There is something quietly uncomfortable about the contrast at the heart of today's news: Amazon's profits have ballooned to $77 billion even as the number of its workers relying on food stamps has nearly tripled, a tension that raises hard questions about what growth actually means for the people powering it. Elsewhere, the masses in China are proving far more savvy at using AI in their daily lives than the US, while Appple TV positioned itself as a new entertainment behemoth after 29 wins the Emmys.

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The number of Amazon workers receiving government food and healthcare assistance has nearly tripled since 2020, according to new data obtained by the US Government Accountability Office and reported by Fortune. As of the most recent figures, 12,346 Amazon employees across 11 states were enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, while another 11,338 relied on Medicaid to cover their healthcare costs. That dramatic rise coincides directly with a period of extraordinary financial growth for Amazon itself, whose annual profits climbed from $11.6 billion in 2020 to $77.7 billion in 2025.

The GAO findings effectively put a number on what critics have long argued: that federal assistance programs function as a hidden subsidy for large, profitable corporations, allowing them to pay wages too low for workers to cover basic necessities. Amazon was consistently ranked among the very top employers of adult SNAP and Medicaid enrollees, alongside Walmart, McDonald's, Dollar General, and ride-share companies like Uber. The picture grows even starker when zoomed out, nearly 14 million working adults were enrolled in Medicaid in 2024, and 10.6 million received food assistance, with roughly 71 percent of SNAP recipients working 35 hours or more per week. GAO director Kathryn Larin described the findings as evidence of a broad population of workers who are employed, often heavily so, yet remain barely able to make ends meet.

Apple TV+ had a landmark night at the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards, walking away with 29 wins to become the most awarded entertainment network of the evening. The haul also set a new record for the streamer, making it the fastest streaming platform to reach that distinction in the history of television's biggest annual awards show. The performance was spread across a strong slate of originals, including Widow's Bay, Pluribus, Slow Horses, Margo's Got Money Troubles, Palm Royale, and Mr. Scorsese. Widow's Bay led the charge with 14 trophies, becoming the most Emmy-awarded freshman comedy series in history.

Its wins included Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actor for Matthew Rhys, and Outstanding Directing for Hiro Murai, who made history as the first Asian director to win in that category at the Emmys. Pluribus added six wins of its own, with Rhea Seehorn taking Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and Vince Gilligan earning Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. The night marks the second consecutive year Apple TV+ has claimed the title of most awarded series at the Emmys, following its run with The Studio last year, and comes on the heels of a broader awards season that included six Oscar nominations and wins at the Critics Choice and Golden Globe ceremonies. With 89 nominations heading into the night, the streamer shows no signs of slowing its awards momentum.

China has pulled ahead of the United States in how frequently everyday consumers use AI, according to a new Morgan Stanley report based on a survey of users in both countries. Eighty percent of Chinese respondents said they use AI for personal purposes at least weekly, compared with 54 percent of Americans, a gap that reflects not a difference in model quality but in distribution strategy. Technology giants Tencent and Alibaba have embedded AI directly into the super apps that hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers already rely on for messaging, shopping, and payments, making the technology an almost invisible part of daily life.

The scale of that growth is striking. China's generative AI user base expanded from roughly 249 million people in December 2024 to 602 million by December 2025, a pace that Morgan Stanley says outstrips even the rapid spread of mobile internet adoption over a comparable period. The bank was careful to note that American models still lead on frontier benchmark performance, but raw capability appears to matter less for mass adoption than frictionless access through familiar platforms tailored to local habits. The findings suggest that the next phase of the global AI race may be decided less in research labs than in product integration, and that embedding AI into apps people already open dozens of times a day could prove a more powerful adoption lever than building the most powerful model.

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