Daily Insight
All three major U.S. stock indexes closed at all-time highs on President Joe Biden's first day in office. (Click to Tweet)

Amazon has sent a letter to President Biden offering help with vaccine distribution. The company said that it is ready to turn its sites into vaccination facilities and mentioned its technological capabilities to help in vaccination efforts.

More:

• In the letter, Dave Clark, head of Amazon's consumer division, also requested the early vaccination of employees who can't work from home. Amazon has around 800,000 employees and is the second-largest employer in the U.S. behind Walmart. As of September last year, about 19,000 Amazon employees contracted COVID-19. 
• On Tuesday, Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced a vaccine distribution plan, "Washington State Vaccine Command and Coordination Center (WSVCCC)" to administer vaccines for 45,000 people every day. While companies including Microsoft, Costco, and Starbucks were included, Amazon is not currently a part of the plan.
• Amazon spent $7.5B in COVID-19 related expenses through Q3 2020 and estimated an additional $4B expense for Q4 2020. 

In other news:

• New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said that the sluggish rollout of vaccines in the state is due to CVS and Walgreens' inefficiency, particularly the latter. The state has 8.8 million in population, while only 432,000 vaccines have been administered out of the 898,550 distributed. However, both companies have denied the claim and said that the first dose in all nursing homes and facilities would be completed by the end of this month.
• Since CVS and Walgreen struck a deal with the U.S. government last October to administer the vaccine in long-term care facilities, the companies' stock price increased by around 40%.

Apple is designing a $300-500 VR headset that will act as a precursor for its more mainstream VR headset, Bloomberg reported. The headset is expected to be released next year and compete with Facebook's Oculus and Sony's PlayStation VR.

More:

• The headset might feature more powerful chips than the M1 Apple Silicon processors, which are currently used in MacBooks. The Verge noted that Apple is also testing the ability to track hand movement and include software features like a virtual keyboard.
• Last year Apple acquired NextVR, which offers a VR video streaming service, for $100M. Apple also acquired Spaces, which provides a platform to create AR/VR based experiences for public locations, including theme parks and retail. Spaces shifted its focus to immersive VR headsets for virtual conferences after the beginning of the pandemic. 

Big Tech's AR/VR plans:

• Last September, Facebook announced its new VR headset Oculus Quest 2, priced at $299. The company also demoed the "infinite office" feature, which allows users to work in a virtual multi-screen environment built on the Oculus browser.
• During the Oculus Quest 2 launch, Facebook introduced the research endeavor Project Aria to build AR devices. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that a lot of people are trying to take shortcuts when it comes to building AR glasses by "just showing some heads-up information." He added: "I call that 'putting an Apple Watch on your face.'"
• In June 2020, Google acquired smart glass manufacturer North to strengthen its ambient computing efforts. Microsoft also released its mixed-reality glasses Microsoft HoloLens 2, in 2019.

United Airlines reported a loss of $1.9B for Q4 2020, down from a profit of $641M in the previous year. The company’s revenue fell 69% to $3.41B.

More:

• Its cargo division generated a revenue of $560M, up 77% YoY. The division contributed 16% of revenue for Q4 2020, compared to 3% contribution in 2019. 
• Overall in 2020, United Airlines generated a revenue of $15.3B, down 64% YoY. It reported a net loss of $7B for the same period, compared to $3B in profit in 2019.
• The airline said that it expects to return to pre-pandemic level revenue in 2023. For the current quarter, it estimates the revenue to be down 60-70% and the operating capacity to be at 51%, compared to 2019.
• United Airlines’ stock price fell by 6% on the earnings announcement; its stock price has fallen by 76% since the beginning of last year.

The Labor Department reported 900,000 new jobless claims for the week of Jan. 10-16. This is a slight decrease from the 926,000 new claims the previous week. There are also 5.05M continuing claims for the same week. 

More:

• Markets did not react to the news. Investors are anticipating a large stimulus package to be delivered in the near future.
• 498,000 of new claims this month came from the hospitality industry. 
• California has the biggest fall in unemployment claims (down 58,665 from the previous week), while Arizona had the biggest increase (up 15,347 from the previous week).

President Biden has paused student loan payments till Sept. 30. He has also promised to forgive $10,000 per borrower following congressional approvals. 

Google opened an investigation into one of its AI researchers, Margaret Mitchell, under claims that she shared thousands of internal company files with outsiders. A source told Axios that Mitchell, a co-leader of Google's ethical AI team, used automated scripts to search through messages for instances of discriminatory treatment toward AI researcher Timnit Gebru.

More:

• Gebru, Mitchell's former colleague, who was also a co-lead of Google's ethical AI team, was ousted last month after Google asked her to retract an AI research paper she co-authored. Gebru later voiced frustration at managers' requests to retract the paper, as well as its treatment of women and minorities, particularly in hiring, which generated support from colleagues and people online.
• Mitchell recently tweeted that she was documenting “current critical issues" related to Gebru's firing "point by point, inside and outside work.” She has also criticized Google's AI chief Jeffrey Dean and other company heads for ousting Gebru, who argues that she was fired rather than resigned, as Google claims.
• Google says it's investigating Mitchell after the company's systems detected that one of its accounts, presumably Mitchell's, had "exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts."
• The company has suspended the corporate account of Mitchell, who has not been fired. In a tweet, Gebru said she wonders if Mitchell is "going to get an email to her personal email accepting her 'resignation.' I have not seen a company that has this little shame in a while."

This story first appeared in Inside AI. You can read the full issue here.

Inside Washington

• President Biden will use wartime powers to fight the pandemic, compelling private companies to make masks, medical equipment, and other resources required. 
• Senate confirmed Avril Haines as director of national intelligence.
• China has sanctioned 28 members of the Trump administration. These individuals are banned from Chinese sovereign territory, and neither they nor companies associate with them can do business with any Chinese person or company. 

QUICK HITS:

• How are companies deciding on privacy management solutions in 2021? This eGuide breaks it down.*
• TripAction offers a platform to manage bookings and expenses related to business travel, and it raised $155M in Series E from investors including Andreesen Horowitz.
• Google has finalized its agreement with publishers in France, for reusing their content as snippets in its search products.
• Ahead of its investor day, American Eagle said that it expects Q4 sales to decrease due to a reduction in brick and mortar sales.
• Nexo manages $4B in assets and has over 1M users. See why fintech consumers are banking on crypto.*

*This is a sponsored post.