Dolly Parton in Los Angeles in 2012. (BigStock Photo)
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos joined the chorus of people who said they were touched by the life and work of Dolly Parton as he shared his condolences after the passing of the entertainment legend.
Parton, the rags-to-riches country music star whose hits included “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You,” “9 to 5” and “Coat of Many Colors,” died in Nashville on Tuesday at age 80.
“Dolly spent her whole life showing us what it means to lead with love,” Bezos wrote in an Instagram post. “Lauren and I are so grateful to have known her. She lifted everyone with her music, her generosity, and her joy. Sending our sincere condolences to her family and everyone she touched.”
Parton was a prolific giver. Her philanthropic endeavors included Imagination Library, which distributed more than 200 million books to young children. She gave back to her home county in Tennessee, through awards and scholarships for high school graduates. She helped raise millions after wildfires in the state, and gave millions more to hospitals.
The award was established in 2021, with the prize to be distributed within 10 years. Past winners have included include Jose Andres, chef and founder of the World Central Kitchen nonprofit organization, Van Jones, host of “The Van Jones Show” and founder of Dream.org; Eva Longoria, actress, producer, and founder of the Eva Longoria Foundation; Richard Rusczyk, founder of Art of Problem Solving; and others.
“She gives with her heart,” Bezos said when presenting Parton with the award, as seen in a video he posted on Twitter at the time. “What she’s done for kids, and literacy, and so many other things, is just incredible.”
“Did you say $100 million?!” Parton exclaimed as she took the stage. “When people are in a position to help, you should help. I’ve always said, ‘I try to put my money where my heart is,’ and I think you do the same thing,” she added, tapping Bezos on the chest.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Amazon’s delivery drones are going national, nearly 13 years after Jeff Bezos unveiled them on 60 Minutes. We listen back and discuss what’s next.
Plus: We go inside Anduril’s unmarked Bellevue office as the defense company builds toward 1,000 Seattle-area engineers; a reporter hides an AirTag in a rare book and tracks it to a secret Amazon book-scanning facility in Las Vegas; and an Anduril-themed trivia challenge.
GeekWire co-founder John Cook talks with Dan Clubbe of The Redmen TV about Jeff Bezos’ investment in Liverpool FC. (The Redmen TV Video)
What does Jeff Bezos’ new ownership stake in English Premier League powerhouse Liverpool FC mean for the storied soccer club?
I was invited by Dan Clubbe of the Liverpool fan site The Redmen TV to talk about the Amazon founder’s recent investment, Bezos’ first real foray into sports ownership.
Across the 45-minute discussion, I shared thoughts about Bezos’ transformation from the nerdy, khaki-wearing entrepreneur of his early career to the higher-profile “Buff Bezos” of the past decade.
On the surface, it appears as if Bezos will, for now, take an arm’s-length approach to Liverpool. He’s investing through a consortium, 1892 Holdings, that owns about a 38% interest in the team and an option to buy it outright.
One point I made: Bezos leads a very busy life. The sci-fi nerd’s true passion is his space company, Blue Origin, and he is also spending considerable time as the co-CEO at newly formed AI startup Prometheus. And with a new wife (Lauren Sanchez Bezos, who seems to be the true sports fan between them) there may not be enough hours in the day for the Miami resident to worry much about the inner workings at Anfield.
But Bezos does bring enormous capital and business acumen to the team.
To better understand what this might mean for Liverpool, I suggested Clubbe and his mighty team of reporters take a closer look at Amazon’s famous Leadership Principles.
Some of the most relevant Leadership Principles include “Ownership,” which asks leaders to think long term and not trade lasting value for a quick result; “Customer Obsession,” which means starting with what the customer wants and working backward; and “Insist on the Highest Standards,” setting the bar higher than most people think reasonable.
That said, the Amazon principle of “Frugality” doesn’t really play well these days on the world soccer stage.
We talked about the changing nature of global soccer, driven by big personalities and big money, and the balancing act it takes to build a soccer club while respecting the community of fans. I noted how this tightrope was a hard one for Bezos to walk in terms of his relationship to Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, something that might give Liverpool fans pause.
