Business Insights and Market Implications Summary

Amazon & Streaming

• Prime Video: Reached 130M monthly U.S. customers with ads as of May 2025, up 15M from 2024. Offers ad-free option for +$2.99/month. 88% of U.S. Prime Video viewers shop on Amazon.
• Beast Games: MrBeast's Amazon Prime Video game show premiered Dec 19, 2024, had 50M views in 25 days but lost millions. Faced controversies including unsafe working conditions accusations and a lawsuit.
• Project Kuiper: Amazon seeks Indian regulatory approval to launch its satellite internet service, competing with Starlink. Plans to use over 3,200 LEO satellites for affordable, high-speed internet, establishing 10 gateway earth stations. Starlink recently received a Letter of Intent to launch in India and has partnerships with Reliance Jio and Airtel.
• AI Ads: Netflix is launching an AI-powered ad format that integrates product placements directly into shows. Amazon Prime Video service will start showing a limited number of ads from June 17 and YouTube testing Peak Points, which uses AI to place ads during moments of peak user engagement.
• The Beekeeper 2: Amazon MGM acquired global rights to Jason Statham’s sequel. It is valued at over $50 million.
• Prime Air Drones: Amazon's drone program experienced crashes due to faulty laser sensor readings caused by a software update. The MK30 drone lacks a backup sensor (squat switches) that was present in the MK27. FAA approved Amazon’s updates in March.
• Salesforce: Launched Agentforce AI software which has signed 5,000 customers in its first few months after launching.
• AI tools: AWS released Strands Agents SDK, an open-source toolkit for developing AI agents.

MrBeast

• YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) is a billionaire with over 320M subscribers on his main channel and 500M social media followers.
• Income sources: YouTube ad revenue, sponsorships, online merchandise, MrBeast Burger (launched in 2020; $100M revenue by July 2022), and Feastables (food company launched 2022).
• Controversies: Lawsuit against Virtual Dining Concepts for MrBeast Burger quality; countersuit by VDC; allegations of unsafe working conditions on Beast Games.

Financial/Market News

• LDS Church Investments: Ensign Peak Advisors, the LDS Church's investment arm, saw its portfolio decrease by $3.98B in Q1 2025 to $52.3B due to market volatility tied to President Trump's tariff proposals. Overall wealth stands at about $293 billion at the close of 2024, up $28 billion from the previous year. Underperformed the S&P 500 in Q1 2025. Reduced holdings in "Magnificent Seven" tech stocks.
• Walmart vs. Amazon: Walmart warned prices are rising due to tariffs. Despite similar revenue projections ($700B), Amazon has higher operating income due to cloud computing and advertising.
• Dow Jones: Stocks closed higher on Friday with the major indexes posting big gains for the week, with the Nasdaq gaining 7.2% this week as investor enthusiasm for tech stocks has been rejuvenated. Moody’s downgraded its previously top-notch rating of the U.S. government’s creditworthiness on Friday.
• Tesla: Tesla’s stock rose 17% this week despite declining sales in China and Europe. Protests have targeted the automaker over Musk's involvement in the Trump administration.
• UnitedHealth: UnitedHealth Group () shares surged Friday after tumbling to a pandemic-era low yesterday following reports that by the Department of Justice for possible Medicare fraud.

ISRO

• ISRO to launch EOS-09 earth observation satellite on May 18th from Sriharikota, 4 months after a failed launch. EOS-09 has a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload and is designed to improve observation frequency. It will be placed in a Sun-synchronous polar orbit with a mission life of five years. The satellite will carry fuel that will be reserved for de-orbiting it after the end of its mission-life.

Man UTD Transfer

• Man UTD are preparing for a MASSIVE summer transfer window - with Ruben Amorim set to overhaul much of his squad.