Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday mark the most important stretch of the year for many founders like me. For small brands, holiday sales don’t just fuel growth, they often determine whether we can sustain our teams, our missions, and our dreams into the next year.

At ICONI, we create inclusive and motivational activewear to support women on every stage of their journey, and this season, we’re deeply grateful for every customer who chooses to shop small, whether it¶¶Òőap with us or another local business.

We also recognize this is a challenging time for many families. Every purchase, big or small, is thoughtful and intentional. That¶¶Òőap why e-commerce has become a lifeline for small businesses, allowing us to reach our community wherever they are and offer value, connection, and convenience without asking anyone to stretch beyond their means.

As online shopping plays a bigger role in how consumers support small businesses, it¶¶Òőap important that policymakers avoid adding barriers that make it harder for independent entrepreneurs to participate in the digital economy. When regulations increase costs for small sellers, it¶¶Òőap communities, not corporations, that feel it first.

This holiday season, choosing small, whether in person or with a click, keeps creators creating, communities thriving, and local dreams alive. Thank you for supporting businesses built with purpose, heart, and hustle.

Angel Johnson, Denver

‘Tired of being treated like a criminal’

I have reached the breaking point with grocery stores in this area. I have had it with being treated like a criminal by stores that, until now, have gotten my business.

My local King Soopers refuses to adjust its self-checkouts that constantly accuse you of bagging an item that you supposedly did not scan. “Help is on the way,” it says. On my last visit, four of the five self-scanners in use were malfunctioning. You can’t tell me that management doesn’t know there is a problem.

Today I went to Walmart. I purchased $130 worth of merchandise, which was checked out by the cashier and placed into three paper bags. Only two items of paper products were not bagged. As I was leaving, an employee asked me if I had a receipt. “I certainly do,” I replied. She asked to see it. I refused and told her that I did not steal anything (could she not see the three paper bags, which I also paid for?). I also said that if I had to show my receipt, I would return everything in my cart. And I left.

I am sick and tired of being treated like a criminal. It¶¶Òőap not my fault that theft is a problem, but treating customers like thieves is not the answer. Spend more money on security and fix the problem.

As for me, I will be putting more money in Jeff Bezos’ pocket. Amazon has never accused me of being a thief.

Wendy Evans, Littleton

Plenty of shutdown blame to go around

I’m tired of both parties blaming the other party for shutting down the federal government.

It¶¶Òőap easy to blame the Republicans for the shutdown since they are refusing to negotiate right now; however, there is plenty of blame to go around.

The main issue seems to be about the expiration of health care subsidies, which are a direct result of legislation written and passed by the Democrats.

As I understand the legislative history, in 2021, these subsidies were put in place by a Democratic-led bill, which set them to expire. Then in 2022, these subsidies were extended, again by a Democratic-led bill, with a new expiration date of 2025.

The Democrats during the Biden administration had multiple opportunities to make the subsidies permanent. The choice was made to make them temporary. Therefore, the fact that they are expiring is not a crisis created by the Republicans; it is a feature of the very bills the Democrats designed and passed.

As you can see, both parties are to blame for the government shutdown. The sooner each stops blaming the other and realizes they are part of the problem, perhaps a compromise solution can be found, and the quicker the government can get back to work.

Buzz Davis, Wheat Ridge

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The decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals means Watson, the owner and CEO of Northstar Commercial Partners, again must defend himself from claims made by Seattle-based Amazon that he committed fraud and racketeering in connection with the development of data centers for the tech giant in northern Virginia.

The appeals court determined that “genuine disputes of material fact” remain on those claims.

The decision means a court battle that began in April 2020, and which once featured a parallel criminal investigation that federal prosecutors abandoned in unusual fashion, will continue.

“It¶¶Òőap a disappointment — I don’t know that it¶¶Òőap a surprise,” said Stan Garnett, Watson’s attorney.

“Regardless, our job will be to get it to trial as quickly as possible and win it for Brian,” he added.

The case revolves around millions of dollars that Watson’s firm paid to a trust, money which was later shared with Carl Nelson and Casey Kirschner, two employees that worked on real estate for Amazon. The two men are also defendants in the case.

Amazon has described those payments as kickbacks paid for Nelson and Kirschner steering contracts to Amazon.

Watson has said payments to the trust, set up by Casey’s brother Christian, were legitimate referral fees that compensated Christian for introducing Watson to Amazon and helping Northstar land business. Watson did not direct or intend for a portion of those fees to be passed on to Casey Kirschner or Carl Nelson, he has said.

Watson has denied knowing that the men were given money by the trust, which was set up by Casey Kirschner’s brother Christian, a longtime friend of Watson. Watson says he paid the trust “referral fees” he owed Christian for introducing him to Amazon and landing work.

Nelson and Kirschner have argued that Watson landed contracts through a competitive process, that they did not make the final call on Amazon’s real estate decisions and that getting money from the trust did not violate their Amazon employment contract.

The appeals court decision this week means Amazon’s lawsuit will proceed in federal district court in Virginia, where a judge’s April 2023 decision allowed only two of Amazon’s claims against Watson to proceed. The case has been on pause for approximately two years amid the appeal.

The appeals court also reopened Amazon’s one claim against Rod Atherton, a local attorney who helped create the shell companies that the payments were funneled through.

In the interim, Watson has been going on the offensive. In September 2024, he sued a former Northstar employee whose email to founder Jeff Bezos initiated Amazon’s investigation. In October 2024, he sued IPI Partners, a firm that helped finance the data center deals. And last December, he sued Amazon itself in federal court in Colorado.