Watch highlights from the discussion above, and subscribe to The Redmen TV for our full discussion. Listen to a much shorter analysis on last week’s GeekWire podcast.
An Amazon Prime Air delivery drone flies over a suburban neighborhood in Arizona. (Amazon Photo)
Amazon’s drones are finally going national.
The company’s autonomous aerial vehicles are set to deliver packages to nearly 500 cities and towns across the country by the end of this year, zipping items through the air to drop them in backyards and driveways as quickly as 30 minutes after ordering.
Amazon announced the plan Wednesday, describing it as a sixfold increase in its Prime Air footprint, reaching communities collectively representing tens of millions of customers.
“I know this looks like science fiction — it’s not,” the Amazon founder said at the time.
Bezos acknowledged that it would take at least four or five years, optimistically, and that convincing the FAA the drones were safe would be one of the biggest hurdles. Amazon’s FAQ that night said it hoped the agency would have rules in place “as early as sometime in 2015.”
Both the technology and the regulations took far longer than the company expected.
Amazon said Wednesday morning that Prime Air will launch soon in the Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, Atlanta and Boise metro areas, with more communities to come later this year. The drones fly primarily over suburban areas, which allows them to avoid the tall buildings and crowded airspace that complicate flights over dense urban areas.
There’s no word yet on when or whether drone delivery will come to the Seattle area.
Amazon said the drones launch from two types of facilities: smaller same-day delivery sites and its larger robotic fulfillment centers. The mix is what lets Prime Air offer anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of items depending on the location, according to the company.
Nearly any item weighing 5 pounds or less and small enough to fit in a large shoebox is eligible for drone delivery. That translates into millions of products, as noted by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in his annual letter to shareholders earlier this year. He wrote that Prime Air would carry “a much larger selection of items inside a half hour” than Amazon’s other fast-delivery options.
Drone delivery will be free for Prime members on orders of $50 or more. Prime orders below that carry a $2.99 fee, and customers without a membership pay $4.99.
Amazon’s reference to expanding to 500 cities and towns does not reflect the number of planned Amazon drone launch locations, but rather the number of municipalities that fall within delivery range of the planned hubs, each of which covers roughly 175 square miles.
The 30-minute delivery scenario is a best case. Most orders arrive around 60 minutes after checkout, Amazon said in its announcement.
Amazon isn’t the only company betting on drones. Amazon retail rival Walmart and Google parent Alphabet’s Wing have been building what they call the largest drone delivery network in the U.S., adding seven new markets in June including Phoenix, Philadelphia and the Bay Area. They plan to reach 270 stores and more than 40 million people by next year.
Local approvals remain a hurdle for delivery drones. Noise has been a recurring concern for residents near drone operations. Amazon says its drones are quieter than an idling delivery truck during drop-off and comparable to a window fan while in flight. A proposed federal rule that would more broadly allow flights beyond the pilot’s line of sight has not been finalized.
The Associated Press first reported on the expansion Tuesday afternoon in what appears to have been an inadvertent break of a news embargo, to which GeekWire had not agreed. Post updated Wednesday morning with details from the official announcement.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: What should Liverpool FC fans expect from Jeff Bezos as a member of the storied English Premier League club’s new minority ownership group? We consult the Amazon leadership principles for the answer.
Plus, a tip and an SEC filing lead to a scoop on a former Meta AI director’s new startup, the GeekWire Editorial Board convenes to decide whether Dave Clark’s Auger stays on the GeekWire 200 after moving its HQ to Dallas, and Microsoft quietly semi-retires its AI blob.
This week on the GeekWire podcast: Microsoft and Amazon both reported quarterly numbers, and both stocks rose on cloud results that beat expectations. Is all that AI spending paying off? And in related news, Microsoft sees a rare annual headcount decline, hitting product R&D hardest.
