which Riegel — a songwriter and two-time Emmy Award-winning voice director — worked on.<div type="image" title="Sam Riegel and Liam O'Brien attend &quot;The Legend of Vox Machina&quot; S3 Special Screening at The Culver Theater on October 02, 2024 in Culver City, California." height="4000" width="6000" msid="114603931" hostid="261" sizebytes="796460"></div>One of the songs Riegel wrote was about the Ruby of the Sea — a famed courtesan from Critical Role's second long-running "D&amp;D" campaign. Mercer recorded the song, and it later became an episode-ending track.On the casting front, CR's co-founders have looped their kids into recording for the show. Most recently, Ronin Willingham — CEO Travis Willingham's six-year-old son — had a small voice-acting role."I think a few minutes into it, he decided he didn't want to do what we were asking him to do. He wanted to be a dragon instead," Willingham said.<h2 id="6da8b83a-790c-446a-8acd-1bbe915783d9">More stories to tell</h2><div type="image" title="Matthew Mercer, Marisha Ray, Taliesin Jaffe, Laura Bailey, Sam Riegel, Ashley Johnson, Liam O'Brien and Travis Willingham attend The Prime Experience: Saturday Morning Cartoons Ft. &quot;The Boys Presents: Diabolical&quot;, &quot;Fairfax&quot; &amp; &quot;The Legend of Vox Machina&quot; on May 07, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California." height="3488" width="4717" msid="114603932" hostid="261" sizebytes="807232"></div>Riegel and his crew have big plans for the future. And on Wednesday, Prime Video announced that CR is <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/legend-of-vox-machina-season-4-renewed-critical-role-amazon-2024-10">getting a fourth season of "Vox Machina"</a> — a massive vote of confidence from Amazon in the crew's ability to keep its nerdworld investment humming.Riegel told BI ahead of the third season's launch that the crew still has more stories to tell."As always, we left the season ending on the smallest of cliffhangers," Riegel told BI. "There's evil forces still out there to deal with."The end of the third "Vox Machina" season also portends ominous consequences for O'Brien's half-elf rogue Vax'ildan, who must now pay a heavy price for having helped bring his friend Percival back from the dead."If we are lucky enough to tell the entire story — that we hope to, knock on wood — I think he's just getting started," O'Brien said of his character.CR also has its "Mighty Nein" animated series in the works with Prime Video.An official release date hasn't been announced yet, but recording for the show is already underway. Jaffe told BI that viewers can expect a "darker story" for the "Mighty Nein," as opposed to "Vox Machina's" heroic, dragon-fighting romp."That the show has grown not just into an animated series, but we're still going 10 years later, and there's comics and novels — it's very surreal," Ray told BI.

Critical Role's 8 co-founders say this is how they turned their 'Dungeons & Dragons' home game into an Amazon hit

