Visa’s Andrew Torre claimed the acquisition will enable the organisation to better identify fraud before it impacts consumers at the point of payment.

Payment platform Visa has stated it plans to acquire Israel-based cybersecurity company BioCatch as a means of tackling cybersecurity breaches and AI-powered attacks. 

Andrew Torre, the president of value-added services at Visa, said the $2.4bn cash acquisition will enable Visa’s clients to stop fraudulent activity before it reaches a point of payment. 

Established in Tel Aviv in 2011 by Avi Turgemen, Benny Rosenbaum and Uri Rivner, BioCatch aims to detect fraud and differentiate legitimate users from fraudulent users in real time by analysing signals. The organisation has offices in Tel Aviv, London, New York, São Paulo, Mexico City, Mumbai and Sydney.

As part of the acquisition, Visa will gain access to BioCatch’s behavioural biometrics platform, which can analyse identifying data such as keystroke timing, touch screen pressure and other signals used to distinguish real users from scammers and bots. 

In a press release, BioCatch’s CEO Gadi Mazor said: “Real-time insights into customer intent continue to grow increasingly essential for institutions to establish trust within digital banking sessions. For more than a decade, we’ve demonstrated behaviour’s unique ability to distinguish the criminal from the legitimate. 

“In the last couple of years, we’ve shown how real-time intelligence-sharing networks between our customers can amplify the power of our behavioural intelligence further still. Together with Visa, we’re even better positioned to advance our mission of making the world a safer place to transact and protect consumers from financial crime.”

Visa’s deal will be subject to the traditional closing conditions, including receipt of applicable regulatory approvals and is expected to close by the end of Visa’s fiscal second quarter of 2027.

AI-powered cyberattacks are becoming an increasingly concerning issue for organisations. In late July, chipmaker Nvidia formed an alliance with other companies in the technology space, in order to develop and share tools designed for enhanced AI safety and cybersecurity. 

The Open Secure AI Alliance’s founding members include Adobe, Crowdstrike, Hugging Face and Dell Technologies, among others. 

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Big anniversary, big screens? Apple might bump up the display size of the iPhone Pro and iPhone Pro Max next year as the company celebrates the 20th anniversary of the iPhone, according to an insider.

Digital Chat Station, an anonymous but well-regarded source of tech leaks, shared on Chinese social media platform Weibo that the iPhone 20 Pro could feature a 6.4-inch display, while the iPhone 20 Pro Max could come with a 7-inch screen. Although the account holder’s identity has never been publicly confirmed, Digital Chat Station has built a reputation for providing reliable information about upcoming devices.

Apple is expected to release those devices in September 2027, three months after the company celebrates the 20th anniversary of the iPhone’s launch on June 29, 2007. (For a blast from the past, check out CNET’s review of that legendary device.) Apple has not announced any official launch dates.

A representative for Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The latest versions of the iPhone Pro and Pro Max are a tad smaller — 6.3 inches for the iPhone Pro and 6.9 inches for the iPhone Pro Max.

The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, expected to launch next month, will also have 6.3- and 6.9-inch screen sizes. According to our roundup of reports and rumors about Apple’s upcoming products, the company’s next lineup could also include its first foldable iPhone, the Apple Watch Series 12, and the Apple Watch Ultra 4

Glass all around?

In addition to the larger screen sizes for the iPhone 20 Pro and Pro Max, the Digital Chat Station report also said the devices might have a quad-curved design and no bezel showing. If true, when you look at the front of those phones, you’ll only see glass that wraps around all four edges. You won’t see a bezel, the border that surrounds the screen, which is typically found on most smartphones.

Digital Chat Station said that, even with the bigger screens, the phones will maintain the same aspect ratio.

The last time Apple increased screen size was two years ago. The iPhone 16 Pro screen size increased to 6.3 inches (up from 6.1), and the Pro Max to 6.9 inches (up from 6.7).

