NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon said Tuesday that it has started offering faster U.S. deliveries of selected products for a fee, including pantry staples, clothing, over-the-counter medications, cleaning supplies and electronics.
The announcement comes as Amazon is seeing increased competition from Walmart and is also looking to satisfy shoppers' increasing demands for faster delivery.
The e-commerce colossus said customers in more than 2,000 cities, towns and suburban areas can now choose to have orders from its speedy-shipment inventory of 90,000 items delivered in three hours. The charge is $4.99 for Amazon Prime members and $14.99 for nonmembers.
One-hour delivery slots are available in hundreds of places, including major metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, and smaller cities such as Des Moines, Iowa and Boise, Idaho, the company said. Prime members will get charged $9.99 for the service, which costs nonmembers $19.99, Amazon said
The Seattle-based company said it started testing the express delivery service late last year and expanding it this month.
“We saw an opportunity to use our unique operational expertise and delivery network to help make customers’ lives a little easier while unlocking even more value for Prime members,” Udit Madan, senior vice president of worldwide operations at Amazon, said in a statement.
Amazon launched its Prime program in 2005, offering members free two-day delivery on a selection of 1 million items, primarily DVDs, CDs, and books. Prime members now have access to over 300 million items across 35 categories, and tens of millions of products are available for free same-day or next day deliveries.
The company has used robotics and artificial intelligence technology to speed up order fulfillment. Regionalizing its U.S. delivery network into eight areas also has helped reduce delivery times, Amazon said.
Amazon is testing an ultrafast service for deliveries in 30 minutes or less. Amazon Now is available in various cities in India, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates and is being tested in several communities in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, according to the company.
Rival retailer Walmart has focused on faster deliveries. The Bentonville, Arkansas-based company says it offers same-day deliveries in under three hours to 95% of the U.S. population, compared to 76% three years ago. Walmart is also expanding its drone delivery of essentials. It announced in January it was expanding drone delivery service to 150 more stores in partnership with Wing, a division of Alphabet. The addition will bring Walmart’s drone delivery locations with Wing to 270 by 2027, stretching from Los Angeles to Miami, the companies said.
Target, which is trying to reverse a persistent sales malaise, has been expanding faster delivery through its partnership with Shipt and by testing new shipping models. Target offers same-day delivery via Shipt to 80% of the U.S. population, the retailer said. About 80% of those orders are delivered in three hours or less. Annual membership for Shipt is $99 per year.
FILE - An Amazon truck makes deliveries in Wheeling, Ill., May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is rising toward records Tuesday after an easing of oil prices let Wall Street turn its focus back to the big profits that companies keep producing.
The S&P 500 rose 0.6% and was on track to top its all-time high set at the end of last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 248 points, or 0.5%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was heading toward its own record after climbing 0.7%.
Stocks got a boost after oil prices gave back some of their big jumps from Monday. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, fell 3.3% to $110.70 after briefly topping $115 on Monday, though it’s still well above its roughly $70 price from before the war with Iran.
A ceasefire in the war appears to be holding, even after the United Arab Emirates said Monday that Iran fired missiles and drones at it. The U.S. military is trying to force open a path in the Strait of Hormuz, which would allow oil tankers to resume shipments from the Persian Gulf and hopefully bring down the price of crude.
Iran’s powerful parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, accused the United States of undermining regional security with the effort to end Iran’s stranglehold on the strait and warned that Tehran will respond.
Even with the war ongoing, the U.S. stock market has remained remarkably resilient on its record-setting run. That’s in large part due to the strong profits that U.S. companies have reported for the start of 2026 despite the rise in oil prices since the end of February.
“This has been a ‘why ask why’ market,'” according to Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. “You just have to go with it.”
Even though many risks are still weighing on the market, “investors are looking at earnings” and how much companies are spending on AI data centers and other investments, he said.
DuPont’s stock rallied 8.7% Tuesday after the chemical giant led another cavalcade of companies reporting better-than-expected profits for the latest quarter.
DuPont said its water technologies business felt some impact because of the war with Iran due to logistics disruptions in the Middle East. But it nevertheless raised its forecasts for financial results over the full year due in part to its strong start to 2026.
Other winners included American Electric Power Co., which rose 1.8%, and Cummins, which added 1.7%, after they likewise made more money during the first three months of the year than analysts expected.
Pinterest soared 14% after the online bulletin board topped Wall Street’s first-quarter sales and profit targets as its number of active monthly users jumped 11% to 631 million.
AB InBev likewise topped analysts’ profit forecasts, and it credited growth for its Corona, Stella Artois and Michelob Ultra brands outside of their home markets. “Cheers to beer,” CEO Michel Doukeris said, as the company’s stock that trades in the United States jumped 9.2%.
They helped offset a drop for Palantir Technologies, which fell 4.3% even though it reported stronger results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its stock has struggled this year with worries about increased competition, like many software companies have. Its stock is also coming off a huge run where it more than doubled in each of the last three years.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe. The CAC 40 rose 0.6% in Paris, but the FTSE 100 fell 1.7% in London. Many Asian markets were closed for holidays, as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.8%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.2% after the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate to 4.35%, saying conflict in the Middle East had sharply increased fuel and commodity prices that were already adding to inflation.
In the U.S. bond market, Treasury yields eased after oil prices gave back some of Monday’s gains and reports on the U.S. economy came in mixed.
One report said growth for U.S. services businesses unexpectedly decelerated last month, with some companies saying the war is slowing spending. A separate report said U.S. employers were advertising slightly more job openings at the end of March than economists expected, an encouraging signal for the job market.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.42% from 4.45% late Monday.
That’s still well above its 3.97% level from just before the war began. That rise has made mortgages and other kinds of loans for U.S. households and businesses more expensive.
AP Writers Chan Ho-him, Matt Ott and Rod McGuirk contributed.
Specialist Patrick King works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, May 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Options trader Anthony Spina, foreground, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A board above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange displays the closing number for the Dow Jones industrial average, Thursday, April 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
FILE - A train arrives at a Wall Street subway station in New York's Financial District on Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