In a statement, Alex Little, an attorney for Nelson, called the appeals court decision “disappointing.” He noted that the lower court¶¶Òőap ruling was followed in short order by the Justice Department vacating guilty pleas it had secured in a related criminal investigation from Christian Kirschner and former Northstar executive Kyle Ramstetter.

“Amazon had repeatedly trumpeted that criminal investigation to support its baseless civil case,” Little said.

Last year, Ramstetter told Nelson’s wife Amy in a recorded phone call that he was “being threatened with f***ing everything” during the investigation. Ramstetter said Nelson “did nothing wrong,” reversing what he’d told the court.

“We will petition for an evidentiary hearing so these matters can be investigated. One man against a trillion-dollar corporation is daunting, but Mr. Nelson has stood his ground for years, and we are confident the truth will prevail,” Little said Tuesday.

Amazon spokeswoman Montana MacLachlan said the company was “pleased” with the decision and looks “forward to the opportunity to present the extensive evidence of the defendants’ misconduct.”

Read more from our partner,

Re: “It’s about ideology, not oligarchy,” March 30 commentary

Ross Douthat states that the misuse of “oligarchy” by Sen. Bernie Sanders creates a vision of Trumpism as a vision of billionaires calling the shots. He correctly notes that many Trump agenda items are not those of the oligarchs.

What he ignores is that any coherent “ideology” of Donald Trump is contained in Project 2025, which is his model for assuming power.

Project 2025 is explicitly derived from the processes used by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor OrbĂĄn to subvert his country’s democracy and by Russian leader Vladimir Putin to subvert the inchoate democratic movement after the fall of the Soviet Union. The oligarchs in Hungary and Russia support the dictatorship with their monetary gains in return for being allowed to remain billionaires. The dictator calls the shots.

According to former Secretary of Labor , seven oligarchs contributed a total of $1 billion to elect Trump and other Republicans. Elon Musk contributed millions to the key Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Musk, Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg support Trump on their mega-platforms.

Again, according to Reich, Trump supporters add to his riches through his . Douthat is right, except that the “ideology” of Trumpism should be called “kleptocracy.”

David Schroeder, Arvada

America is worth staying and fighting for

Re: ” ‘I don’t get why anyone would want to stay,’ ” March 9 news story

First, there was the article “I don’t understand why anyone would want to stay” about moving out of the U.S. because of the country’s political direction.

Then, there were the follow-up letters concerning the moves abroad – other countries are also having their problems, etc.

What amazes and distresses me is that I have seen no letters stating my instant, gut reaction when I read the “don’t understand why anyone would want to stay” article:

Because America is worth fighting for – for our future and the future country in which our grandchildren will live.

America has been a beacon of light to the world. That light is dimming. We need to stay and get that light shining again.

I never saw this country as a nation of quitters.

Alvina Mabry, Golden

The playbook to promote division

In what may be the lowest of lows in spreading inflammatory disinformation, Rep. Lauren Boebert, CD-4, issued a on April 1 in which she asserted that “Members of the Democrat [sic] Party have made calls for their supporters to incite and engage in domestic terrorism by attacking Tesla vehicles and facilities to protest Elon Musk.” This is utterly defamatory and beyond the bounds of civil political discourse, but it fits with the playbook of the Trump administration and Rep. Boebert’s efforts to create a false narrative promoting division and hostility within our society for their own political ends.

Ralph Roberts, Littleton

Journalist rightfully honored

I wish to offer my sincere congratulations to Sam Tabachnik for the honor of Journalist of the Year, Denver Post reporter, selected by the Colorado Society of Professional Journalists. He is an excellent researcher and writer. You must be very proud to have him on your staff. I anticipate reading his important articles in the Denver Post.

Victoria Swearingen, Denver

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — will try again to launch its massive new rocket as early as Tuesday after calling off the debut launch because of ice buildup in critical plumbing.

The 320-foot (98-meter) was supposed to blast off before dawn Monday with a prototype satellite. But ice formed in a purge line for a unit powering some of the rocket’s hydraulic systems and launch controllers ran out of time to clear it, according to the company.

Founded by , Blue Origin said Tuesday’s poor weather forecast could cause more delay. Thick clouds and stiff wind were expected at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The test flight already had been delayed by rough seas that posed a risk to the company’s plan to land the first-stage booster on a floating platform in the Atlantic.

New Glenn is named after the first American to orbit Earth, John Glenn. It is five times taller than Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket that carries paying customers to the edge of space from Texas.

Bezos founded the company 25 years ago. He took part in Monday’s countdown from Mission Control, located at the rocket factory just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

No matter what happens, Bezos said this weekend, “We’re going to pick ourselves up and keep going.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

“I really do believe that has got the ability to be successful — very successful,” “His game management, we could debate that forever and a day.”

Several days, now that you mention it. Oh, to have Oregon State back. And Fresno.

Although the nits to pick are fairly small compared to 2023. And let’s be real, here: An offensive play-caller probably wouldn’t have changed much against Texas and CU, except to perhaps lessen the collateral damage.

Yet your 2024 Rams — minus Horton, CSU’s best player — went 8-4 in the regular season, clearing that preseason over-under of 6.5 victories several weeks ago.

If the Rammie fan next to you is still , pour them a cold one and remind them to enjoy what’s left of 2024. To enjoy trophy wins over Wyoming and Air Force in the same season for the first time since 2015. To enjoy a victory at the Academy for the first time since 2002.

In the 50 years since Graham hung up his QB cleats at CSU, the Rams have burned through nine football coaches. Only five of those guys ever won eight or more games in a season. Between Jim McElwain’s 10 victories in 2014 and Norvell’s 8-4 this year, CSU survived 10 long years, a Bobo and a Daz.