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Amazon's Wondery is launching a "Wow in the World" toy line, expanding beyond audio content.</li><li>The toys, priced from $14.95 to $29.95, will be sold in stores like Barnes &amp; Noble and Nordstrom.</li></ul><a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon">Amazon</a>'s <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-youtube-plans-to-compete-podcasting-with-spotify-apple-2024-5">podcast</a> studio Wondery is continuing to branch out beyond audio with a new line of toys tied to the kid podcast "Wow in the World." Wondery is billing it as the first toy line based on a podcast.Wondery is giving a big rollout treatment to the toys, which it sees as the start of a bigger push into consumer products. The toys, from manufacturers Thames &amp; Kosmos and Goliath, include a volcano kit and dinosaur collection and range from $14.95 to $29.95. There are also new story sets from Tonies, an audio storybox company. Distribution includes promotion in Amazon's Holiday Dash print catalog and on a new Wondery Kids Amazon storefront and sales at physical and online stores, including Barnes &amp; Noble, Mastermind Toys, and Nordstrom.<div type="image" title="Product shot of Wondery Kids &quot;Wow in the World&quot;-tied toy." height="2000" width="2000" msid="113910750" hostid="261" sizebytes="302234"></div>The toy rollout shows Amazon's ambitions for Wondery, which it <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-will-acquire-podcast-startup-wondery-2020-12">acquired in early 2021</a>. Three years ago, Wondery hired Nicole Blake, who helped develop the Harry Potter franchise while at Warner Bros. Entertainment, to build its top podcasts into bigger businesses. Blake calls it a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-movie-franchises-ranked-successful-fandom-study-2023-9">Hollywood-style approach to franchises</a>, with full consumer product lines in addition to other touchpoints like books and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/private-equity-investors-vc-live-events-entertainment-rebound-2023-10">live events</a>."I thought, could the next major franchise come from audio?" Blake said. "Every medium that has broken through in entertainment and created a fandom has then generated IP that delivered these long-lasting franchises and 360 franchises. So I thought, wow, that's an exciting challenge."The Guy Raz- and Mindy Thomas-hosted "Wow in the World" from media company Tinkercast already has a line of books with HarperCollins and a live national tour. Wondery's "Dr. Death" podcast was adapted into an anthology TV series in 2021; other pods like "WeCrashed" have <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://time.com/6168849/podcast-tv-shows/">also made the leap to screen</a>. Fans of "Morbid" can buy T-shirts and a board game based on the true-crime podcast. Up next, Blake is planning more live events tied to Wondery's kid-aimed podcasts and a direct-to-retail deal.<div type="image" title="Nicole Blake of Wondery." height="800" width="800" msid="113910752" hostid="261" sizebytes="32136"></div>By getting into consumer products, Wondery is betting it can not only feed the retail sales business of its parent Amazon, but attract top podcasters who have multi-hyphenate ambitions. In <a target="_blank" href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/new-heights-podcast-amazon-wondery-deal">announcing</a> its recent deal with "New Heights with Jason &amp; Travis Kelce," Wondery touted its plan to grow the popular podcast with live experiences and merch. Blake and her team are also working with existing podcast hosts to build product lines, and evaluating future shows for their franchise potential."We're helping them build their personal brands," she said.<h2 id="3a0f698f-5961-4c64-abb1-2a23b9a2469a">Franchises are coming from places outside film and TV</h2>Wondery's push into audio franchises comes as people have more entertainment options than ever, including creator-made content, and Hollywood faces <a target="_blank" href="https://medium.com/@mattnitowski/the-future-of-entertainment-franchises-eec16e0ceaf9">doubts</a> about whether its famous franchises can keep generating the same returns they have in the past.Meanwhile, franchises have sprung from new places like video games such as Nintendo's Mario Bros., which spawned 2023's popular "Super Mario Bros. Movie"; Netflix, which has parlayed "Bridgerton" into merch, collaborations, and experiences; and the YouTube kids hit "Ryan's World," which sells clothing and toys at Target and Walmart.The growing time people are spending on podcasts makes it a ready opportunity for franchise development, said Amanda Cioletti, VP of content and strategy for B2B company Informa Markets' licensing group. Podcast listening growth has slowed since it shot up during the pandemic but continues to rise, with US adults listening to 28 minutes a day in 2024, up from 16 minutes in 2020, according to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.emarketer.com/insights/the-podcast-industry-report-statistics/">Emarketer</a>. Emarketer projects advertising in podcasts to grow 15.9% in 2024 to $2.28 billion, though podcast ad spending lags behind the media time spent. (Emarketer shares a parent with Business Insider.)Toys are a natural direction to go for brand extensions. In a survey of licensors by Informa Markets, toys and games were listed as the third biggest licensing opportunity after apparel and food and beverage. Cracking the crowded toy aisle won't be easy, though, she said."There is a lot of competition for that shelf," Cioletti said.The "Wow in the World" toys were designed to drive kids back to the podcast. Toys come with step-by-step guides and QR codes that link to "Wow" content and with a three-month subscription to Wondery+, which allows for early and ad-free listening.For Thames &amp; Kosmos, the Wondery deal was a chance to reach young kids, a group that's eluded the science toy and game maker due to their age and short attention spans, said Andrew Quartin, the company's CEO. By working with the podcast, it will reach its target market and get built-in promotion."This is the audience they're talking to," Quartin said. "They have millions of listeners of curious kids. Guy and Mindy, they're like science superstars."

