Amazon is rolling out 30-minute delivery across dozens of U.S. cities, marking its fastest shipping option yet as the retail giant continues to accelerate its push into ultra-fast fulfillment.

The new service, called Amazon Now, will deliver thousands of items — including groceries, household essentials and electronics — to customers’ doors in about 30 minutes.

The offering is now available in Seattle, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta, and is expanding to additional markets such as Austin, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis, Orlando, Oklahoma City and Phoenix.

“Amazon Now is for when you need or want the convenience of getting your Amazon order delivered in 30 minutes or less,” Udit Madan, senior vice president of Amazon Worldwide Operations, said in a statement. “With thousands of items available for ultra-fast delivery, you can get everything from groceries for dinner, to AirPods before a flight, to household essentials like laundry detergent or toothpaste delivered right to your door.

CALIFORNIA ACCUSES AMAZON OF PUSHING RIVALS TO RAISE PRICES

A worker near packages in an Amazon delivery vehicle in San Francisco on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

“Amazon Now complements Amazon’s existing fast-delivery offerings, including 1-hour and 3-hour delivery on more than 90,000 products and Same-Day Delivery on millions of items,” Madan added.

Amazon said the new service relies on a network of smaller fulfillment sites located closer to customers, allowing for faster delivery times and shorter travel distances for drivers.

Prime members will pay $3.99 per order for the service, while non-members will pay $13.99. Additional fees will apply for smaller orders, including $1.99 for Prime members and $3.99 for non-Prime members for orders under $15.

AMAZON DISRUPTING ITSELF, REBUILDING CUSTOMER SHOPPING EXPERIENCE AROUND AI FROM GROUND UP

Amazon’s new MK30 Prime Air drone is displayed during Amazon’s “Delivering the Future” event at the company’s BFI1 Fulfillment Center, Robotics Research and Development Hub in Sumner, Washington on October 18, 2023. (Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

“Amazon Now uses a network of smaller locations designed for efficient order fulfillment, strategically placed close to where customers live and work,” Amazon said. “This approach prioritizes the safety of employees picking and packing orders, reduces the distance delivery partners need to travel, and enables faster delivery times for customers.”

Amazon plans to expand the service to tens of millions of customers by the end of 2026.

AMAZON ADDS SELLER SURCHARGE AS OIL SPIKE FROM IRAN TENSIONS DRIVES LOGISTICS COSTS HIGHER

Amazon is investing $4 billion to expand Prime delivery services to rural America. (Amazon / Fox News)

The rollout comes as Amazon continues to invest heavily in speeding up deliveries, reporting that U.S. Prime members received more than 8 billion items the same or next day in 2025 — a more than 30% increase from the previous year.

The new offering adds to Amazon’s broader delivery network, which includes Prime Air drone delivery, offering sub-60-minute service in select U.S. locations, as well as one-hour, three-hour and same-day delivery options across thousands of cities and towns.

Amazon said 2025 marked its third consecutive year of record-fast delivery speeds, with more than 13 billion items arriving the same or next day globally. In the U.S., Prime members received over 8 billion of those shipments — up more than 30% year over year — with groceries and everyday essentials making up about half.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX BUSINESS APP

The company said Prime members have access to free shipping on more than 300 million items, and saved an average of $550 on fast delivery last year — nearly four times the cost of a membership.

Mr Moulton and GM&C Life Sciences Fund join £4.3m funding round

Venture capitalist Jon Moulton has backed a biotech firm that’s looking to tackle the “critical global threat” of infections that are resistant to antibiotics.

Infex Therapeutics, of Alderley Edge, has secured £4.3m in a funding round led by Mr Moulton alongside the GM&C Life Sciences Fund, managed by Catapult Ventures, and existing high net worth investors.

The company will use the funding to develop its pipeline of new anti-infectives targeting antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and other “critical-priority infectious diseases”.

Dr Peter Jackson, CEO of Infex Therapeutics, said: “We are delighted to secure this investment led by Jon Moulton, with support from the Greater Manchester and Cheshire Lifescience Investment Fund and our existing investors.

“This funding represents strong validation of our progress in developing novel anti-infectives to address the critical global threat of antimicrobial resistance.”

Jon Moulton, founder of Better Capital and now chair of Infex Therapeutics, said: “We have supported Infex from the beginning and continue to be impressed by the company’s scientific progress and strategic execution.”

He highlighted Infex’s lead programme RESP-X, which is being trialled as a therapy for non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis (NCFB) patients.

And he said: ”This additional investment reflects our strong conviction in both the team and its innovative approach to tackling antimicrobial resistance.

Nick Wright, CEO of Catapult Ventures which manages the GM&C Life Sciences Fund, said: “Infex Therapeutics has made excellent scientific progress since we first invested several years ago. The company has clearly established itself as a world leader in the AMR and related space and the data it is generating is very compelling.”

President Donald Trump is slated to visit China this week, and according to a White House official, business figures including Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook and more than a dozen others will travel to China with the U.S. delegation.

Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon are some of the other figures listed.

