<span>THE STORY: From a possible smartphone comeback for Amazon to OpenAI’s big offer… This is Tech Weekly.</span><span>:: Tech Weekly</span><span>Amazon is planning a comeback to smartphones more than a decade after the firm’s most high-profile failure.</span><span>The Fire Phone was released in 2014 but was canceled a little over a year later.</span><span>Sources said Amazon’s latest smartphone effort is known internally as ‘Transformer’.</span><span>The project’s timeline is uncertain, and sources have warned that it could be abandoned due to a change in strategy or financial concerns.</span><span>Sources said OpenAI is looking to form joint ventures with acquisition firms.</span><span>They added that the ChatGPT maker is offering private equity firms a minimum guaranteed return of 17.5% and early access to the latest AI models as part of the move.</span><span>It aims to raise new capital and advance the adoption of enterprise AI products. </span><span>Sources also said OpenAI is trying to offer a more attractive deal than rival Anthropic, which is seeking a partnership.</span><span>Rivian has struck a deal with Uber to provide robotaxis to the ride-hailing service.</span><span>Both companies have said Uber will invest up to $1.25 billion in the electric vehicle maker.</span><span>In return, Rivian will provide 10,000 fully autonomous robotaxis within two years.</span><span>Investors liked what they heard, with Rivian shares rising by a tenth on the update.</span><span>The Amazon Web Services region in Bahrain has been “disrupted” amid the current conflict in the Middle East.</span><span>Its operations were affected by war for the second time in a month.</span><span>Amazon said the outage was caused by drone activity in the area.</span><span>The company said it is helping customers move to alternative AWS regions during the recovery process.</span><span>However, no further details were given about the extent of damage or how long the outage is believed to last.</span><span>SpaceX and Tesla will build two advanced chip factories at a facility in Austin, Texas.</span><span>These were the words of CEO Elon Musk, who announced the ‘Terafab’ project.</span><span>One facility would produce chips for cars and humanoid robots, he said.</span><span>While Musk said the other would make processors for artificial intelligence data centers in space.</span>