Amazon's Wondery is launching a new toy line as it aims to build the next big franchises from podcasts

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Lux Capital's Josh Wolfe is bullish on AI investments in biology and robotics.</li><li>AI's role in biology includes startups like Recursion and EvolutionaryScale.</li></ul>With the AI arms race underway and a host of industries investing in the technology, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lux-capital-vc-josh-wolfe-interview-factors-for-biotech-startups-2022-4">Lux Capital venture capitalist</a> Josh Wolfe identified the areas he's particularly keen on.In a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGdZzGzy0xU">recent episode</a> of "The Logan Bartlett Show," the Lux Capital cofounder and biotech VC said that his firm has invested in two main sectors within AI over the past two years — biology and robotics.Wolfe predicted that in a couple of years, these fields, alongside aerospace and defense technology, will have people "very bullish" about investing.<h2 id="7295d674-64b3-4fc3-afc1-5928384156b2">AI in biology</h2>"AI into biology is really interesting because most computer scientists underappreciate how hard biology is," he said. "Biology is really complex — it is not linear, it is not 'programmable biology' the way many people think."In turn, Wolfe added that most biologists similarly "underappreciate how sophisticated computer science and AI" are."There's people that are versed at the interstices between those two things that I think are poised to do really well," he said.Wolfe said that the first stage of AI and biology included biotech companies like Recursion — which Lux Capital invested in — that uses AI to translate pictures of cells into computable data and identify biologically meaningful relationships, according to the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.recursion.com/technology">company's website</a>."AI 2.0, which is where we are today, is actually using large language models which very few people have other than EvolutionaryScale," he said, giving a shoutout to an AI startup founded by ex-Meta researchers, one of whom previously started a biotech company with Wolfe.After Meta axed the group's project, the researcher approached Wolfe, the VC said, who offered him $25 million on the spot."He has the only frontier language model in biology, and he can really, from prompt to protein, produce things," he said. "So it's jumping out of the two-dimensional space of code into the three-dimensional space of actually producing a protein."The company, which has <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://press.aboutamazon.com/aws/2024/6/evolutionaryscale-launches-with-esm3-a-milestone-ai-model-for-biology">raised over $142 million</a> in seed funding led by Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Lux Capital, partnered with Amazon Web Services to launch its AI model, ESM3, in June.ESM3 is "capable of generating entirely new proteins that have never existed in nature," AWS <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/06/evolutionaryscale-esm3-available-aws/">wrote in a press release</a>. And the company has already created its first protein, a non-previously evolved version of a fluorescent protein."There's many ways that evolution has found this way, but they found a path that evolution never found, which is pretty cool," Wolfe said. "So the implication for being able to do antibodies, small molecules, drugs, proteins is pretty profound."<h2 id="c76e507a-776b-428e-8019-4e2831c0eb04">AI in robotics</h2>While "robots" typically invoke images of futuristic humanoid tech like <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-humanoid-robot-optimus-becoming-mans-best-friend-2024-6">Elon Musk's Optimus</a>, Wolfe said he thinks "humanoid robots are not going to be the way.""Focusing on the training data, the repository, for universal robot intelligence is what they're focused on," he said. "I think that's where the value is going to be."Although Wolfe thinks <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/humanoid-robots-ai-saudi-china-us-21st-century-space-race-2024-3">humanoid robots</a> will attract money for their intrigue, he said that robots mimicking human capabilities are "really inferior to what robots can do."Rather, he said that the value of robotics will be the repository of data that can train robots to exist in an unconstrained environment. Similar to how LLMs are trained off large batches of known information from the internet to develop predictive chatbots."I think that the winning models will be highly specialized robots that do one or two specific things, and they do it extraordinarily well," he said.Wolfe said he thinks mass competition will emerge for creating a universal operating system between humanoid robotic companies, including <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-weapon-war-machine-gun-toting-robot-dog-military-drills-2024-5">China's Unitree Robotics</a>."But I think that the value will accrue to the intelligence," he added.