Increasing screen sizes “makes sense” as people consume more content on their iPhones, says Austin Evans, who has been testing tech devices for years on his YouTube channel, which has nearly 6 million subscribers. He also likes the idea of the wraparound glass look on the front display.

“I’m excited to see what they put together for the 20th anniversary,” Evans said. “If they’re able to ship an iPhone with effectively zero bezels at all, it could really set the tone for what an iPhone can be for the next decade.”

What else have we heard?

According to the rumor mill, there could be several other upgrades and changes for the iPhone 20 lineup.

There might not be physical buttons for powering on, adjusting volume or controlling the camera. Instead, solid-state buttons might be integrated into the frame itself, enabling consumers to initiate actions by pressing lightly or firmly.

There might be a Face ID sensor under the main screen, according to some reports. The Dynamic Island might shrink, with the front camera reduced to pinhole size, although these changes might arrive sooner with the iPhone 18.

The iPhone 20 might also have a brighter, thinner OLED panel to reduce glare, increase brightness and use less power.

Internally, the iPhone 20 might be fitted with a second-generation 2nm chip for better efficiency and performance, as well as a pure-silicon anode battery.

Ever since being admittedly fascinated by the Cambridge coffee webcam from the 1990s, I’ve written about VPNs, the NFL, smartphones, living wages, over/unders and everything in between.

See full bio

Astell&Kern has taken a flagship digital audio player with four vacuum tubes, 54 possible sound configurations and enough mass to make the word “portable” feel legally optimistic, and decided that the missing ingredient was a copper chassis. The question is whether the new material offers any meaningful performance benefit or merely gives collectors another expensive object to polish.

The new Astell&Kern SP4000T Copper expands the recently introduced SP4000T line with a chassis made from copper rather than the stainless steel used for the original silver version.

Pricing and general availability have not been announced, and Astell&Kern has not explained the delay. The timing is worth watching, however. FiiO has already increased prices in response to sharply rising memory costs, while Shanling has warned that AI driven demand and higher component prices will affect both upcoming products and new production runs.

With 256GB of internal storage and no immunity from the same semiconductor supply chain, Astell&Kern may still be calculating the final price or adjusting its production schedule before making a commitment. That remains speculation until the company says otherwise, but the SP4000T Copper is entering a very different cost environment than the one in which the original player was developed.

Related Reviews:

What Is Actually New?

The SP4000T Copper is not a second generation player or a substantially revised platform. Its internal architecture, amplification system, operating system and playback capabilities appear to be unchanged from the silver SP4000T announced ahead of High End Vienna in June 2026.

The original player is already something of an engineering fever dream. It is the first portable digital audio player to use four Raytheon JAN6418 MIL Spec vacuum tubes in a channel separated Quad configuration. Each tube is measured and paired before being mounted on its own modular circuit board.

Listeners can select Triode, Ultra Linear or Pentode tube operation, then combine those settings with OP AMP, TUBE AMP or five Hybrid amplification levels. Three adjustable tube current settings bring the total to as many as 54 possible combinations.

That is either an impressive degree of control or enough menu options to make one forget that the original purpose was listening to music.

Astell&Kern also employs a second generation, five stage anti microphonic system intended to reduce noise caused by movement and external vibration. That matters with subminiature tubes such as the JAN6418, which can become microphonic when used inside something that gets carried around, placed on a desk or dropped into a bag beside three charging cables and a set of keys.

Our hands on experience at CanJam London found the SP4000T powerful, responsive and far more commanding than its portable dimensions might suggest. It also weighs 565 grams, so slipping it into a trouser pocket remains a bold lifestyle choice.

The SP4000 Platform With Four Tubes Added

The digital section combines two AKM AK4191EQ delta sigma modulators with two AK4499EX DACs in a fully separated architecture. The design keeps the digital processing and analog conversion stages apart, while the left and right channels receive their own dedicated signal paths.

Astell&Kern also includes its High Driving Mode, TERATON ALPHA power and noise management system, ESA signal alignment, Advanced DAR upsampling and Any Layer HDI circuit boards. Native playback extends to 32 bit/768kHz PCM and DSD512.

