Spotify takes on Googles NotebookLM with its new app

Amazon deliveries keep getting faster. On Tuesday, the online retailer announced the launch of its 30-minute delivery option, dubbed “Amazon Now,” in dozens of U.S. cities. This ultra-fast delivery option will allow customers to shop across “thousands” of items, Amazon says, including fresh groceries, household essentials, and other locally relevant items. At launch, Amazon Now will be widely available in Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, and Seattle, and is expanding to Austin, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis, Orlando, Oklahoma City, and Phoenix. By year-end, Amazon expects to bring the service to tens of millions of customers in these and other cities, as the rollout continues across the U.S. The eligible items will be flagged with “30-minute delivery” banners in the Amazon app and website. Amazon Now offers will also be displayed to customers as they shop. Amazon began pilot tests of 30-minute deliveries in Seattle and Philadelphia in December, a move that pitted the retailer against other quick delivery services like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Instacart. In addition to speed, the service competes on price. While Amazon Now deliveries aren’t free, Prime members still save as they pay only a $3.99 per-order fee, compared with $13.99 for non-Prime members. An additional small order fee of $1.99 for Prime members, or $3.99 for non-members, is charged on orders below $15.00. That’s a more straightforward fee structure than competitors — and one that often ends up being cheaper for Prime members, compared with competitors that charge variable delivery fees alongside service fees, expected shopper tips, and sometimes even price markups per item. To make these fast orders possible, Amazon taps into a network of smaller fulfillment locations that are placed closer to where customers live and work, as compared with the company’s larger warehouses. With a more limited selection of items and reduced travel distances, the delivery times can be sped up. At launch, Amazon Now orders can include fresh produce, dairy and eggs, bakery items, healthcare and personal care items, baby and pet needs, electronics, and alcohol, where permitted. In most areas, the option will be available 24 hours per day. “Amazon Now is for when you need or want the convenience of getting your Amazon order delivered in 30 minutes or less,” said Udit Madan, Senior Vice President, Amazon Worldwide Operations, in a statement about the launch. “With thousands of items available for ultra-fast delivery, you can get everything from groceries for dinner, to AirPods before a flight, to household essentials like laundry detergent or toothpaste delivered right to your door.” The service also joins Amazon’s existing fast-delivery options, including its 1-hour and 3-hour deliveries available across more than 90,000 products as of March, and its same-day delivery option across millions of items. In eight U.S. locations, Amazon is also experimenting with under-60-minute drone deliveries via Prime Air. In 2025, Amazon Prime members received over 13 billion total items via either same-day or next-day delivery globally. The U.S. alone accounted for 8 billion of those items, a figure up 30% year-over-year. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal. View Bio

Perplexity’s Personal Computer, its answer to OpenClaw and other local AI agents, is now available to all Mac users via its desktop app, the company announced on Thursday. As a reminder, Personal Computer is an expansion on Perplexity’s general-purpose, multi-model digital worker dubbed, confusingly, Perplexity Computer. “Personal Computer,” meanwhile, is designed to bring those capabilities to your own device. It does so by allowing AI agents access to local files, applications, and connectors, as well as the web, in order to handle the individual user’s personal, multi-step workflows. Ss the company describes Personal Computer, it “takes Computer out of the cloud-only world and onto the device where most of your real work already takes place.” Image Credits:Perplexity The goal is to capitalize on the growing demand for local AI agents, popularized by OpenClaw, which can perform tasks on users’ behalf. But while OpenClaw presented several security risks because of its elevated permissions, solutions like Personal Computer are meant to offer users a safer AI-enabled computing environment. (Or at least that’s the claim.) Perplexity’s Personal Computer was first introduced last month, but was limited to users on to Perplexity Max subscribers and involved a waitlist. Today, the company says anyone on a Mac can now try the software. At launch, the software is able to work with your local files, native Mac apps, and operate on the web. It can also orchestrate tools, files, use over 400 connectors, and leverage your personal context, all within a secure development environment on Perplexity’s servers. If paired with Perplexity’s AI-powered Comet web browser, it can operate web-based tools without the need for direct connectors. Image Credits:Perplexity Designed to run autonomous agents on an always-on device like a Mac Mini, Personal Computer can even be accessed remotely from your iPhone, where you can initiate tasks or approve requests from your device. Perplexity suggests this can be used for all types of work, like working with spreadsheets, documents, and projects with many different materials. Because the tool can work across apps, agents could do something like compare two files from different apps or pull notes from one app to create a draft in another. As a result of its general availability, Perplexity says its older Mac app will be deprecated in the weeks ahead so the team can focus on the Personal Computer app. The new Mac app is available as a direct download only for now; it’s not in the Mac App Store. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal. View Bio