2 investment areas in AI that people will be 'very bullish' on in the future, according to a VC

<ul><li><keyword id="18635" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="amazon" source="Orion">Amazon</keyword> has reportedly alleged that <keyword id="375475" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="future-retail" source="Orion">Future Retail</keyword> transferred $939 million as a capital advance to a company controlled by the founder Kishore Biyani.</li><li>Another $575 million was transferred into an unusual rental security deposit and advances were made to suppliers.</li><li><keyword id="23644" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Future" source="Orion">Future</keyword> Retail says that the transactions were a part of public disclosures made by the company as a part of standard governance practices.</li></ul>Amazon, which is trying to prevent Reliance Industries from taking over the retail assets of Kishore Biyani-led <keyword id="44949" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="future-group" source="Orion">Future Group</keyword>, has reportedly made a fresh set of allegations against Future Retail. The ecommerce giant has reportedly accused Future Retail of diverting $1.5 billion from its account to other companies. As per a report by Bloomberg, Amazon has alleged that Future Retail transferred 70 billion Indian rupees, which is close to $939 million at current conversion rate, in the financial year March 2020 as a capital advance to a company controlled by the founder Kishore Biyani. This was a payment for the goods and services purchased by the related firm. Future Retail said that the transactions were a part of public disclosures made by the company as a part of standard governance practices. There is nothing new that is being brought to notice here, “except for false speculations being created out of selective excerpts,” the company’s representative told Bloomberg. The ecommerce giant has written, as per the report, to Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and several other authorities, seeking an investigation into Future Retail. The copy of the letter was<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-25/amazon-alleges-1-5-billion-diverted-from-indebted-future-retail"> seen </a>by Bloomberg, which first reported the development. Business Insider has shared a detailed list of questions to Amazon and Future Retail. The copy would be updated if and when they respond. Amazon has also alleged, as per the Bloomberg report, that Future Retail created an unusual rental security deposit and made advances worth 43 billion ($575 million, at current conversion rate) Indian rupees to suppliers in the same year even though its business had slumped and it was shutting down stores. “Significant amounts may have been diverted from Future Retail…,” Amazon reportedly said, adding that a part of these transactions can help Future Retail immediately repay the outstanding debt owed to banks and creditors. The legal battle between Amazon and Future Retail dates back to August 2020, after Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Retail agreed to buy Future Group’s retail, wholesale and warehousing assets for ₹24,713 crore. Amazon — which held about 3% stake in Future Retail through its 49% shareholding in Future Coupon — objected to the deal, saying that it had barred Future Group from getting into any retail agreement with 11 companies, including Reliance. The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/retail/news/amazon-wins-supreme-court-case-against-mukesh-ambani-reliance-retail-and-kishore-biyanis-future-group/articleshow/85092072.cms">Supreme Court of India in August</a> upheld the emergency award given to Amazon by Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC), which considered the Future and Reliance deal invalid. The case is still pending before India’s Supreme Court. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/foreign-investors-have-pulled-out-nearly-7-billion-in-the-last-two-months-and-over-12-billion-since-april-this-year/articleshow/87927351.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">Foreign investors have pulled out nearly $7 billion in the last two months, and over $12 billion since April this year</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/foreign-investors-have-pulled-out-nearly-7-billion-in-the-last-two-months-and-over-12-billion-since-april-this-year/articleshow/87927351.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">From Nykaa to Cipla to 3i infotech — these are some of the themes the market is betting on amid a sell-off</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/pvr-inox-mainland-china-barbeque-nations-share-price-falls-due-to-new-covid-19-variant/articleshow/87925164.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink" style="">Shares of PVR, INOX, Burger King, Barbeque Nation tumble as investors panic over the new COVID-19 variant</a>