Balanced output reaches a claimed 8Vrms, while the 3.5mm single ended output delivers up to 4.2Vrms. Those figures should provide adequate power for most IEMs and a wide range of full size headphones, although difficult planar magnetic models may still be better served by a dedicated desktop amplifier.

Android 15 provides access to current streaming applications, while Astell&Kern’s ADP technology bypasses Android’s normal sample rate conversion to preserve bit perfect playback. The SP4000T is also the company’s first player to use dual Wi-Fi antennas, which Astell&Kern claims can produce approximately twice the 5GHz download performance of its previous design.

Other features include 256GB of internal storage, microSD expansion up to 1.5TB, a six inch 2160×1080 touchscreen, Bluetooth 5.2, aptX HD, LDAC, LHDC, BT Sink, USB DAC operation, ReplayGain, Crossfeed, AK File Drop and USB PD 3.0 charging. The internal 7,450mAh battery is rated for approximately 10 hours of playback, with a full charge requiring around five hours.

Does a Copper Chassis Really Matter?

Copper is substantially more electrically conductive than stainless steel. In a properly designed enclosure, that can make it an effective material for electromagnetic shielding and potentially improve heat distribution. But material conductivity alone does not guarantee better sound. Shielding performance also depends on chassis construction, panel seams, grounding, internal layout and how the enclosure is electrically connected to the circuits inside.

There is also an awkward detail for anyone preparing to claim that the copper exterior transforms the SP4000T: the regular stainless steel model already uses a 99.9 percent pure copper Shield Can around its sensitive audio circuitry. That internal component is specifically intended to block electromagnetic interference and reduce noise before the exterior chassis enters the discussion.

A full copper enclosure may provide another layer of shielding, but Astell&Kern has not published comparative noise measurements, distortion figures or listening test data showing that the Copper version performs differently from the stainless steel model.

The company has made similar claims for previous copper editions, including the SP4000 Copper, describing the material as beneficial for conductivity, shielding and signal integrity. It also applies a multilayer coating to limit oxidation and preserve the appearance of the copper surface. Those are technically plausible benefits, but they remain manufacturer claims unless supported by direct measurements between otherwise identical models.

In other words, the SP4000T Copper is not automatically snake oil. Copper is a legitimate engineering material, and this is more substantial than changing the paint color and inventing a paragraph about “earthy musicality.”

But without comparative test results, it is difficult to argue that the copper chassis will produce a meaningful audible improvement. The most obvious changes are appearance, exclusivity and possibly weight. The copper version is therefore best understood as a luxury material option with a technically defensible backstory, not a confirmed sonic upgrade.

If the price premium is modest, buyers may reasonably choose it for the appearance and added collectibility. If Astell&Kern adds several hundred dollars because copper apparently requires its own security detail, then customers will mostly be paying for jewelry that happens to play DSD512.

Key Specifications

• DACs: Dual AKM AK4499EX
• Digital processors: Dual AKM AK4191EQ
• Vacuum tubes: Four Raytheon JAN6418 MIL Spec tubes
• Amplification: OP AMP, Tube and five stage Hybrid modes
• Tube operation: Triode, Ultra Linear and Pentode
• Maximum configurations: 54
• Maximum playback: 32 bit/768kHz PCM and DSD512
• Display: Six inch, 2160 x 1080 touchscreen
• Operating system: Android 15
• Internal storage: 256GB
• Expansion: microSD cards up to 1.5TB
• Balanced output: 4.4mm, up to 8Vrms
• Single ended output: 3.5mm, up to 4.2Vrms
• Wireless: Dual band Wi Fi, Bluetooth 5.2
• Bluetooth codecs: aptX HD, LDAC, LHDC, AAC and SBC
• Battery: 7,450mAh
• Rated playback: Approximately 10 hours
• Standard model dimensions: 85.7 x 150 x 19.5mm
• Standard model weight: 565 grams

The Bottom Line

The Astell&Kern SP4000T was already one of the most elaborate portable players on the market, combining four vacuum tubes, multiple amplification modes, flagship AKM conversion and enough output power to challenge some desktop systems.

