Quick Take — Heineken will lay off 6,000 employees (mainly in Europe). This is why

The cutback strategy is part of a broader reorganisation project, which includes cost rationalisation, including through the use ofartificial intelligence The news comes alongside Heineken’s fiscal year 2025 results, which show that Heineken posted a 1.2 per cent drop in sales volumes, while maintaining net revenue and operating profit slightly above analysts’ expectations. At the opening of trading on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the share reacted positively, jumping almost 3.9 % to EUR 77.50. Investors therefore seemed to reward the plan, which also foresees a growth in profits of between 2% and 6%

Quick Take — Lidl invests eleven billion euros in the AI data centre in Lübbenau

SchwarzDigits, the technology division of Schwarz, is working on a 130,000 square metre site.

The centre will be able to make use of 100 thousand AI chips while the initial computing power will be 200 megawatts. As already explained Lidl – 175.4 billion € turnover – will not only optimise its own data management, but also offer services to third parties.

There are already 12,000 data centres worldwide, of which just under half are in the US. In Italy, according to the Datacenter Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, in 2023 there were already 190 centres in the country, but 2025 should close with 205 settlements.

The same source explains that, in our country, EUR 5 billion have been invested in the two-year period 2023-2024, a figure that will rise to EUR 10 billion in 2025-2026. And, in order to improve and strengthen the energy supply, Terna has announced a 2025-2034 development plan with allocations of more than 23 billion euro.

Big absentee from this race? The Italian retail sector.

On the problems related to data centres read here but also here.

Quick Take — Amazon enters into a $38 billion partnership with OpenAI

AWS will provide OpenAI with Amazon EC2 UltraServers, with hundreds of thousands of chips and the capacity to scale up to tens of millions of CPUs (Central Processing Unit, meaning the ‘brain’ of the computer) for advanced GenAI workloads.

Martin Peers commented: ‘That’s not a lot’, given Silicon Valley’s billion dollar deals and sums on AI, Cloud and whatnot.

Indeed, OpenAI has commitments of $1.5 trillion and agreements with Nvidia, AMD, Oracle, Broadcom, Google and Samsung.

Amazon is expected to invest $8 billion in Anthropic. On AWS read here.

Compiled 4 November, updated 5 November 2025

Quick Take — Amazon’s cloud business – Amazon Web Services – recorded its strongest quarterly growth in almost three years

this was due to booming demand for computing power related to artificial intelligence. The company’s shares rose about 13 per cent in after-hours trading on Thursday, after Amazon Web Services reported a 20 per cent increase in sales to $33 billion.

Amazon’s total revenues for the three months to the end of September rose 13 per cent to $180.2 billion, while net income rose nearly 40 per cent to $21.2 billion compared to the same period last year.

Amazon ‘s capital expenditure on artificial intelligence infrastructure such as chips and data centres was $34.2 billion in the quarter, higher than the $31.5 billion expected by analysts, bringing the total spent so far this year to $89.9 billion.

AWS has always been Amazon’s ‘golden goose’.

Read also this article on Amazon’s revenue breakdown.

Quick Take — Amazon will lay off up to 30,000 workers

The cuts would amount to about 10% of the white-collar workforce of the online giant.

Amazon’s job cuts come as large companies in the US are looking for ways to reduce or slow their workforce growth, including by employing artificial intelligence. Rising prices, tightening labour markets and the ebb and flow of President Trump’s trade war have prompted business leaders to look for ways to tighten their belts without hurting growth.

More and more large companies are betting that they can grow without hiring. Read this article on the subject.

Below: in front of the Seattle headquarters in 2016