Quick Take — Amazon’s artificial intelligence services in its cloud computing unit are generating annual sales of more than $15 billion

This figure, based on first quarter results, represents about 10% of Amazon Web Services‘ annual revenue of $142 billion, and comes after years of anticipation from investors and analysts…

Like its competitors, Amazon is under pressure to prove that its spending on artificial intelligence will pay off. The company has forecast $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, mainly for AI, a figure that has spooked investors and fuelled fears of a speculative bubble in the sector.

Quick Take — Carrefour relies on ChatGPT to win new customers

Carrefour becomes the first European food retailer to launch an application on ChatGPT, allowing users to compose shopping trolleys by drawing on its offer directly through OpenAI’s chatbot…

AI is one of the main pillars of the plan unveiled in February by CEO Alexandre Bompard, which aims for a 25% market share in France by 2030, up from 22% today.

Carrefour had already launched its chatbot Hopla based on ChatGPT in 2023, and announced in early 2024 a partnership with Google to enable shopping via the AI agent Gemini.

A third of French cyber shoppers already use AI during their online purchases, according to an Odoxa study for Fevad published in February…

In Europe, only Lidl seems to be banking on AI.

Confirmation of the German giant’s orientation by Martin Brandenburger, CEO of Lidl Italy, can be found here.

Below: Google is a historical partner of Carrefour.

Quick Take — Walmart launches new payment experience with ChatGPT

Walmart has launched a ChatGPT-based experience that will allow shoppers to find products in AI-based chat and then purchase them in a personalised Walmart environment, OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, said this week.

According to the company, this initiative links the product search functionality within ChatGPT to shoppers’ accounts, loyalty programmes and payments with Walmart. The experience is available via web browser and will also be launched with access via iOS and Android apps.

Walmart’s new ChatGPT-based experience represents a change from the retailer’s previous OpenAI strategy. In October 2025 , Walmart had announced a partnership with OpenAI to allow its customers to shop using Instant Checkout on ChatGPT. Walmart’s latest move marks a step back from Instant Checkout functionality….

Source

I had written on the subject here

AI Agents in Retail: the silent revolution in large-scale retail

McKinsey estimates that retailers with autonomous AI systems are growing 50 per cent faster than competitors. Cognizant projects $4.4 trillion in additional spending over the next five years from customers embracing AI. Agents are not an investment in the future of retail, they are already the present, and those who delay to act today risk having to make up for a hard-to-fill disadvantage tomorrow

Quick Take — Amazon: e-commerce malfunctions due to AI?

The red alert is said to have been raised immediately after a malfunction of the ecommerce site that occurred in early March and lasted for about six hours, during which customers were unable to complete transactions or use certain specific functions such as checking the price of products or accessing their profile on the site. According to the Financial Times , this is just the latest episode in a long series of malfunctions caused precisely by errors introduced by Q, the artificial intelligence assistant for computer code development that was chosen by the tech giant. A tool that, together with Kira – the assistant employed instead by Amazon Web Services, the subsidiary that deals with cloud services -, seems to have been adopted by all Amazon developers.

Giorgia Meloni and Coldiretti put the brakes on the development of solar energy in Italy

The government, on energy, is in a huge conflict of interest, which is why prices do not fall: Snam, Italgas and Terna beat Microsoft, Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook). Italy’s publicly controlled companies that transport or distribute gas and electricity to citizens and businesses are more profitable than some of the world’s largest, most technologically advanced and important companies in the business of the future: cloud, data centres and artificial intelligence. In short, Big Energy beats Big Tech

How Walmart became an advertising powerhouse while remaining focused on the food, non-food and e-commerce business

It is a pity that no Italian company has had the size but above all the vision to approach the world as these giants have done. In Italy everyone thought: e-commerce must be sustainable on its own. It happened to Esselunga at home until it had no rivals, but Amazon and Walmart disprove this vision. E-commerce is sustained by other, more profitable revenues