Amazon preparing NFTs for April

 

1. Amazon's NFT marketplace could debut in April, and the secret sauce might be Amazon's ability to tie tokens to real-world items being delivered the old-fashioned way. Q: Is Amazon being smart with its NFT marketplace, or is it late to the party? Share your thoughts with the Inside Amazon community.

2. Prime Video is getting itself a little something special on Black Friday this year, streaming the NFL's first-ever day-after-Thanksgiving game — all for free. Q: Do you think you'll tune in to a Black Friday game on Prime Video? Tell us who you'd like to see play on Inside.com.

3. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced a probe into Amazon's robo-taxi subsidiary Zoox — specifically Zoox's self-certification process, which Zoox's (human) general counsel believes has "met or exceeded applicable (federal) performance requirements."

4. Amazon is still cutting costs, but it is also spending, committing $237.8M to buy a new industrial plant in Santa Clara, California, though it remains unclear how the facility will be used.

5. UPS and Amazon expect to do just a little less business with each other in 2023 – or as Amazon CFO Brian Newman put it, "continue on a mutually agreed path to glide that business down."

6. Amazon's latest layoffs and hiring freeze sent some chills through its workforce, but Ian Wilson, a human resources VP at AWS, sounded optimistic at a recent town hall, anticipating that some of those who were laid off would ultimately return in new roles.

7. The same Just Walk Out technology used in Amazon's recently shuttered Go convenience stores will roll out on college campuses through a new partnership with Transact, though shoppers without university-verified accounts may not have access.