Future Retail denies Amazon’s allegation that it diverted $1.5 billion to other businesses

Future Retail, Jet Airways, Adani Enterprises and other hot stocks on January 6

The All India Garment Manufacturers &amp; Vendors Association (AIGMVA) has demanded that <keyword id="44949" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="future-group" source="Orion">Future Group</keyword> owner <keyword id="44950" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="kishore-biyani" source="Orion">Kishore Biyani</keyword> should pay up their dues of over Rs 200 crore pending since 2019, here on Wednesday. The AIGMVA, comprising around 350 members from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala, has warned <keyword id="49454" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="biyani" source="Orion">Biyani</keyword> of legal action if he fails to clear their dues. In a statement, the AIGMVA advisor and Trade Union Joint Action Committee (TUJAC) Convenor Vishwas <keyword id="313080" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="utagi" source="Orion">Utagi</keyword> said that the producers and suppliers had supplied the garments as ordered by Biyani's group of companies between 2019-2022. "Each manufacturer-vendor has dues of between Rs 70 crore to over Rs One crore and the total amount plus interest would be around Rs 500 crore. We want the union government and all the concerned state governments also to intervene and get the huge amount cleared immediately," Utagi demanded. A garment producer from Thane said that a majority of them had availed bank loans to fulfil the Future Group's orders then but since Biyani did not pay up their bills, now the banks are hounding the manufacturers and suppliers for default and refusing to give more loans. "Due to this, over 100,000 are directly hit and along with their families and other stakeholders, more than five lakh people are on the verge of joblessness and starvation due to Future Group, explained Utagi. He said that the Future Group was last year sold to the Reliance Group and in this deal, the poor vendors comprising the backbone MSME sector of the Indian economy have been left in the lurch. A vendor from Gujarat said that their profit margins are very thin, they have no cash surplus and they survive on a cash-credit facility with regular payments to their suppliers, employees, establishment costs, EMIs, etc. "Owing to Future Group, our 100 per cent working capital is blocked, totally paralysing our operations, and now banks are hounding us with notices of loan defaults, some members have sold off family gold, saving or even their shops or homes to clear their dues and are now practically homeless," he said. The AIGMVA and TUJAC also plan to file cases against the Future Group in different states, write to Members of Parliament and Members of Legislatures to highlight their plight and urge the government's intervention to compel Biyani to pay up the entire dues and end the matter. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/careers/news/meta-alphabet-amazon-among-companies-that-laid-off-most-employees-in-2023/slidelist/98656731.cms">Meta, Alphabet, Amazon among companies that laid off most employees in 2023</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/most-polluted-cities-in-india/slidelist/98657500.cms">39 out of 50 most polluted cities are in India; here are some key facts</a>