“Joe (Parker) hired Jay Norvell, that’s who he got,” Graham said of Parker, who left the CSU AD chair earlier this year.  “You’ve got to give Joe all the credit in the world for that.”

And no, the job’s not done. Not even close. Over the last five decades, CSU’s won eight or more games just 12 times. Sonny Lubick accounted for seven of them. McElwain did it twice. Earle Bruce once (1990). Sarkis Arslanian once (1977). Norvell once. That’s it.

But if you want to see more of them, Graham says, the answer isn’t some whiz-kid coordinator who’ll lighten Norvell’s load on gamedays. Oh, no.

The answer’s cash.

I mean, isn’t it always?

“It’s absolutely clear to me, the only way Jay’s going to be successful the way we want him to be successful,” Graham continued, “(is that) he needs money and he needs talent.”

He needs the former, specifically, to help pay for the latter. For the Rams to step up, the coffers have to perk up.

The move in two summers to the Pac-12 Lite/Mountain West Plus is the opposite of what just happened in Boulder. CU re-joined a diluted, weakened Big 12 it could conceivably win, or come darn close to winning, for as long as Deion Sanders wants to sit on the throne.

Buffs fans won’t admit it to their CSU pals without some serious libation, but the black and gold took a step down. Yet it was also a step that’s worked brilliantly in their favor, from direct exposure to the best recruiting pools (Texas and Florida), cultural uniqueness (Boulder is the Berkeley of the Big 12 again!) to the nationalization of the Coach Prime brand.

Brett Yormark’s Big 12 was built for basketball, meaning the football side looks like a collection of oddballs (BYU, Baylor), little brothers (Kansas State, Iowa State, Oklahoma State) and assorted historic middleweights (West Virginia, Arizona State, TCU, Texas Tech, etc.). Only with — and this is the key — Power 4/College Football Player status largely already grandfathered in, giving the Buffs the best of all worlds. At least until they get matched up with some old-money Big Ten or SEC bully in a postseason game.

The Rams’ 2026 move is going the opposite direction — westward and northward in terms of both football challenge and geography.

When it comes to the core membership, CSU is joining ’em before it’s really beaten many of ’em. Since 2015, the Rams are 0-2 vs. Washington State, 1-1 vs. Oregon State, 1-8 vs. Boise State, 2-3 vs. San Diego State, 3-2 vs. Fresno State and 3-6 vs. Utah State.

Combined, it’s a record of 10-22. If you’re playing seven league games, that translates into an average conference record of 2-5. Which does not translate into a CFP berth.

Even as the transfer portal dilutes its oomph, early National Signing Day seems to arrive quicker each December. On Wednesday, Norvell is expected to introduce a class, as of Saturday morning,

“Jay needs two things. He needs money and he needs talent. For him to get that talent, he’s got to have money,” Graham continued. “At the end of the day, his job is to find ways to pay for players — that’s what college football has become. If you’re going to compete at the Power-4 conference level, you’ve got to have a pool of roughly $3.5 million (in NIL money), and to legitimately compete, you’ve got to be at $5 million. You don’t have to be at $20 million.

“You can attract a lot of talent with less money than that … but without it, CSU football is never going to compete at a Power-4 level. It’s just that simple.”

For all the hand-wringing over Norvell’s X’s and O’s, it’s still about the Jimmies and Joes. The ones good enough to pull your bacon out of the fire in Boise or Pullman will write the next chapter in CSU history. And those scripts won’t come cheap.

We live in a time of great change in all aspects of life and often have to hit the reset button before moving on. Look how quickly Artificial Intelligence has entered our lives, demanding our attention. 

Polls are a good way to measure public sentiment about what worries people today. I found these poll results partially answered that question. 

an Axios graphic, reflects the views of Colorado adults who said select issues are extreme or very serious problems. It was based on a survey of 1,202 Colorado adults from May 20 to June 24. It comes from the Colorado Health Foundation and was published on July 18.

Housing costs were the top concern of poll participants at 89%, followed by:   

‱ Rising cost of living, 86%

‱ Homelessness, 79%

‱ Health care costs, 68%

‱ Drug Overdoses, 65%

‱ Crime, 59%

‱ Mental health, 59%

‱ Jobs and economy, 57%

‱ Illegal immigration, 53%

These results indicate that we may be approaching the nation’s Second Gilded Age, a term coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their satirical novel, “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today,” published in 1873. 

The book refers to the period in United States history between the 1870s and the 1890s, characterized by extreme wealth accumulation, conspicuous consumption, rising inequality, political partisanship and social turmoil (focused on populism, racism and xenophobia) as what framed daily life. Does this sound like America today?

Moreover, the paths the country took when leaving behind the Gilded Age offer valuable lessons for what we should do now and what we should ŽÚ±đČč°ù.Ìę

The First Gilded Age revealed glitter on the surface, but underneath, America was fraught with social inequality and superficial prosperity. On the surface, the U.S. appeared to be thriving as industries and technologies emerged, cities grew and extreme wealth was created for the fortunate. 

However, only a few were able to participate, causing social and economic problems nationwide.

Vast economic inequality was one of the most defining features of the First Gilded Age. 

Wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few industrial magnates, such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, while the majority of Americans struggled to make ends meet.

Today, people such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are the modern equivalents of Rockefeller and Carnegie. Their companies wield significant influence over the economy and society, often operating with minimal regulation and oversight.  

Now, we see a similar pattern. The top 1% of Americans hold more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these disparities, with billionaires significantly increasing their wealth while millions face financial instability.

As economic disparities grow, the stability of the middle class erodes. The American Dream, once a central tenet of the nation’s identity, now appears increasingly elusive for many. The rising costs of education, healthcare and housing have put significant pressure on middle-income families, leading to increased financial strain and decreased social mobility.

