Ticker: Jesse Ventura makes jump into pot biz; Amazon bets big on AI boom
Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has announced he is entering the cannabis market as a seller, as the state still figures out retail sales of the drug on the heels of legalizing marijuana for adults last year.
Ventura is launching his own brand of cannabis edibles in partnership with Retro Bakery, which is based in suburban Minneapolis and producing hemp-derived THC edibles under the Jesse Ventura Farms brand, Minnesota Public Radio reported.
“Ventura Farms is my foray into the world of cannabis,” Ventura said in a video with rock music playing in the background.
Amazon bets big on AI boom
Amazon.com Inc. plans to spend almost $150 billion in the coming 15 years on data centers, giving the cloud-computing giant the firepower to handle an expected explosion in demand for artificial intelligence applications and other digital services.
The spending spree is a show of force as the company looks to maintain its grip on the cloud services market, where it holds about twice the share of No. 2 player Microsoft Corp.
Sales growth at Amazon Web Services slowed to a record low last year as business customers cut costs and delayed modernization projects. Now spending is starting to pick up again, and Amazon is keen to secure land and electricity for its power-hungry facilities.
“We’re expanding capacity quite significantly,” said Kevin Miller, an AWS vice president who oversees the company’s data centers. “I think that just gives us the ability to get closer to customers.”