The Copper edition does not appear to change any of that. It wraps the existing platform in a more conductive, more visually distinctive and almost certainly more expensive enclosure.

Could the copper chassis provide incremental shielding or thermal benefits? Yes.

Has Astell&Kern demonstrated that it sounds better? Not yet.

For existing SP4000T owners, this is not an upgrade. For buyers who were already considering the player and prefer copper, it is a legitimate material choice. For collectors, it will probably be irresistible because Astell&Kern understands that the shortest route to an audiophile’s wallet sometimes involves a periodic table.

Price & Availability

Astell&Kern has not announced final Copper edition pricing. Its global product page currently lists the standard SP4000T at $3,300, while several U.S. dealers list the silver model at $3,620. That makes it reasonable to expect the copper version to land above $3,500, although any exact figure would be speculation until Astell&Kern confirms it.

August 2026 Demonstrations

Astell&Kern says the SP4000T Copper will be available for demonstration at several upcoming audio events in China and the United States.

The August calendar includes the Hong Kong High End Audio Visual Show, running August 7-9 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, followed by SIAS Shenzhen from August 14-16 at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center.

The major U.S. portable audio event later in the month is CanJam SoCal, scheduled for August 29 and 30 at the Irvine Marriott in California.

Related Reading:

Dell’s MS700, priced at $19.98 (was $40), starts life looking like any other small Bluetooth mouse, then does something few others manage. Half the body rotates a full 180 degrees around a solid central hinge. One firm twist and the arched shape collapses into a nearly flat slab that slides into a laptop sleeve, jacket pocket, or the narrowest gap in a travel bag. The same motion powers the mouse on and off, so there is never a separate switch to hunt for or forget.

The MS700 is absurdly lightweight when placed in a filled bag, weighing 56.9 grams without batteries and closer to 76 grams with batteries. When opened, it measures 4.6 x 2.3 x 1.2 inches and takes up just enough room. When you twist it close, it shrinks dramatically, almost disappearing among the cords and chargers that seem to be everywhere. A magnetic battery cover, you know the type, keeps those two AAA cells secure and in place when you twist it close. Dell claims that the cells will last you 24 months with average use, or at least long enough to avoid scrambling for the charger every week or so.

Sale

Dell Wireless Gaming Mouse MS700, 4000 DPI, 2 Buttons

• Effortless portability: Weighing only 56.9g, this slim and lightweight travel mouse is your perfect companion. Its smooth, twistable design allows for…
• Perform like never before: Enjoy swift touch-scrolling for seamless navigation. The adjustable 4000 DPI ensures heightened sensitivity and precision…
• Enhanced sensitivity: Responsive and fast touch scrolling and quiet click buttons.

Bluetooth 5.0 handles the connection; simply pair the mouse with your laptop, tablet, or phone, then press a tiny button on the underside to cycle through the three devices on the list. There is no need for an annoying USB receiver to take up a valuable port, and it pairs seamlessly on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, Linux, Android, and the most recent iOS. For the average home user, this means you can just pick up one mouse from your work laptop and use it on your living room tablet without having to re-pair each time, which we believe is a significant benefit. At the end of the day, twist it shut once more and place it in a drawer or your luggage; power is already taken care of.

The MS700’s optical sensor has a DPI of 4,000 and can be modified to 1,000, 1,600, or 2,400 using Dell’s free Peripheral Manager program for Windows. The default is 1,600, which is about as good a middle ground as you can get for daily commutes. Its left and right buttons are decent and silent when pressed. Scrolling occurs thanks to a capacitive strip running along the top, and you don’t need a huge wheel to move the page around; a gentle touch is all your fingers need to slide the pointer over. The design is enough for use with either hand if necessary, and the soft outside feel isn’t too uncomfortable even if you’re using it for an extended period of time at a wobbly coffee shop table or hotel desk.

from the classroom-exercises dept

Early in the media law and ethics course I teach, as I shift gears from the ethics section to the law and core free speech issues, I try to build a foundation by introducing the many kinds of legal issues they may face as communicators. By this time, we have already discussed social media platforms and the terms and conditions to which they have agreed as users, and what this means for them as future media professionals and citizens.