People know changes are coming. We might be electing a new president on Nov. 5. But no matter the winner, it will bring about big changes in our lives.

The parallels between the two Gilded Ages are striking.  

In both periods, a small elite had amassed tremendous wealth and power, often through industries that dominated the economy. In the 19th century, it was railroads, steel and oil. Today, it¶¶Òőap technology, finance and ±èłóČč°ùłŸČ賊±đłÜłÙŸ±łŠČč±ôČő.Ìę

The influence of corporate money in politics has intensified, as seen through lobbying and campaign financing. This concentration of power raises questions about the efficacy of democratic institutions and the ability of the government to regulate corporate behavior in the public interest. The historical parallel is clear: Just as the First Gilded Age faced challenges regarding monopolies and regulations, today we grapple with similar issues amid calls for increased corporate responsibility. 

In the end, the question is not what kind of country we are, but instead, but what kind do we want to be?

Jim Martin can be reached at Jimmartinesq@gmail.com. This column first ran in the Boulder Daily Camera.

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Edward Dwight is going to space, finally.

In the coming weeks, as conditions allow, Denver’s Dwight is expected to be part of a six-person crew heading into space on the latest mission of Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin’s seventh human flight will carry an array of adventurers including a venture capitalist, a craft-beer entrepreneur from France, a retired accountant who has been told by doctors that she is going blind and Dwight, a retired Air Force captain who 60 years ago was chosen, and then passed over, to be the first Black man to orbit Earth.

Dwight wound up in the astronaut training program at Edwards Air Force Base in California in the early 1960s under the command of Chuck Yeager. (In 1947 Yeager became the first test pilot to break the sound barrier; he died in 2020.) Dwight was a charismatic, handsome test pilot, a public relations dream for an administration looking to lead on civil rights. President John F. Kennedy was a supporter, but Yeager was not impressed; according to a well-chronicled history, Yeager described Dwight as an average pilot who had been placed on the A-list for political reasons. Dwight had a different account, recalling Yeager as a racist who wanted him removed. His height — 5 feet 4 inches — was also a disadvantage, Dwight recalled.

After the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, Dwight was not selected to go to space. The would-be astronaut left the Air Force in 1966 and went on to other successes, including as a restaurateur and real estate developer in Colorado and, eventually, as a celebrated sculptor of prominent figures in Black history.

In conversations spanning several months, Dwight spoke to The New York Times about his impending spaceflight. The interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q: How do you feel about going to space?

A: It¶¶Òőap a culmination of a long life of events. I’ve thought this would be a nice end of a fascinating story about all I’ve gone through and my reaction to adverse conditions.

Everything I’ve done has been an uphill battle: getting into the military and being an Air Force pilot, getting chosen by the president of the United States to be the first Black astronaut, and facing all kinds of obstacles in the years that I was in that program. But I was performing well, and that¶¶Òőap why they would say, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s getting things done,’ and my Blackness and my shortness didn’t mean a damn thing.

Then, after I left the Air Force, I came to Colorado and became a big-time businessman — and then started an art career at the age of 45. My whole life has been about getting things done. This is the culmination.

q: What is your prevailing emotion now — anger? That you’ve been lucky? Or something else?

A: I’m not angry and I’m not lucky; neither of those things is in my mind. When you get angry, your brain stops working. I couldn’t even think about getting angry or disappointed about anything; that¶¶Òőap my psychological makeup, I guess. When I came across people that might have caused me a setback, I rationalized: Why did they feel that way?

Chuck Yeager was taught as a kid that Black people were ignorant and stupid and couldn’t do a damn thing. He and I had conversations about it, and so, no, I had no anger toward him. People are products of their background, and there wasn’t a damn thing I was going to do to change his attitude.

The only thing I could do was show Yeager that I could do anything that was expected of me and transcend. In no way could he throw me out or get rid of me.

Q: Why would he want you thrown out?

A: We’d have these conversations, and this guy would pull out a sheet of paper that he carried — a folded piece of yellow, lined paper that had all these names — and he’d say, “Captain Dwight, I got 100 and 50 white boys on this list, and every one of these white boys are more qualified than you to be a test pilot.”

And I’d say: “So are you telling me that all these white guys are superior? Every street at Edwards is named after a dead test pilot, and every one of those guys is white and dead. They had to have made mistakes somewhere along the line to have a street named after them. Don’t come to me with this stuff about how smart and witty and brilliant and able white people are versus Black people.”

There were 17 people in my class, and I finished seventh. I had to remind him of that.

Q: You faced numerous obstacles to getting to space.

A: The power brokers were not going to give the last frontier to a Black person or a woman.

So, now, a guy who didn’t get to fly into space when he was supposed to, is going at 90, at the end of his career. Some people think of that as justice. But I don’t think that way. It seems far too late for it to be justice. My philosophy is that everything has a time and place. This is a natural occurrence that should have happened at some point.

Q: What do you think you will see when you’re up there?>

A: During my flight-test days, I went high enough to see the curvature of Earth, the totality of the land, to look at Earth as a big ball. But I am curious. We’re laying down in the capsule, and you’ve got this big panoramic window. I’m definitely putting this in my gee-whiz file.

Q: Care to add anything?

A: America is the guiding light of the world. Anybody who thinks about running for national office should take at least three orbits around Earth as a prerequisite. They should look down at how valuable it is and how sacred it is and how fragile.

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The lure: billions of dollars in Saudi money as the kingdom seeks to build a tech industry to complement its oil dominance.