TESLA RECALLS MORE THAN 218K VEHICLES OVER REARVIEW IMAGE ISSUE THAT POSES CRASH RISK

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., left, and Larry Fink, chief executive officer of BlackRock Inc., during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Others on the list provided by the White House official include Blackstone Chairman, CEO and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, Cargill Board Chair and CEO Brian Sikes, Citi Board Chair and CEO Jane Fraser, Coherent CEO Jim Anderson, GE Aerospace chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp, Jr., Illumina CEO Jacob Thaysen, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach, Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick, Micron Chairman, President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon and Visa CEO Ryan McInerney.

“I am very much looking forward to my trip to China, an amazing Country, with a Leader, President Xi, respected by all,” Trump declared in a Monday Truth Social post. 

GORDON CHANG WARNS CHINESE EVS ENTERING US VIA CANADA COULD BECOME ‘ROLLING SPY MACHINES’

Apple CEO Tim Cook (R) shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump during an event in the Oval Office of the White House on Aug. 6, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images / Getty Images)

“Great things will happen for both Countries!” he added.

President Donald Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October in South Korea, according to Reuters.

EX-WHITE HOUSE ‘AI CZAR’ SAYS US, CHINA COULD FIND AI COMMON GROUND DESPITE FIERCE RIVALRY

U.S. President Donald Trump greets Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of a bilateral meeting at Gimhae Air Base on Oct. 30, 2025 in Busan, South Korea. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images / Getty Images)

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

During his first term, Trump visited China in 2017.

Mike Ashley’s retail empire has scored a notable courtroom victory after the Court of Appeal threw out a substantial damages award handed down in a protracted trademark infringement dispute, sparing the FTSE-listed group what could have proved a punishing financial blow.

The ruling brings to a head a long-running tussle between the Shirebrook-based discount sports chain, rebranded as Frasers Group in 2019, and Lifestyle Equities, the company that owns and licenses the Beverly Hills Polo Club marque. Lifestyle Equities had alleged that Ashley’s group infringed its trademark by flogging goods under the rival ‘Santa Monica Polo Club’ label, a claim it first lodged back in 2018.

Frasers had lost the underlying infringement case seven years ago but mounted a fresh challenge against the scale of damages it was ordered to stump up. At an appeal hearing in April, the retailer’s lawyers argued that the bill should be slashed because the third-party companies trading under the Beverly Hills Polo Club name, and on whose behalf Lifestyle Equities was attempting to recover losses, had never been officially registered as licensees in the United Kingdom.

The Court of Appeal duly sided with the high street giant, ruling that it was “too late” for Lifestyle Equities to retrospectively register the licences in question. With the original claim dating back to 2018 and the licensing arrangements stretching back nearly a decade, the court concluded that the additional claims “appear to be well out of time” and that allowing them through would amount to an “unprincipled windfall” for businesses that had not properly placed themselves on the public register.

Counsel for Frasers warned during the appeal that permitting such claims to succeed would expose accused infringers to ambush litigation, leaving defendants “suddenly confronted with a Trojan Horse full of licensees claiming damages” of whose existence they had no prior knowledge. Without strict adherence to public registration, the retailer’s legal team argued, the regime risked becoming “a charter of unjust enrichment”, allowing trademark owners to scoop up compensation for unregistered partners alongside their own losses.

The judgment represents a material win for Frasers, which has shrugged off a potentially eye-watering damages bill that, had it stood, would have set an awkward precedent for the wider retail sector. The decision is likely to be studied closely by intellectual property lawyers and brand owners alike, given the implications for how licensing arrangements must be formally documented to be enforceable in the British courts.

The legal win follows news first reported by City AM that the magic circle-adjacent law firm RPC has lost one of its highest-billing partners, Jeremy Drew, who represents Ashley personally, to Taylor Wessing.

The trademark victory comes hard on the heels of an extraordinary admission by Ashley, the man who founded Sports Direct in his native Burnham in 1982 and ran it as chief executive until handing the reins to son-in-law Michael Murray in 2022.

The 61-year-old billionaire has confirmed publicly for the first time that he engineered the downfall of his most prominent retail adversary, the former JD Sports executive chairman Peter Cowgill.

Cowgill stepped down from the FTSE 100 trainer chain in 2022 in the wake of a Competition and Markets Authority probe, triggered after leaked footage emerged of him in a clandestine car park meeting with Footasylum chief executive Barry Brown. The pair had been expressly barred from exchanging commercially sensitive information while JD Sports was attempting to acquire Footasylum, and the leaked footage led the CMA to impose fines of nearly £5m on the two businesses.

In an interview with the Financial Times last weekend, Ashley conceded that the footage had been obtained by one of his own employees and said he was “not hiding from the fact” that he was the architect of Cowgill’s removal, a candid acknowledgement that lifts the lid on one of the more colourful boardroom feuds in recent British retail history.

Jamie Young

Jamie is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, bringing over a decade of experience in UK SME business reporting.
Jamie holds a degree in Business Administration and regularly participates in industry conferences and workshops.

When not reporting on the latest business developments, Jamie is passionate about mentoring up-and-coming journalists and entrepreneurs to inspire the next generation of business leaders.