As a break from weekly writing assignments, I set up a lesson starting in 2023 using the online game launched by Techdirt called “Trust & Safety Tycoon.” This puts students in the position of the head of a trust and safety team — basically, the chief of content moderation — for a social media startup company. As the site grows its users and popularity, and tries to remain viable as a commercial enterprise, the player faces increasingly challenging tasks. What happens when users threaten a boycott over offensive content? How do you handle Congress or foreign government leaders demanding takedowns? When news breaks on your platform and police ask for your help, to what extent do you cooperate?

While I require my students to do case briefs and other writing assignments on a weekly basis, the ease of using generative AI to do these assignments makes them less appealing. Students are far more likely to want to play a video game, especially one as engaging and challenging as Trust & Safety Tycoon. The assignment itself — to play the game through twice at a minimum, submitting selfies with the end-game screen — can be done in less than an hour, though some students report playing it several times to try to max out their score.

By this point in the semester, usually around the fourth week, students have completed readings and in-class discussion on media ethics and First Amendment issues. Playing this game is an opportunity to engage critically with modern content regulation matters across a broad array of media law topics — particularly free speech, prior restraint, privacy and intellectual property.

To ensure that students have played through the game as an assignment, they are asked to take a picture of themselves with the end-game screen. This provides another level of interaction that students enjoyed, with some sharing their results on their own social media accounts and commenting on the game there.

Execution of Assignment in the Classroom: Students were told in class about the assignment, with the instruction that the student had to play the game at least twice: once to learn the game mechanics and develop some comfort with how it operates, and a second time as a more serious effort to complete the game to their satisfaction. When they reach the final screen, they take a selfie with the end-game screen (rather than a screenshot, which could be easily copied or downloaded). They then upload those into the assignment box in the online course management system.

After class, a link was sent via email to the online game at https://trustandsafety.fun. Students had two days (48 hours) to complete the game. They were also instructed to be ready to start the next class with discussion about the decisions they made.

The game itself takes about 20 to 30 minutes to complete. The game was designed by the Copia Gaming initiative and launched on Techdirt in 2023. The player begins as an employee of a social media startup called “Yapper,” which appears to operate as a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter/X. The player then has to make a number of decisions on content moderation rooted in the real experience of those companies, such as handling users who use the site to host pirated copyrighted video from Netflix or managing parody accounts of celebrities. Each year in the game, the player can invest in moderation resources (such as verified users, blocklists, encryption, copyright scanning, etc.) to help maximize the site’s moderation speed, user growth, conversation health, and ad revenue.

As the years pass, the moderation decisions get tougher. Players have to decide how to handle beheading videos posted by an overseas terrorist group; visits from the FBI requesting user information, gag orders, and potential jawboning about election misinformation; demands from both state attorneys general and foreign leaders for information about dissidents; an active shooter situation in which law enforcement makes several demands, including a request to broadcast the shooter’s manifesto; a legal battle with a Disney-like entity on parody videos; foreign privacy laws requiring either resistance or expensive compliance; a new age verification law; and ultimately a demand to testify before Congress as they consider regulation of your platform. 

When students return to class, I prompt to share some of the difficult decisions they made, and why they made them. I use this discussion to inform them of the real-world situations from which many of these scenarios are derived, most of which predate their experience as social media users but were formative in shaping what we see online and how governments regulate the Web.

Student Learning Outcomes: This assignment is designed to achieve the following:

(1) Introduction to different areas of media law and their interaction. Each situation can be dropped into one of our main topic areas — copyright, free speech, defamation, privacy, etc. — as we identify these issues and what body of law applies.

