Amazon Hiring 100K in Operations; Google Will Bow New Pixel & More; Oracle Gets USS TikTok; Nvidia Confirms Arm Purchase

Amazon had previously announced plans to hire some 30,000 corporate and tech employees. Now, comes word from geekwire.com that they are also looking to hire an additional 100,000 full and part time operations employees around the US and Canada, to keep up with exploding demand. They have also announced plans to open 100 new warehouses and fulfillment centers. Amazon just tacked on 175,000 new operations workers in March and April, so now will swell their ranks to over a million employees. The career day for corporate and tech employees, featuring some 20,000 free coaching sessions, is this Wednesday.

Google is planning to roll out a new Pixel phone, Chromecast, and smart speaker on September 30th. According to techcrunch.com, the event may feature a 5G Pixel 5 and 4a, although there has been some talk about Google ‘going in a new direction,’ which might not allow the new handsets to run 5G. Google had filed patents for a Nest that responds to hand gestures earlier, so that may be something which shows up at the event, as well as other Google Home hardware.

Microsoft is apparently out, and Oracle has won the TikTok sweepstakes. Arstechnica.com says that ByteDance rejected Microsoft’s bid yesterday. According to the Wall St. Journal, it won’t be an outright sale. Instead, Oracle will become ByteDance’s US “tech partner.” The details of the transaction aren’t yet public, but they will soon be submitted to US regulators for their approval. Oracle doesn’t have any apparent business operations that seem to sync up with TikTok, but the chairman, Larry Ellison, is one of a handful of tech billionaires who openly support Trump, so perhaps ByteDance and the Chinese government see this as a way of greasing the skids and keeping a toehold in TikTok’s US presence. The lack of an outright sale is most likely a way to save face for the Chinese government.

Nvidia has confirmed it is acquiring Arm Holdings for $40 billion. Arm chip designs are licensed by Apple for the iPhone and iPad, and will also power the next generation of Macs, as 9to5mac.com notes. At this point, it isn’t clear what the move of Arm from SoftBank to Nvidia will mean for Apple. Nvidia and Apple have had a rough relationship for a while now. Nvidia says Arm will “continue to operate its open-licensing model while maintaining the global customer neutrality that has been foundational to its success.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang emphasized that the company has no intentions of doing anything that would cause clients like Apple to walk away. Apple has licensed Arm tech since 2006.