Pentagon reportedly favors Amazon for cloud contract, Southwest CEO hasn’t talked to Buffett, Apple poaches Google AI chief

Here’s a look at some of the companies the Yahoo Finance team will be watching for you.

Amazon (AMZN) tops our list. President Trump’s dislike for CEO Jeff Bezos may not matter. The Pentagon says it’s received over a thousand comments, including messages from 46 companies, that Amazon should get the winner-take-all $10B Pentagon cloud contract. So far, Trump hasn’t commented on the matter.

If Warren Buffett wants to take over the friendly skies with Southwest Airlines (LUV), the company’s CEO certainly doesn’t know about it. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly says he hasn’t talked to Buffett since the Berkshire Hathaway CEO said he wouldn’t be opposed to owning an entire airline. Currently, Buffett’s Berkshire owns 8.1% of Southwest. He also holds major stakes in American, Delta and United airlines.

Apple (AAPL) is poaching talent from rival Google (GOOGL) to beef up its artificial intelligence unit. Apple named John Giannandrea its first senior vice president of AI. The move comes after news Monday that Apple posted over 160 Siri related jobs in an effort to take on Amazon’s Alexa.

Viacom (VIA) is putting a counterproposal together for CBS (CBS), according to Reuters. This comes after CBS proposed an all-stock offer below Viacom’s current market valuation of $12.5B. The previous deal required CBS CEO Les Moonves and President Joe Ianniello lead the combined company.