US Shopping Season Sets New Record 🛍️ SoFi Moves Crypto Customers to Blockchain.com 🔗 Amazon Unveils Its Own AI Chatbot 🤖
This year’s US shopping season set a new record after large discounts from retailers and a boost in online sales.
US Shopping Season Sets New Record
SoFi Moves Crypto Customers
Amazon Unveils Its AI Chatbot, Q
Cybertruck Unveiling
Charlie Munger Passes Away
US Shopping Season Sets New Record
This year’s US shopping season set a new record after large discounts from retailers and a boost in online sales.
Large retailers had initially warned analysts to expect lower consumer spending due to higher inflation but in the end, it seems discounts helped the consumer open their wallets.
Online consumer spending was up 7.8% during Cyber Week (23rd - 27th November), far surpassing initial expectations of a 5.4% rise.
More than 200 million people made both in-store and online purchases during the Thanksgiving weekend and people spent an average of $321.
Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services were also adopted by a lot of shoppers to avoid the fees that come with credit card payments.
$940 million of goods were purchased using BNPL services, 42.5% up from last year - worryingly higher than Adobe’s estimates of 18.8% growth.
The shopping season was good news for Shopify too. The ecommerce company recorded record sales of $9.3 billion from 24th - 27 November, up 24% from a year ago.
Despite 50% of the shopping season remaining, the National Retail Federation (NRF) maintained its prediction of a 3%-4% increase in retail sales for the entire November-December holiday period and said consumers are likely to keep looking for bargains.
SoFi Moves Crypto Customers
The popular US banking app, SoFi, has announced it will exit the crypto business on 19th December.
In an email sent out last Wednesday, the company told customers they can transfer their digital assets to Blockchain.com, or liquidate them. New York clients must close their accounts by January as Blockchain.com isn’t available in the state.
Although SoFi hasn’t said officially why it’s ending its crypto services, the transition is almost certainly tied to its decision to become a bank holding company.
When the Federal Reserve approved SoFi’s application to become a bank, it also told the company that its crypto activities were not allowed under the rules and gave them a two-year grace period to end them.
Lane Kasselman, President of Blockchain.com, said SoFi still wants to offer crypto services to its customers which is why it’s partnering with the company.
The deal will likely mean the acquisition of hundreds of thousands of customers and hundreds of millions of dollars for Blockchain.com. According to its Q3 earnings, announced on September 30th, SoFi holds about $140 million in crypto on its platform.
Amazon Unveils Its AI Chatbot, Q
Amazon joined the other big tech companies last Tuesday when it announced its own chatbot, Q (not to be confused with OpenAI’s rumored Q*).
The name Q is meant to relate to the chatbot’s conversational nature and is a play on the word “question” and the character Q in the James Bond franchise who creates the gadgets for Bond.
Q was developed by Amazon’s cloud unit, AWS, and is focused on helping businesses rather than everyday consumers. Amazon is marketing it as a “generative AI-powered assistant tailored for work”.
AWS is already the market leader in cloud computing which means Amazon already has businesses storing huge amounts of data on its cloud servers.
Amazon CEO and former head of AWS, Adam Selipsky, said that there was demand for AI assistants from many AWS customers but they were unsure about the security and privacy concerns around them.
It’s for this reason that Amazon has built Q to be more secure and private than other consumer-based chatbots.
At a company where an employee in marketing may not have access to sensitive financial forecasts, Q can also be set to not provide that employee with such financial data even when asked.
Q starts at $20 a month compared to Google and Microsoft’s $30 a month for their enterprise chatbots
Cybertruck Unveiling
Four years after it was announced, Tesla’s latest vehicle, Cybertruck, was unveiled last Thursday.
In Tesla’s October earnings call, Musk said demand was “off the charts” and that 100 million $100 deposits have been made for a reservation reserve.
Musk made sure to mention that the truck isn’t just a showpiece with a polarizing design, but will also be incredibly useful.
The event featured a video of the truck towing one Porsche 911 whilst racing another at the same time, and winning.
The “Cyberbeast”, the most expensive version of the vehicle, will sell for $96,390 and will be delivered in 2024.
It has a 320 mile range, can go 0-60mph in 2.6 seconds (impressive for a vehicle that weighs 6,600 lbs or 3000 kgs), and has an 11,000 lbs (5,500 kgs) towing capacity.
Musk said the vehicle will “change the look of the roads” and that the “future finally looks like the future.”
Charlie Munger Passes Away
Charlie Munger, the billionaire vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, died last week aged 99.
He was a crucial figure in the company's growth, working closely with Warren Buffett. Munger's diverse career also included roles as a real estate attorney and chairman of Daily Journal Corp.
Born in Omaha in 1924, Munger served in the Army Air Corps and graduated from Harvard Law School. His significant influence on Buffett's investment strategy was evident in successful ventures like See's Candies.
Munger was known for his sharp wit and profound investment insights. His approach to value investing and business acumen were pivotal in Berkshire Hathaway's success and building it into the nearly $800 billion empire it is today.
When asked earlier this year about his impact on the world, Munger replied: “I would like my legacy to be a more relentless determination to develop and use what I call an uncommon sense.”