To bypass the congestion, frustrated eventgoers drove onto the highway shoulder, kicking up plumes of desert sand as they sped past those following traffic rules. A lucky few took advantage of a special freeway exit dedicated to “VVIPs” — very, very important people.

“To the Future,” a sign read on the approach to the event, called Leap.

More than 200,000 people converged at the conference, including Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon’s cloud computing division, who announced a $5.3 billion investment in Saudi Arabia for data centers and artificial intelligence technology. Arvind Krishna, the CEO of IBM, spoke of what a government minister called a “lifetime friendship” with the kingdom. Executives from Huawei and dozens of other firms made speeches. More than $10 billion in deals were done there, according to Saudi Arabia’s state press agency.

“This is a great country,” Shou Chew, TikTok’s CEO, said during the conference, heralding the video app’s growth in the kingdom. “We expect to invest even more.”

Everybody in tech seems to want to make friends with Saudi Arabia right now as the kingdom has trained its sights on becoming a dominant player in AI — and is pumping in eye-popping sums to do so.

Saudi Arabia created a $100 billion fund this year to invest in AI and other technology. It is in talks with Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and other investors to put an additional $40 billion into AI companies. In March, the government said it would invest $1 billion in a Silicon Valley-inspired startup accelerator to lure AI entrepreneurs to the kingdom. The initiatives easily dwarf those of most major nation-state investments, like Britain’s $100 million pledge for the Alan Turing Institute.

The spending blitz stems from a generational effort outlined in 2016 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and known as “Vision 2030.” Saudi Arabia is racing to diversify its oil-rich economy in areas like tech, tourism, culture and sports — investing a reported $200 million a year for soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and planning a 100-mile-long mirrored skyscraper in the desert.

For the tech industry, Saudi Arabia has long been a funding spigot. But the kingdom is now redirecting its oil wealth into building a domestic tech industry, requiring international firms to establish roots there if they want its money.

If Crown Prince Mohammed succeeds, he will place Saudi Arabia in the middle of an escalating global competition among China, the United States and other countries like France that have made breakthroughs in generative AI. Combined with AI efforts by its neighbor, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s plan has the potential to create a new power center in the global tech industry.

“I hereby invite all dreamers, innovators, investors and thinkers to join us, here in the kingdom, to achieve our ambitions together,” Crown Prince Mohammed remarked in a 2020 speech about AI.

His ambitions are geopolitically delicate as China and the United States seek to carve out spheres of influence over AI to shape the future of critical technologies.

In Washington, many worry that the kingdom’s goals and authoritarian leanings could work against U.S. interests — for instance, if Saudi Arabia ends up providing computing power to Chinese researchers and companies. This month, the White House brokered a deal for Microsoft to invest in G42, an AI company in the UAE, which was intended partly to diminish China’s influence.

For China, the Persian Gulf region offers a big market, access to deep-pocketed investors and a chance to wield influence in countries traditionally allied with the United States. China’s form of AI-powered surveillance has already been embedded into policing in the region.

Some industry leaders have begun to arrive. JĂŒrgen Schmidhuber, an AI pioneer who now heads an AI program at Saudi Arabia’s premier research university, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, recalled the kingdom’s roots centuries ago as a center for science and mathematics.

“It would be lovely to contribute to a new world and resurrect this golden age,” he said. “Yes, it will cost money, but there’s a lot of money in this country.”

The willingness to spend was front and center last month at a gala in Riyadh hosted by the Saudi government, which coincided with the Leap conference. Hollywood klieg lights blazed in the sky above the city as guests arrived in chauffeured Maseratis, Mercedes-Benzes and Porsches. Inside a 300,000-square-foot parking garage that had been converted two years ago into one of the world’s largest startup spaces, attendees mingled, debated opening offices in Riyadh and sipped pomegranate juice and cardamom-flavored coffee.

“There’s something happening here,” said Hilmar Veigar Petursson, the CEO of CCP Games, the Icelandic company behind the popular game Eve Online, who was at the gala. “I got a very similar sense when I came back from China in 2005.”

A sci-fi script

Crown Prince Mohammed’s Vision 2030 project, unveiled eight years ago, seems taken from a science-fiction script.

Under the plan, new futuristic cities will be built in the desert along the Red Sea, oriented around tech and digital services. And the kingdom, which has piled billions into tech startups like Uber and investment vehicles such as SoftBank’s Vision Fund, would spend more.

That drew Silicon Valley’s attention. When Crown Prince Mohammed visited California in 2018, Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, escorted him through a tree-lined path at the company’s campus. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, showed him the company’s products. The prince also traveled to Seattle, where he met with Bill Gates of Microsoft; Satya Nadella, the company’s CEO; and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

It was a key moment for Saudi Arabia’s tech ambitions as Crown Prince Mohammed presented himself as a youthful, digitally savvy reformer. But enthusiasm dimmed a few months later when Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of the crown prince, was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The prince denied involvement, but the CIA concluded that he had approved the killing.

For a brief period, it was seen as untoward to associate with Saudi Arabia. Business executives canceled visits to the kingdom. But the lure of its money was ultimately too strong.

AI development depends on two key things that Saudi Arabia has in abundance: money and energy. The kingdom is pouring oil profits into buying semiconductors, building supercomputers, attracting talent and constructing data centers powered by its plentiful electricity. The bet is that Saudi Arabia will eventually export AI computing muscle.

Majid Ali AlShehry, the general manager of studies for the Saudi Data and AI Authority, a government agency overseeing AI initiatives, said 70% of the 96 strategic goals outlined in Vision 2030 involved using data and AI.

“We see AI as one of the main enablers of all sectors,” he said in an interview at the agency’s office in Riyadh, where employees nearby worked on an Arabic chatbot called Allam.

