Just like the birthday celebrations of the most self-centered people, Amazon’s Prime Day event will last four days this year. The extravaganza when everyone rushes to order a bargain flat-screen TV kicked off at midnight and will last through Friday, instead of just the usual two days.

Amazon could ship a record $21.4 billion worth of products during the elongated Prime Day stretch, 60% more than it shipped during the event last year, according to projections by BofA Securities Analyst Justin Post.

High stakes this year

A prolonged Prime Day isn’t just about the usual juicing of sales and Prime subscriptions, but also a way to mitigate the impact of any future tariffs, analysts say.

• Extending the deals gives customers more opportunity to front-load large purchases before new tariffs kick in.
• It could also reinforce Amazon’s reputation as a deals purveyor despite any tariff-related price hikes.

Then there’s AI: The shopping rush is a chance for Amazon to get customers talking with its AI assistant, Rufus, which is designed to help customers sift through product info, reviews, and deals. However, it was met with low enthusiasm upon its release ahead of last July’s Prime Day sale. Bloomberg’s Austin Carr, who recently tested an updated version of Rufus, said he still prefers Amazon’s traditional search function.

No longer just an Amazon holiday

Competing retailers, including Best Buy, REI, and Dollar General, have run their own promotions in the lead-up to Prime Day. Meanwhile, its most formidable rival, Walmart, kicked off a six-day sale online and in stores today in a bid to dominate America’s shopping baskets.

Walmart has been encroaching on Amazon’s turf by rapidly ramping up same-day delivery service for groceries and household items offered at its sprawling store network.

But…Amazon surpassed Walmart’s quarterly sales for the first time in Q4 of last year, temporarily unseating it as the highest-revenue US company. —SK

Trump extends tariff deadline and starts revealing steep new levies. The White House confirmed yesterday that President Trump planned to delay imposing new tariffs on trade partners that haven’t reached deals with the US until Aug. 1, ahead of the original date (tomorrow) when the 90-day tariff pause would have ended. However, the president also began sending letters to other countries threatening high duties on their goods unless a deal is secured. These threats included 25% on imports from Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Kazakhstan, 30% on South African goods, and 40% on products from Laos and Myanmar.

Search for survivors continues as death toll from Texas floods rises. Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp for girls, said 27 campers and counselors had died due to the flash flooding over the weekend, with 10 more campers and a counselor reportedly still missing. In all, authorities said yesterday that more than 100 people were known to have died in the flooding, and that the number was likely to go up as searching continued. They declined to answer questions about weather warnings and didn’t clarify why more areas were not evacuated as searches continued with more rain expected. Meanwhile, facing criticism from Democrats, President Trump denied that staffing cuts at the National Weather Service had hindered weather forecasting before the sudden flooding.

AI company to buy crypto miner for $9b to meet power needs. That very 2025 sentence comes as AI companies race to scoop up energy and data centers to power their tech. CoreWeave is doing it by acquiring Core Scientific, a Bitcoin miner that was already providing data center infrastructure to the company and has access to lots of energy. It’ll nab those centers for itself in an all-stock deal valued at $9 billion that’s expected to close in Q4. But investors weren’t energized by the deal—both companies’ stocks fell after it was announced.—AR

Tesla lost $68 billion in value when its stock plunged almost 7% yesterday in the wake of CEO Elon Musk declaring his intention to forge a new political party, marking the latest evidence that investors wish he’d focus less on elections and more on electric vehicles.

Shareholders seem to be begging Musk to follow through on his May promise to be “super focused” on his businesses and to spend less time on politics after leaving DOGE, a move that coincided with Tesla’s stock jumping 22% that month. But now, Musk wants to start a third party:

• Musk says his new “America Party,” which sounds like a European describing Fourth of July fireworks, will key in on “two or three Senate seats and eight to 10 House districts” in the 2026 midterms.
• The party’s creation is a response to President Trump’s signature tax legislation that was just passed. The law will add to the deficit that Musk sought to slash. It will also axe tax credits for EVs, which could be detrimental to Tesla’s bottom line.

Meanwhile, the anti-DEI investment firm Azoria Partners announced it was delaying its Tesla ETF, saying it needed clarity on how much attention the America Party would require from Musk.

Shorter version: Per Reuters, short sellers betting against Tesla will pocket about $1.4 billion from yesterday’s dip.

Big Picture: Tesla shares have dropped nearly 23% this year, and sales have been down for two straight quarters. Many investors see politics as a distraction for Musk and a danger to Tesla’s brand value.—DL

Look to your left, look to your right. Odds are, one of you has watched anime this week—and probably on Netflix. The genre is now watched by more than half of Netflix users worldwide, the company announced over the weekend.

According to Netflix:

• More than 50% of its global user base (150+ million households) watches anime on the platform, up 3x from five years ago.
• 33 anime titles made the platform’s rotating Global Top 10 (Non-English) list last year, up more than 2x from 2021.

The company unveiled the numbers at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, which drew 400,000 people, including rapper Rico Nasty in cosplay as a character from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, a popular Netflix anime show. That series and Sakamoto Days, another hit that recently charted in 54 countries, have helped propel the entertainment giant to anime dominance.

How dominant is it? About one in three people watch anime weekly in the US and worldwide, and those fans subscribe to Netflix more than any other platform, according to a new study from the Japanese ad company Dentsu. In the US, Netflix is followed by Disney+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video, while Crunchyroll—the original anime platform—ranks last in anime viewership.

Something fresh: “Fatigue with Hollywood sequels and remakes” is at least one reason why 29% of US anime fans watch the genre, per Dentsu.—ML

Dinosaur wrangling may be dangerous, but it’s lucrative work. Thanks to the success of Jurassic World Rebirth over the holiday weekend, Scarlett Johansson has become the highest-grossing lead actor ever.

The dino-filled blockbuster has raked in $318.3 million globally so far. That catapulted the actress’s lifetime career box office gross to $14.8 billion for films in which she had a lead role or a lead ensemble role, and puts her in the first place spot, according to data from The Numbers.

It helps that the series featuring the world’s least safety-conscious theme parks isn’t Johansson’s only major franchise. More than $8.7 billion of the total gross from her films comes comes from the Marvel movies in which she played Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow. And to get to the top, Johansson leapfrogged two MCU co-stars: Samuel L. Jackson, who long held the No. 1 spot, and Robert Downey Jr. In fact, the only lead actor in the top five who isn’t a part of the MCU is Tom Hanks, because when the Avengers are involved, the box office, like life, finds a way.—AR