Among his observations, Jassy asserted that the reinvention of customer experience enhanced by AI will be most broadly adopted when Amazon shoppers feel comfortable with the technology. So, in its retail business, the company takes the position that customers will always care deeply about massive selection, low prices, very fast delivery, ease of use and how they’re treated. Yet with the development of AI, how consumers want to interact with retailers could change substantially over time. Although the temptation may be to add a little AI as part of existing functions, that’s only a start.
Jassy suggested that the trick for retailers will be to go back to the starting line and reimagine experiences from a clean sheet, building with the new technology available, which is what Amazon is doing. It may take time to create experiences better than those it offers now, Jassy added, and even if it takes consumers a while to adopt new experiences, history shows that everything gets reinvented. In the meantime, Amazon has continued to upgrade its Alexa, effectively rewiring its brain to make it more capable, useful and effective with a greater depth of knowledge, improved routing of services and upgraded interfaces.
In taking another perspective on artificial intelligence, Jassy pointed out that ChatGPT, from OpenAI, an Amazon partner, launched in November 2022 and reached 100 million users in two months, four times faster than TikTok and 15 times faster than Instagram, and today, reports have revenue run rates for both OpenAI and Anthropic approaching $30 billion.
Regarding delivery in the retail business, a function that Amazon continually emphasizes, Jassy stated that Amazon achieves higher order completion rates when delivery promises are faster. Three years ago, as he characterized it, two-day delivery was the gold standard, but Amazon pushed that bar to one day and has been working to make it same day.
As part of its efforts to speed up delivery, the company developed a new, more streamlined fulfillment center format. Dubbed Same Day Fulfillment Centers, the facilities have become an important part of Amazon’s infrastructure, with the company building more than 85 SSDs across the U.S. They carry Amazon’s top 90,000 SKUs, and enabled the company to deliver more than 500 million same-day units in 2026 so far. At the same time, Amazon continues to expand Prime Air, which oversees its drone delivery service, and Jassy declared that the company has a design that will scale, with plans to serve communities home to 30 million customers by year’s end. Amazon Prime Air anticipates delivering half a billion packages by the end of this decade while aiming to cut delivery time to 30 minutes or less.
In assessing 2025, Jassy said Amazon had a “strong year” with revenue up 12% year-over-year from $638 billion in 2024 to $717 billion. By segment, North America revenue increased 10% year over year from $387 billion in 2024 to $426 billion in 2025, he observed, while International revenue grew 13% from $143 billion to $162 billion and AWS revenue increased 20%, from $108 billion to $129 billion. Operating income in 2025 gained 17% year over year from $69 billion in 2024 to $80 billion. Year over year, free cash flow decreased from $38 billion in 2024 to $11 billion, driven primarily by $50.7 billion in property and equipment purchases in 2025, net of proceeds from sales and incentives. Overall, the change in free cash flow primarily reflected capex investments in artificial intelligence, Jassy pointed out.
He indicated that inevitable change has favored Amazon and that, despite its forays into brick-and-mortar stores, the main retail business is well-positioned to thrive.
“Our retail business is now approaching $600 billion in topline, yet roughly 80% of global retail sales still happen in physical stores. That will change,” he wrote.