Plus: Satya Nadella builds a Power BI dashboard out of an analyst’s research report, and touts it on the earnings call to make a bigger point. Jeff Bezos names Amazon’s chips business as the long-awaited fourth pillar. And AI House managing director Jacob Colker delivers a much-needed pep talk for Seattle tech, calling on the region to recognize and build on its strengths.
AWS CMO Julia White, left, and CEO Matt Garman at an event in April. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop)
Amazon Web Services revenue grew 37% last quarter, its fastest pace since the end of 2021, but the company is spending so much on data centers and infrastructure to fuel that growth that its free cash flow for the past 12 months turned negative for the first time since 2023.
Overall, the tech giant reported $200.6 billion in revenue for the second quarter, up 20%, with operating income of $27.5 billion, up 43%. That beat Wall Street’s expectations of about $196.4 billion in revenue, and topped the high end of Amazon’s own guidance.
Profits were $62.6 billion, or $5.75 per share. However, that included $53.4 billion in pre-tax gains, primarily on Amazon’s investment in Anthropic, which inflated the bottom line. Excluding those gains, EPS would have been about $1.95, above analyst expectations of $1.82.
Amazon shares rose more than 8% in after-hours trading following the report.
AWS revenue reached $42.2 billion in the quarter, a $169 billion annualized run rate. Operating income in the cloud division rose 64% to $16.6 billion, lifting AWS operating margin to 39.4% from 32.9% a year ago — evidence that the AI buildout is starting to convert into profit, not just revenue.
“AWS is booming,” CEO Andy Jassy said in the release, adding that the company’s AI and chips businesses “each eclipsed run rates of more than $25 billion.” The chips business, which Jeff Bezos called the next pillar of the company this week, was at a $20 billion run rate three months ago.
Amazon’s operations generated $161.4 billion over the past 12 months, but the company spent a net $169 billion on property and equipment — up $66.1 billion from a year earlier, an increase Amazon attributed primarily to AI investments — leaving a shortfall of $7.6 billion in free cash flow.
A year earlier, it had $18.2 billion left over for the prior 12 months, by comparison.
Free cash flow is what’s left after a company covers its operating costs and pays for things like data centers and warehouses. It’s an important measure of financial health, which investors watch closely because it shows how much cash a business actually creates after paying for its own growth.
Update: Amazon raised its capital spending forecast on its earnings call. Jassy said the company now expects to spend about $220 billion in cash capex this year, up from the roughly $200 billion it projected earlier, attributing the increase to the higher cost of memory chips.
He addressed the cash flow squeeze directly, framing it as a matter of timing. Data centers require capital about two years before servers can be installed and start generating revenue, he said, but once open, they can be monetized for more than 30 years without repeating that upfront cost.
Servers and networking equipment run on a shorter cycle, purchased a few months before going into service. Those take a little under three years to break even, Jassy said, against a useful life of at least five to six years.
He said most of Amazon’s AI capacity is now contracted for terms of five years or longer.
“We’ll spend a lot of capex and encounter free cash flow headwinds until these data centers come online, can be monetized, and we get a few years into these servers being utilized,” Jassy said.
Other notes from Amazon’s earnings release:
Online store sales rose 15% to $70.4 billion, up from 10% growth in the same quarter a year ago. It remains Amazon’s largest single revenue line at about 35% of total revenue, and it is the line most directly affected by the decision to move Prime Day into June, into the second quarter. Last year, the annual online sales event took place in the third quarter.
Advertising revenue rose 26% to $19.8 billion, up from 22% growth in the same quarter a year ago. It has generated about $76 billion over the past 12 months, making it one of Amazon’s fastest-growing businesses. Prime Day lifted this line as well, because the event drives a surge in spending by sellers and brands competing for placement.
Third-party seller services revenue, which includes commissions and fulfillment and shipping fees Amazon charges independent merchants, rose 16% to $46.8 billion, up from 10% growth in the same quarter a year ago. Independent sellers accounted for 61% of units sold in Amazon’s stores, roughly flat with recent quarters. Prime Day boosted this line as well.