Garment producers demand ₹200 crore dues from Kishore Biyani's Future Group

<ul><li>The Covid pandemic has ushered in a new wave of digital adoption and we have witnessed tremendous growth in online e-commerce. </li><li>A multi-vendor <keyword id="2746147" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="digital-marketplace" source="Orion">digital marketplace</keyword> provides businesses with the right technology and customer outreach. </li><li>While B2B marketplaces are the future, managing your listing on multiple platforms has numerous challenges.</li></ul>Have you listed your products and services on multiple marketplaces? If yes, are you able to manage the listings, prices, creatives, and content efficiently? During the pandemic, customers’ buying habits changed as they preferred online stores over brick-and-mortar shops. Since then, online marketplaces have become the key drivers of growth for businesses. But <a href="https://www.infosysbpm.com/blogs/digital-business-services/six-ways-to-managing-multiple-marketplaces.html">managing multiple marketplaces</a> and staying on top of your listings can take time and effort. The digital marketplace model is an excellent way to reduce the risk of holding excess inventory and the expenses of managing a physical store. It provides a low-risk model to reach a significantly larger audience. The benefits of a digital marketplace The aforementioned challenges should not deter you from going online. Statistics reveal that the e-commerce market in the US will surge past $1 trillion by 2023. The <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/792047/india-e-commerce-market-size/">e-commerce sales in India</a> were at $84 billion in 2021, up from just $30 billion in 2020. Businesses must recognise their growth potential in a digital marketplace. <ul><li>Convenience: The marketplace model has eliminated any entry barriers for a business to reach its customers. Businesses no longer need large investments to manage physical stores and warehouses. Most marketplaces offer fast onboarding and assisted promotion to boost sales. </li><li>Global outreach: With an online digital marketplace, your business can sell their products and services anywhere in the world. You can target a specific country or demography with ease. </li><li>Access huge customer base: Marketplaces offer a one-stop-shop solution for all customers. A physical store cannot match the choice and inventory that an online marketplace offers. Hence, a large customer base can be reached by an online marketplace due to the variety of products it offers. </li><li>Easy payment and logistics fulfilment: Your marketplace manages operational requirements, be it payments, shipping, refunds, returns, or product pickups. This delivers efficiency into the system, allowing businesses to focus on their core job. </li><li>Measure the KPIs: Most online marketplaces provide dashboards that help you monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue, sales, reach, and customer satisfaction. It is not feasible for most businesses to develop this capability independently.</li></ul>The challenges of listing on multiple B2B marketplaces While B2B marketplaces are the future, managing your listing on multiple platforms has numerous challenges. <ul><li>The online B2B marketplace is a fast-changing model where you need to update products, services, prices, and creatives frequently. Doing so on multiple platforms manually is an uphill task. </li><li>Providing customer support and keeping track of agreed-upon terms with multiple marketplaces is difficult. </li><li>Lack of backend technology can create a large amount of manual work. </li><li>Tracking and dealing with counterfeit products from suppliers and frauds is necessary but difficult without technology.</li></ul>Industry trends in marketplace management The pandemic has shifted the way customers buy products and services, and the following industry trends are set to influence online marketplaces. <ul><li>Shopping on mobile phones: Over 70% of <keyword id="6357762" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="online-shopping" source="Orion">online shopping</keyword> happens on smartphone apps. It is crucial for businesses to offer a great buying experience for customers on mobile phones and desktops. </li></ul><ul><li>Vertical marketplaces: Vertical marketplaces connect businesses with a group of customers within a specific niche. They have a specific target audience. This model brings high-quality leads that can be converted into sales quickly and easily. As a business, a vertical marketplace can help you offer more value to the customers. </li><li>Voice commerce: The use of smart devices that work on voice commands is growing rapidly, and customers are using them to purchase products and services online. In the future, these devices will optimise voice search queries, increase search speed, and help businesses make their listings friendly to voice search. </li><li>Artificial intelligence (AI): Chatbots are a great example of AI technology. They provide instant answers to customer questions, as well as learn and improve over time. Online marketplaces serving global customers cannot have a human workforce serving 24 x 7 and need to rely on AI chatbots to fill the gap.</li></ul>Marketplaces have been the lifeblood of commerce since times immemorial. In today’s world digitization is expanding rapidly, and so is the need for digital marketplaces. Like any new digital transformation, this disruption too is currently on a test run and requires some tweaks, but it certainly promises trailblazing advancements and opportunities. Disclaimer: This article is authored by Sreepriya Swaminathan, Senior Domain Principal, Infosys BPM. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Business Insider India.