(2) Global media regulation. This assignment requires students to see how U.S. standards on free speech and regulation may differ from other countries.

(3) Connection between law/policy and media outcomes. The exercise illustrates how government action through coercion, regulation, and litigation shapes the messages they see and hear on online platforms.

(4) State actors vs. private companies. We identify and discuss the role of government and strong First Amendment protections, as well as the role of private companies in shaping online speech.

Measuring Impact: The assignment is graded simply on a 0–2 scale (2 points for turning it in on time, 1 for late/incomplete submission, 0 for neither). The effectiveness is evident in the quality of discussion and recall of in-game examples.

Participation in this class discussion has always been robust, and students remember the game in future units when we talk about the First Amendment, Section 230, privacy, and intellectual property. Feedback about the assignment on student evaluations at the end of the semester have been uniformly positive as well.

I will be presenting this exercise in the AEJMC Law & Policy preconference session in New Orleans in August. The assignment won first place in the Teaching Ideas contest. 

Chip Stewart (@medialawprof.bsky.social) is a media & law professor at Texas Christian University.

Filed Under: content moderation, law, teaching, trust & safety, trust & safety education, trust & safety tycoon

Lucid Motors said Tuesday that its “operational reset” will focus on $1.4 billion in cash reductions along with three other “must win” and potential money-making priorities that include robotaxis, its factory in Saudi Arabia, and launching a mid-sized electric vehicle.

But that mid-sized vehicle, which is supposed to start at under $50,000, is now delayed until next year. It was supposed to start shipping by the end of 2026.

“Our objective is clear: Mid-size will launch only when every process and quality requirement have been met,” Lucid’s new CEO Silvio Napoli said on a conference call Tuesday. “We will not repeat the mistakes of the past by bringing a product to market before it is ready.”

The turnaround plan, led by Napoli, aims to pull Lucid out of its spiral of growing EV inventory and unchecked spending. To reach that $1.4 billion in cash savings, Lucid said it will reduce capital expenditures by $500 million and projected savings of between $600 million and $800 million in inventory, according to its second-quarter earnings statement. The company said it will also reduce operating expenses by $200 million.

The effort, if successful, will provide sufficient liquidity runway well into 2027, Napoli said during Tuesday’s earnings call with investors.

Napoli didn’t mince words during his first quarterly earnings call as CEO.

“The way we operate has to change,” he said. “While there is no question that Lucid brought leading innovations and outstanding products to the market, we have disappointed on several fronts, and for far too long. We have not executed consistently, we miss commitments, launched products before they were ready, underinvested in service, responded too slowly to quality issues, and allowed complexity to slow decisions down.”

Napoli has already set some of this plan in motion. The company has shaken up its leadership ranks and hired several top execs, including a new chief financial officer, chief technology officer, chief customer officer, chief digital officer, and chief transformation officer. Napoli has also cut in half the number of people who directly report to him and in June directed the company to lay off 18% of its workforce, or around 1,500 employees, just four months after the EV maker made a cut of 12%.

Lucid also eliminated the second shift of EV production at its factory in Casa Grande, Arizona. The layoffs and elimination of that second shift generated $158 million in projected annualized savings, Napoli said during the company’s earnings call.

Despite these moves, Lucid’s second-quarter earnings show a company that continues to lose money. The EV maker reported revenue of $405 million, up from $259.4 million in the same quarter last year. It reported a net loss of $1.26 billion, or $3.30 a share, compared with a loss of $855.3 million, or $2.80 a share, a year earlier.

Lucid said it ended the second quarter with $3 billion in total liquidity.

While a reduction in spending is central to this reset, Napoli listed several must-win projects, including its upcoming mid-sized EV, finishing its AMP-2 factory in Saudi Arabia, and its robotaxi program with Uber and Nuro, that will eventually make it profitable.