Those goals have permeated the kingdom. Posters for Vision 2030 are visible throughout Riyadh. Young Saudis describe the crown prince as running the kingdom as if it were a startup. Many tech leaders have parroted the sentiment.

“Saudi has a founder,” Ben Horowitz, a founder of Andreessen Horowitz, said last year at a conference in Miami. “You don’t call him a founder. You call him his royal highness.”

Some question whether Saudi Arabia can become a global tech hub. The kingdom has faced scrutiny for its human rights record, intolerance to homosexuality and brutal heat. But for those in the tech world who descended on Riyadh last month, the concerns seemed secondary to the dizzying amount of deal-making underway.

“They are just pouring money into AI,” said Peter Lillian, an engineer at Groq, a U.S. maker of semiconductors that power AI systems. Groq is working with Neom, a futuristic city that Saudi Arabia is building in the desert, and Aramco, the state oil giant. “We’re doing so many deals,” he said.

Torn between superpowers

Situated along the Red Sea’s turquoise waters, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology has become a site of the U.S.-Chinese technological showdown.

The university, known as KAUST, is central to Saudi Arabia’s plans to vault to AI leadership. Modeled on universities like the California Institute of Technology, KAUST has brought in foreign AI leaders and provided computing resources to build an epicenter for AI research.

To achieve that aim, KAUST has often turned to China to recruit students and professors and to strike research partnerships, alarming U.S. officials. They fear students and professors from Chinese military-linked universities will use KAUST to sidestep U.S. sanctions and boost China in the race for AI supremacy, analysts and U.S. officials said.

Of particular concern is the university’s construction of one of the region’s fastest supercomputers, which needs thousands of microchips made by Nvidia, the biggest maker of precious chips that power AI systems. The university’s chip order, with an estimated value of more than $100 million, is being held up by a review from the U.S. government, which must provide an export license before the sale can go through.

China and the United States want to keep Crown Prince Mohammed close. AI ambitions add a new layer of geopolitical significance to a kingdom already key to Middle East policy and global energy supplies. A 2016 visit to Saudi Arabia by Xi Jinping, China’s leader, paved the way for new tech cooperation. Accustomed to top-down industrial policy, Chinese companies have expanded rapidly in the kingdom, forming partnerships with major state-owned companies. The United States has pushed Saudi Arabia to pick a side, but Crown Prince Mohammed seems content to benefit from both nations.

Schmidhuber, the researcher leading KAUST’s AI efforts, has seen the jostling up close. Considered a pioneer of modern AI — students in a lab he led included a founder of DeepMind, an innovative AI company now owned by Google — he was lured to the desert in 2021.

He was reluctant to move at first, he said, but university officials, via a headhunter, “tried to make it more attractive and even more attractive and even more attractive for me.”

Schmidhuber is awaiting the completion of the supercomputer, Shaheen 3, which is a chance to attract more top talent to the Persian Gulf and to give researchers access to computing power often reserved for major companies.

“No other university is going to have a similar thing,” he said.

Some in Washington fear the supercomputer may provide researchers from Chinese universities access to cutting-edge computing resources they would not have in China. More than a dozen students and staff members at KAUST are from military-linked Chinese universities known as the Seven Sons of National Defense, according to a review by The New York Times. During the Trump administration, the United States blocked entry to students from those universities over concerns that they could take sensitive technologies back to China’s military.

“The United States should quickly move to deny export licenses to any entity if the end user is likely to be a PRC actor affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said in a statement.

A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the default U.S. policy was to share technology with Saudi Arabia, a critical ally in the Persian Gulf, but that there were national security concerns and risks with AI.

The Commerce Department declined to comment. In a statement, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “We hope that relevant countries will work with China to resist coercion, jointly safeguard a fair and open international economic and trade order, and safeguard their own long-term interests.”

A KAUST spokesperson said: “We will strictly comply with all U.S. export license terms and conditions for the full life cycle of Shaheen 3.”

Schmidhuber said the Saudi government was ultimately aligned with the United States. Just as U.S. technology helped create Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, it will play a critical role in AI development.

“Nobody wants to jeopardize that,” he said.

The gold rush

Aladin Ben, a German Tunisian AI entrepreneur, was in Bali, Indonesia, last year when he received an email from a Saudi agency working on AI issues. The agency knew his software startup, Memorality, which designs tools to make it easier for businesses to incorporate AI, and wanted to work together.

Since then, Ben, 31, has traveled to Saudi Arabia five times. He is now negotiating with the kingdom on an investment and other partnerships. But his company may need to incorporate in Saudi Arabia to get the full benefit of the government¶¶Òőap offer, which includes buying hundreds of annual subscriptions to his software in a contract worth roughly $800,000 a month.

“If you want a serious deal, you need to be here,” Ben said in an interview in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia was once viewed as a source of few-strings-attached cash. Now it has added conditions to its deals, requiring many companies to establish roots in the kingdom to partake in the financial windfall.

That was evident at GAIA, an AI startup accelerator, for which Saudi officials announced $1 billion in funding last month.

Each startup in the program receives a grant worth about $40,000 in exchange for spending at least three months in Riyadh, along with a potential $100,000 investment. Entrepreneurs are required to register their company in the kingdom and spend 50% of their investment in Saudi Arabia. They also receive access to computing power purchased from Amazon and Google free of charge.

About 50 startups — including from Taiwan, South Korea, Sweden, Poland and the United States — have gone through GAIA’s program since it started last year.

“We want to attract talent, and we want them to stay,” said Mohammed Almazyad, a program manager for GAIA. “We used to rely heavily on oil, and now we want to diversify.”