Digital marketplace: The future of online shopping

RIL, Future Group, SAIL and other top stocks to watch out for on August 9

<ul class="summary-list"><li>"The Boys" season 4 finale includes a warning following the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump.</li><li>The finale centers on an assassination attempt on a newly-elected fictional president. </li></ul>"<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-boys-season-5-release-date-cast-plot-2024-6">The Boys</a>" has always been inspired by real-world politics, but the premise of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-boys-season-4-details-information-what-we-know-2022-7">season four</a> hits so eerily close to home that the show issued a disclaimer for the finale.The eighth and final episode of the season, released Thursday, has been renamed from "Assassination Run" to simply "Season Four Finale." The finale comes five days after former president <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-glad-he-didnt-die-to-have-iconic-picture-2024-7">Donald Trump</a> was wounded during an <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-butler-pennsylvania-rally-secret-service-2024-7">assassination attempt</a> at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania."The season finale of 'The Boys' contains scenes of fictional political violence, which some viewers may find disturbing, especially in light of the injuries and tragic loss of life sustained during the assassination attempt on former President Trump," reads the statement posted on the show's official <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C9jhBWftGVS/">Instagram account</a> on Thursday. "'The Boys' is a fictitious series that was filmed in 2023, and any scene or plotline similarities to these real-world events are coincidental and unintentional. Amazon, Sony Pictures Television and the producers of 'The Boys' reject, in the strongest terms, real-world violence of any kind."A similar message advising viewer discretion plays before the finale.<h2 id="a18de984-5cc6-442d-bdc7-34454f88b1fd">Fans online are comparing the show's eerily prescient storylines to 'The Simpsons'</h2><div type="image" title="Homelander (Antony Starr) and Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) on season four, episode one of &quot;The Boys.&quot;" height="2000" width="3000" msid="111845216" hostid="261" sizebytes="254170"></div>Fox's long-running animated series "The Simpsons" has developed a reputation for <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-simpsons-is-good-at-predicting-the-future-2016-11">predicting future real-world events</a>.In light of the recent assassination attempt and the timing of "The Boys" season four finale, some viewers are noting that the superhero show seems to be following in the footsteps of "The Simpsons."<h2 id="51cc861a-91e6-4fc2-8720-fd158c82bb8e">'The Boys' has never been subtle in its satire, but the real-life parallels are even more overt in season 4</h2><div type="image" title="Antony Starr as Homelander in the season three finale of &quot;The Boys.&quot;" height="1204" width="2880" msid="111845214" hostid="261" sizebytes="47584"></div>Since its premiere in 2019, the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-boys-cast-vs-comic-book-characters-amazon-prime-video-2022-6">comic-book-based</a> series has never shied away from satirizing the political climate.Politician Victoria Newuman (Claudia Doumit) <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/the-boys-claudia-doumit-addresses-aoc-comparisons/">takes inspiration</a> from <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ocasio-cortez-life-completely-transformed-nancy-pelosi-step-down-2023-11">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a> and showrunner Eric Kripke has <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/boys-penis-homelander-trump-billy-joel-season-3-1369258/">said</a> that <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-boys-antony-starr-homelander-season-4-interview-2024-6">Homelander</a> (Antony Starr), the show's main antagonist, draws comparisons to Trump."When he got elected, we had a metaphor that said more about the current world," Kripke told <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/the-boys-showrunner-erik-kripke-interview-trumpism-1235914642/">The Hollywood Reporter</a>. "Suddenly, we were telling a story about the intersection of celebrity and authoritarianism and how social media and entertainment are used to sell fascism. We're right in the eye of the storm. And once we realized that, I just felt an obligation to run in that direction as far as we could."Season four of "The Boys," which premiered in June on Prime Video, pushes the real-world comparisons further.The season kicks off with fictional President-Elect Bob Singer and VP Victoria Neuman celebrating their win on Election Night and shows Homelander on trial for murdering a protester at the end of season three. Homelander is found not guilty, to the delight of his rabid supporters. Throughout the season, the titular rag-tag group of vigilantes tries to prevent Singer from being assassinated so supes can gain world power by infiltrating the White House. This culminates in a supe-led assassination attempt on Singer in the finale, coincidentally on January 6, as Congress certifies the election results.Season four of "The Boys" is streaming on Prime Video.

'The Boys' finale added a trigger warning for eerily depicting a presidential assassination attempt. Viewers say the show is predicting the future like 'The Simpsons.'

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