Subscription services, which includes Prime memberships, grew 12% to $13.7 billion. The line has grown between 10% and 12% every quarter for the past year and a half. Analysts have been expecting a Prime price increase, which has not yet materialized.
Amazon reports quarterly earnings Thursday afternoon, facing the same test as every other big tech company right now: whether it’s generating enough business to justify its massive AI spending.
Wall Street expects revenue of about $196.4 billion, up 17% from a year ago, and earnings of $1.82 per share. That’s essentially the midpoint of Amazon’s own forecast for the second quarter.
Part of that growth is due to the calendar. Prime Day ran June 23-26 this year, during the second quarter in the U.S. and most large markets. Last year it ran July 8-11, in the third quarter. That gives Amazon’s retail numbers a boost this time that the year-ago quarter didn’t have.
Another factor is the cloud. AWS grew revenue 28% last quarter, its fastest rate in nearly four years, and analysts expect the acceleration to continue with revenue of roughly $40.5 billion for the second quarter, up 31%, according to Zacks Consensus Estimates.
The company plans a record $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, nearly all of it for data centers, servers and chips to support increased capacity for training and running AI models.
Amazon is making those investments based in part on demand from big AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic, which have signed commitments to AWS worth $138 billion and more than $100 billion, respectively, for the coming years.
“We’re not investing approximately $200 billion in capex in 2026 on a hunch,” CEO Andy Jassy wrote in his April shareholder letter.
In the meantime, the spending is absorbing nearly all of the cash from Amazon’s operations. Free cash flow fell to $1.2 billion over the past 12 months, from $25.9 billion a year earlier.
Investors seem to be losing patience with that tradeoff overall. Google parent Alphabet beat expectations last week and its stock fell anyway, after raising its own capital spending forecast to as much as $205 billion for the year. Microsoft reports earnings Wednesday afternoon.
One difference for Amazon is its custom chip business — Graviton, Trainium and Nitro — which passed a $20 billion annual revenue run rate last quarter. Jeff Bezos said this week that it’s becoming a fourth pillar of the company, alongside Marketplace, Prime and AWS.
The company is overhauling its approach to AI model development. Business Insider reported this week that Amazon is winding down most of its in-house Nova models and concentrating engineers on a new frontier model effort, with a new flagship model expected at re:Invent this fall.
Amazon cut jobs in its AGI organization last week and confirmed that it’s closing its San Francisco AI site, while saying its frontier model research would continue.
At the same time, AWS is spending to help other companies deploy AI, committing $1 billion at the end of June to embed its own engineers with enterprise customers building agentic systems, following similar moves by OpenAI and Anthropic.
Check back with GeekWire for coverage on Thursday afternoon.
Amazon’s next pillar could be built on a foundation of silicon.
In a new interview with Fortune, Amazon founder and Executive Chair Jeff Bezos says the company’s custom chip business is on track to become one of Amazon’s most durable businesses, placing it alongside Marketplace, Prime, and Amazon Web Services as a core pillar of the company.
“A few of our offerings have become durable pillars, things like Marketplace and Prime and AWS,” Bezos told Fortune. “What I see right now is that our chips business, our silicon business, is lining up to be our next pillar.”
The comments offer one of Bezos’ clearest public endorsements yet of Amazon’s push to design its own chips for artificial intelligence, an increasingly important strategy as demand for AI computing soars and companies look for alternatives to Nvidia’s dominant processors.
More than a decade of investment
Amazon has invested heavily in custom silicon through Annapurna Labs, the Israeli chip startup it acquired in 2015. The company now develops its own AI chips under the Trainium and Inferentia brands, designed to train and run large language models while reducing costs for customers using Amazon Web Services.
AWS has positioned the chips as a lower-cost alternative for AI developers. AWS has positioned the chips as a lower-cost alternative for AI developers. Anthropic trains and runs its Claude models on Trainium, and OpenAI has committed to consume about 2 gigawatts of Trainium capacity, ramping in 2027.