One of the biggest enticements for AI startups is the chance to make the deep-pocketed Saudi government a customer. In one recent meeting, Abdullah Alswaha, a senior minister for communications and information technology, asked GAIA’s startups to suggest what they could provide for the Saudi government, including for megacity projects like Neom. Afterward, many of the companies received messages introducing them to state-owned businesses, Almazyad said.

“I would say this process at the first stages is not organic,” he said. “You don’t find this in Silicon Valley. Eventually the process will be organic.”

Deciding to set up in Riyadh comes with challenges. There’s the heat, reaching more than 110 degrees in the summer, as well as the adjustments of moving to a deeply religious Muslim kingdom. While Saudi Arabia has loosened some restrictions in recent years, freedom of speech remains limited and LGBTQ+ people can face criminal penalties.

Almazyad, who hopes to eventually study in the United States, said cultural differences could make it hard to recruit international AI talent. But he cautioned against underestimating Saudi Arabia’s resolve.

“This is just the beginning,” he said.

This article originally appeared in .

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ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is looking to fuse its artificial intelligence systems into the bodies of humanoid robots as part of a new deal with robotics startup Figure.

Sunnyvale, California-based Figure announced the partnership Thursday along with $675 million in venture capital funding from a group that includes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as well as Microsoft, chipmaker Nvidia and the startup-funding divisions of Intel and OpenAI.

Figure is less than two years old and doesn’t have a commercial product but is persuading influential tech industry backers to support its vision of shipping billions of human-like robots to the world’s workplaces and homes.

“If we can just get humanoids to do work that humans are not wanting to do because there’s a shortfall of humans, we can sell millions of humanoids, billions maybe,” Figure CEO Brett Adcock told The Associated Press last year.

For OpenAI, which dabbled in robotics research before pivoting to a focus on the AI large language models that power ChatGPT, the partnership will “open up new possibilities for how robots can help in everyday life,” said Peter Welinder, the San Francisco company’s vice president of product and partnerships, in a written statement.

Financial terms of the deal between Figure and OpenAI weren’t disclosed. The collaboration will have OpenAI building specialized AI models for Figure’s humanoid robots, likely based on OpenAI’s existing technology such as GPT language models, the image-generator DALL-E and the new video-generator Sora.

That will help “accelerate Figure’s commercial timeline” by enabling its robots to “process and reason from language,” according to Figure’s announcement. The company announced in January an agreement with BMW to put its robots to work at a car plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, but hadn’t yet determined exactly how or when they would be used.

Robotics experts differ on the usefulness of robots shaped in human form. Most robots employed in factory and warehouse tasks might have some animal-like features — a robotic arm, finger-like grippers or even legs — but aren’t truly humanoid. That¶¶Òőap in part because it¶¶Òőap taken decades for robotics engineers to develop robots that can walk effectively on two legs or reliably manipulate small objects.

Whitney Rockley, co-founder and managing partner of Toronto-based venture capital firm McRock Capital, said she understands the appeal of humanoids because they’re relatable, evoking emotions and starting conversations. In practice, however, she said they’re still awkward and pose huge technical challenges, which is why she’s sticking to investing in non-humanoid robots.

“We look at robotics and automation really practically and say, ‘What kind of timeline are we willing to commit to in order to really see commercial liftoff and deployments and applications?’” Rockley said. “And I think that the groups that are backing a lot of humanoid solutions right now, they’re in there for the long haul, which is great because you need that, but it¶¶Òőap going to take decades upon decades.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hinted at a renewed interest in robotics in a podcast hosted by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and released early this year in which Altman said the company was starting to invest in promising robotics hardware platforms after having earlier abandoned its own research.

“We started robots too early and so we had to put that project on hold,” Altman told Gates, noting that “we were dealing with bad simulators and breaking tendons” that were distracting from the company’s other work.

“We realized more and more over time that what we really first needed was intelligence and cognition and then we could figure out how we could adapt it to physicality,” he said.

–—-

The AP has signed a deal with OpenAI for it to access its news archive.

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The buzzy announcement, made by Jeff Bezos on “60 Minutes” as part of a Cyber Monday promotional package, drew global attention. “I know this looks like science fiction. It¶¶Òőap not,” said Bezos, Amazon’s founder and the CEO at the time. The drones would be “ready to enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place,” probably in 2015, the company said.

Eight additional years later, drone delivery is a reality — kind of — on the outskirts of College Station, Texas, northwest of Houston. That is a major achievement for a program that has waxed and waned over the years and lost many of its early leaders to newer and more urgent projects.

Yet the venture as it currently exists is so underwhelming that Amazon can keep the drones in the air only by giving stuff away. Years of toil by top scientists and aviation specialists have yielded a program that flies Listerine Cool Mint Breath Strips or a can of Campbell’s Chunky Minestrone With Italian Sausage — but not both at once — to customers as gifts. If this is science fiction, it¶¶Òőap being played for laughs.

A decade is an eternity in technology, but even so, drone delivery does not approach the scale or simplicity of Amazon’s original promotional videos. This gap between dazzling claims and mundane reality happens all the time in Silicon Valley. Self-driving cars, the metaverse, flying cars, robots, neighborhoods or even cities built from scratch, virtual universities that can compete with Harvard, artificial intelligence — the list of delayed and incomplete promises is long.

“Having ideas is easy,” said Rodney Brooks, a robotics entrepreneur and frequent critic of technology companies’ hype. “Turning them into reality is hard. Turning them into being deployed at scale is even harder.”

Amazon said in October that drone deliveries would expand to Britain, Italy and another, unidentified U.S. city by the end of 2024. Yet even on the threshold of growth, a question lingers: Now that the drones finally exist in at least limited form, why did we think we needed them in the first place?