The midsize EV, known as Cosmos, will be the first model from Lucid’s mid-sized platform, which “remains an essential element of Lucid’s strategic plan,” Napoli said. But “the work ahead is substantial,” he said on the call. Napoli said Lucid has so far “not executed consistently” and “responded too slowly” to quality problems, which is why he’s delaying the vehicle.

Napoli is also bullish on its robotaxi program with Uber and Nuro and sees it as an opportunity to boost earnings outside of selling directly to consumers. In a sign of this program’s value to Lucid, the company has created a new business unit called Lucid Technologies that will be led by chief digital officer Kai Stepper. The new unit will focus on AI, an advanced driver assistance system, and digital technology.

“We project the margins vastly exceeding those of the traditional retail model,” Napoli said, referring to the robotaxi program that integrates Nuro’s self-driving technology into Lucid’s Gravity SUVs. Uber will operate the premium robotaxi service, which will allow users to hail the self-driving vehicles on its app.

Nuro and Uber are testing a fleet of 100 vehicles in Houston and the San Francisco Bay Area. The company said that last month it began delivering production validation vehicles assembled at a facility in Coolidge, Arizona. Regular vehicle production for the robotaxi will begin in the fourth quarter with an expected launch in late 2026.

On the call, Napoli also took a moment to slap down speculation from last month that the company had hired consulting firm AlixPartners to consider bankruptcy.

“Their engagement has been focused solely on supporting our cost-savings plan and streamlining our operations; we will be wrapping up their assignment once that work is complete, which we expect at the end of this month,” he said.

This story has been updated with more information from Lucid’s earnings call.

Tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Nvidia are the other four companies to have previously recorded a market value of $3trn.

Amazon became the fifth company ever to see its market value surpass the $3trn mark when its shares rose by about 5pc yesterday (3 August).

Tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Nvidia are the other companies to have previously recorded a market value of $3trn.

Amazon hit the milestone having first reached the $2trn market capitalisation mark in June 2024. It first reached the $1trn value benchmark in late 2018.

Last Thursday (30 July), the e-commerce and cloud computing giant published its results for the second fiscal quarter of 2026, with net sales increasing 20pc year-on-year to more than $200bn.

Its operating income was up 43pc to $27.5bn, while sales at its AWS cloud infrastructure division increased 37pc year-over-year to $42.2bn, its fastest growth in 18 quarters.

Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy said that “AWS is booming”, adding that “our AI and chips businesses each eclipsed run rates of more than $25bn”, which the company said amounts to “triple-digit percentages” growth year-on-year.

AI-driven demand for cloud and chips solutions contributed to AWS surpassing analysts’ forecasts for the quarter ending 30 June, causing the recent jump in Amazon share prices.

Jassy told investors on a conference call following the release of the earnings report that the company now projected capital expenditures for 2026 hit $220bn, up from the $200bn estimate it made in February and reaffirmed in April.

“But even at that amount, we will still not have enough capacity to meet all the demand we have in 2026, and I believe this dynamic will also be true in 2027 too,” Jassy said. “In fact, the demand we already have for 2028 is striking.”

Infrastructure spending and “investments in artificial intelligence” caused Amazon’s free cash status to see an outflow of $7.6bn for the preceding 12 months, the company said. This compares to a free cash flow inflow of $18.2bn for the 12-month period ended 30 June 2025.

Amazon has a 2GW deal with OpenAI for its Trainium capacity through AWS, as well as a 5GW deal for the same with Anthropic. The company is also investing $25bn into Anthropic.

AWS also has collaborations with up-and-coming Nvidia rival Cerebras; with Uber, for its Graviton and Trainium chips; and with Meta, to deploy tens of millions of AWS Graviton cores for its AI workflows.

Amazon is offsetting some of its AI expenses with large-scale layoffs at the company. In January, it cut about 16,000 jobs, which followed about 14,000 job cuts last October. Around 450 Irish jobs are understood to have been affected in this move.

Meanwhile, AWS could be set for a ‘gatekeeper’ designation in the EU due to the strength and prevalence of its market position as the largest cloud computing services provider in Europe.

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