The company disclosed revenue for its in-house data center chips for the first time earlier this year, and since then its Trainium, Graviton, and Nitro chips have grown to a combined annual run rate of more than $20 billion. Amazon has been pouring billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, including new data centers and custom networking hardware.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has repeatedly argued that demand for AI computing will remain strong for years, making investments in chips, servers, networking equipment, and power generation essential to the company’s long-term growth.
In an earnings release earlier this year, Jassy signaled plans to pour a record $200 billion in capital expenditures across Amazon in 2026, citing “seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites.”
The real potential for Amazon’s chips business could come in going beyond the walls of its own data centers. Jassy wrote in his annual letter to shareholders this year that it’s “quite possible” Amazon will sell racks of its internally developed chips to third parties in the future.
Amazon’s fourth pillar?
This discussion about Amazon’s “pillars” goes back to Bezos’ 2014 letter to shareholders, where he described four characteristics of what he called a “dreamy” business: “Customers love it, it can grow to very large size, it has strong returns on capital, and it’s durable in time — with the potential to endure for decades.”
AWS, Marketplace, and Prime are considered the first three pillars. The question of what could become Amazon’s “fourth pillar” has been debated for more than a decade, with areas including shipping and logistics and Alexa cited as contenders in the past.
The company’s big bet on silicon also was emphasized by Jassy in the Fortune piece. He told the magazine that chips are often the key to computing. “The growth in AI has been so significant, but we have a chips business that we built over the last decade here that is growing very quickly,” he said.
The profile appeared alongside Fortune’s release of its 2026 Global 500 ranking, which placed Amazon at No. 1 for the first time, ending Walmart’s 12-year run as the world’s largest company by revenue after Amazon surpassed $700 billion in annual sales, as reported previously.
Walmart fell to No. 2, followed by State Grid of China, UnitedHealth Group, and Saudi Aramco. The magazine reports that Amazon is on pace to be the first trillion dollar company by revenue.
Amazon reports Q2 2026 earnings on Thursday afternoon. Check back with GeekWire for coverage.
The Amazon founder is reportedly part of a group interested in buying a 30% stake in Liverpool Football Club, the storied English Premier League soccer team whose legendary fans belt out the show tune “You’ll Never Walk Alone” before each home match.
Bezos would join a group that includes the former co-owner of soccer club Queens Park Rangers, Amit Bhatia, who is looking to pay £1.35 billion (about $1.8 billion) for the stake, reports The Guardian. The stake is being sold by current owner Fenway Sports Group, the firm that also owns The Boston Red Sox.
Bezos, who founded Amazon in Seattle in 1994, is considered the fourth richest person on the planet with a net worth estimated by Forbes at $224 billion.
The billionaire has long been rumored as a possible sports team owner, and his name was often tossed out as a possible buyer of the Seattle Seahawks and the Washington Commanders. Earlier this month, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and his family emerged as the lead bidder for the Super Bowl champion Seahawks at a reported purchase price of $9.6 billion.
In addition to his recent marriage to former journalist Lauren Sanchez, Bezos also is highly engaged with his space venture Blue Origin and a new AI company by the name of Prometheus, which just raised $12 billion and where he serves as co-CEO.
Owning a piece of a UK soccer club has become a status symbol of sorts for wealthy Americans, perhaps driven by the popularity of shows like Ted Lasso and Welcome to Wrexham. The latter is a documentary that tracks Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney and their exploits of owning the Welsh team Wrexham FC.
American owners currently own outright or a piece of some of the top clubs in the English Premier League, including Chelsea led by Todd Boehly; Arsenal owned by Stanley Kroenke; and Manchester United owned by the Glazer family. Liverpool also is considered one of the top soccer clubs on the planet, winning the Premier League trophy in the 2024-2025 season.
On a smaller scale, Remitly co-founder Shivaas Gulati joined an ownership consortium two years ago that purchased Southend United, a football club founded in 1906 and located in Southend-on-Sea, about an hour from London. They play in the National League, which is the fifth tier of English soccer.
The English Premier League season starts on Friday, Aug. 21 when defending Premier League champs Arsenal take on newly-promoted side Coventry City.
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