Dominique Lord and Leah Silverman live in College Station’s drone zone. They are Amazon fans and place regular orders for ground delivery. Drones are another matter, even if the service is free for Amazon Prime members. While it¶¶Òőap cool to have stuff literally land on your driveway, at least the first few times, there are many hurdles to getting stuff this way.

Only one item can be delivered at a time. It can’t weigh more than 5 pounds. It can’t be too big. It can’t be something breakable, since the drone drops it from 12 feet. The drones can’t fly when it is too hot or too windy or too rainy.

You need to be home to put out the landing target and to make sure that a porch pirate doesn’t make off with your item or that it doesn’t roll into the street (which happened once to Lord and Silverman). But your car can’t be in the driveway. Letting the drone land in the backyard would avoid some of these problems, but not if there are trees.

Amazon has also warned customers that drone delivery is unavailable during periods of high demand for drone delivery.

The other active U.S. test site is Lockeford, California, in the Central Valley. On a recent afternoon, the Lockeford site seemed largely moribund, with only three cars in the parking lot. Amazon said it was delivering via drones in Lockeford and arranged for a New York Times reporter to come back to the site. It also arranged an interview with David Carbon, the former Boeing executive who runs the drone program. The company later canceled both without explanation.

A corporate blog post on Oct. 18 said that drones had safely delivered “hundreds” of household items in College Station since December and that customers there could now have some medications delivered. Lockeford wasn’t mentioned.

After Silverman and Lord expressed initial interest in the drone program, Amazon offered $100 in gift certificates in October 2022 to follow through. But their service didn’t start until June, and then it was suspended during a punishing heat wave when the drones could not fly.

The incentives, however, kept coming. The couple got an email recently from Amazon pushing Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter, which usually costs $5.38 but was a “free gift” while supplies lasted. They ordered it, and a little while later, a drone dropped a big box containing a small jar. Amazon said “some promotional items” are being offered “as a welcome.”

“We don’t really need anything they offer for free,” said Silverman, a 51-year-old novelist and caregiver. “The drones feel more like a toy than anything — a toy that wastes a huge amount of paper and cardboard.”

The Texas weather plays havoc with important deliveries. Lord, a 54-year-old professor of civil engineering at Texas A&M, ordered a medication through the mail. By the time he retrieved the package, the drug had melted. He’s hopeful that the drones can eventually handle problems like this.

“I still view this program positively, knowing that it is in the experimental phase,” he said.

Amazon said the drones will improve over time. It announced a new model, the MK30, last year and released pictures in October. The MK30, which is slated to begin service by the end of 2024, was touted as having a greater range, an ability to fly in inclement weather and a 25% reduction in “perceived noise.”

When Amazon began working on drones years ago, the retailer took two or three days to ship many items to customers. It worried that it was vulnerable to potential competitors whose vendors were more local, including Google and eBay. Drones were all about speed.

“We can do half-hour delivery,” Bezos promised on “60 Minutes.”

For a while, drones were the next big thing. Google developed its own drone service, Wing, which now works with Walmart to deliver items in parts of Dallas and Frisco, Texas. Startups got funding; about $2.5 billion was invested between 2013 and 2019, according to the Teal Group, an aerospace consultancy. Veteran venture capitalist Tim Draper said in 2013 that “everything from pizza delivery to personal shopping can be handled by drones.” Uber Eats announced a food delivery drone in late 2019. The future was up in the air.

Amazon started thinking really long term. It envisioned and got a patent for a drone resupply vehicle that would hover in the sky at 45,000 feet. That¶¶Òőap above commercial airplanes, but Amazon said it could use the vehicles to deliver customers a hot dinner.

Yet on the ground, progress was slow — sometimes for technical reasons and sometimes because of the company’s corporate DNA. The same aggressive confidence that created a trillion-dollar business undermined Amazon’s efforts to work with the Federal Aviation Administration.

“The attitude was, ‘We’re Amazon. We’ll convince the FAA,’” said one former Amazon drone executive, who asked for anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak about the subject. “The FAA wants companies to come in with great humility and great transparency. That is not a strength of Amazon.”

A more complicated issue was getting the technology to the point where it was safe not just most of the time but all of the time. The first drone that lands on someone’s head or takes off clutching a cat sets the program back another decade, particularly if it is filmed.

“Part of the DNA of the tech industry is, you can accomplish things you never thought you could accomplish,” said Neil Woodward, who spent four years as a senior manager in Amazon’s drone program. “But the truth is, the laws of physics don’t change.”

Woodward, now retired, spent years at NASA in the astronaut program before moving to the private sector.

“When you work for the government, you have 535 people on your board of directors” — he was referring to Congress — “and a good chunk of them want to take your funding away because they have other priorities,” he said. “That makes government agencies very risk-averse. At Amazon, you’re given a lot of rope, but you can get out over your skis.”

In the end, there must be a market. As Woodward put it, using an old Silicon Valley clichĂ©: “Do the dogs like the dog food? Sometimes the dogs don’t.”

Archie Conner, 82, lives a few doors down from Lord and Silverman. He sees the drones as less a retail innovation and more a marketing one.

“When you hear a drone, you naturally think about Amazon. It¶¶Òőap real out-of-the-box thinking, even if no one orders at all,” he said. “Drones were on the news just the other day. People say, ‘Wow, Amazon did that.’”

Conner also ordered the free Skippy peanut butter but forgot to put out the landing target, so the drone went away. Then he ordered it again. Meanwhile, an Amazon delivery person showed up with the first jar. So now he and his wife, Belinda, have two jars.

“We haven’t found much we really want to pay for,” Conner said. “But we have enjoyed the free peanut butter.”

This article originally appeared in .

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