Amazon successfully launched the first 27 satellites for its Project Kuiper internet constellation, kicking off a major effort to compete with Starlink by deploying over 1,600 satellites by mid-2026. It company is investing $10 billion in Kuiper and plans to begin commercial service later this year. CNBC reports: "We had a nice smooth countdown, beautiful weather, beautiful liftoff, and Atlas V is on its way to orbit to take those 27 Kuiper satellites, put them on their way and really start this new era in internet connectivity," Caleb Weiss, a systems engineer at ULA, said on the livestream following the launch. The satellites are expected to separate from the rocket roughly 280 miles above Earth's surface, at which point Amazon will look to confirm the satellites can independently maneuver and communicate with its employees on the ground. [...] In his shareholder letter earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Kuiper will require upfront investment at first, but eventually the company expects it to be "a meaningful operating income and ROIC business for us." ROIC stands for return on invested capital. Investors will be listening for any commentary around further capex spend on Kuiper when Amazon reports first-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday. A livestream can be found here.
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The software-as-a-service industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation, abandoning the decades-old "per seat" licensing model in favor of usage-based pricing structures. This shift, Business Insider reports, is primarily driven by the astronomical compute costs associated with new "reasoning" AI models that power modern enterprise software. Unlike traditional generative AI, these reasoning models execute multiple computational loops to check their work -- a process called inference-time compute -- dramatically increasing token usage and operational expenses. OpenAI's o3-high model reportedly consumes 1,000 times more tokens than its predecessor, with a single benchmark response costing approximately $3,500, according to Barclays. Companies including Bolt.new, Vercel, and Monday.com have already implemented usage-based or hybrid pricing models that tie costs directly to AI resource consumption. ServiceNow maintains primarily seat-based pricing but has added usage meters for extreme cases. "When it goes beyond what we can credibly afford, we have to have some kind of meter," ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott said, while emphasizing that customers "still want seat-based predictability."
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