Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Urges Aggressive Investment in AI, Citing 'Once-in-a-Lifetime' Opportunity

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy urges companies to invest heavily in AI | TechCrunch

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy thinks companies should invest "aggressively" in AI now to reap the full financial rewards in the future. In his annual letter to Amazon shareholders published Thursday, Jassy said "substantial capital" is required to keep up with the pace of AI innovation and customer demand for AI products. He added that Amazon, too, needs to spend this money now if it hopes to see strong returns on its investment years down the line. Jassy's comments come after Amazon announced plans during its fourth-quarter earnings call in February to spend more than $100 billion on capital expenditures in 2025. The "vast majority" of that sum will be put toward AWS AI capabilities, said Jassy at the time. "We continue to believe AI is a once-in-a-lifetime reinvention of everything we know," Jassy wrote in his shareholder letter. "The demand is unlike anything we've seen before, and our customers, shareholders, and business will be well-served by our investing aggressively now." Jassy said the biggest AI expenses are currently data centers and chips, but he added that, over time, this infrastructure will start to cost less. "In AWS, the faster demand grows, the more data centers, chips, and hardware we need to procure (and AI chips are much more expensive than CPU chips)," Jassy wrote. "We spend this capital upfront, even though these assets are useful for many years." Jassy offered Amazon's own Trainium2 chips as an example that prices will go down for AI infrastructure over time. He added that these chips offer 30%-40% better price-performance than the current GPU-powered computing instances generally available today. Trainium2 was released in late 2024. Jassy also said that AI price dynamics will change in the future as the training costs for AI come down and money is instead put toward inference, or actually serving AI models. "We feel strong urgency to make inference less expensive for customers," Jassy wrote. "More price-performant chips will help. But, inference will also get meaningfully more efficient in the next couple of years with improvements in model distillation, prompt caching, computing infrastructure, and model architectures." Amazon is currently building more than 1,000 generative AI applications, Jassy said in the shareholder letter. He added that Amazon's AI revenue is growing at "triple-digit" year-over-year percentages and represents a "multi-billion-dollar annual revenue run rate." TechCrunch has reached out to Amazon for comment.

Amazon CEO sets out AI investment mission in annual shareholder letter

April 10 (Reuters) - Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab chief executive Andy Jassy on Thursday justified the company's billions of dollars in outlays for artificial intelligence development, saying the investment was necessary to remain competitive. "If your mission is to make customers' lives better and easier every day, and you believe every customer experience will be reinvented by AI, you're going to invest deeply and broadly in AI," wrote Jassy in his letter to shareholders, an annual rite of passage for the top boss at the Seattle retailer. He said substantial capital investment is necessary to obtain AI chips and build datacenters. "Our customers, shareholders, and business will be well-served by our investing aggressively now." Like rivals, Amazon is investing heavily in generative artificial intelligence, including releasing a variety of chatbots serving sellers, businesses and consumers. Last month, after multiple delays and billions of dollars of investment, it unveiled an AI-infused revamp of its Alexa voice assistant and has said it will be rolling it out to select users in the coming weeks. Amazon has invested about $8 billion into AI startup Anthropic and has incorporated its Claude software into what it is calling Alexa+. The letter is aimed at shareholders, but is closely read by employees, competitors and analysts. As is tradition, Amazon included the first shareholder letter from 1997 signed by founder and chairman Jeff Bezos. Reporting by Greg Bensinger;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Technology Greg Bensinger Thomson Reuters Greg Bensinger joined Reuters as a technology correspondent in 2022 focusing on the world's largest technology companies. He was previously a member of The New York Times editorial board and a technology beat reporter for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He also worked for Bloomberg News writing about the auto and telecommunications industries. He studied English literature at The University of Virginia and graduate journalism at Columbia University. Greg lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children.

Amazon's Andy Jassy reiterates the need to spend billions on building out AI infrastructure - SiliconANGLE

Amazon's Andy Jassy reiterates the need to spend billions on building out AI infrastructure Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Andy Jassy doubled down on the need for his company to invest heavily in artificial intelligence infrastructure, saying it must spend billions of dollars in capital now to be able to participate in a "once-in-a-lifetime reinvention of everything we know". Jassy's comments came in his annual letter to shareholders, where he argued that spending this money now will ensure it sees strong returns in the future. Amazon is already investing heavily in generative AI, having released a variety of chatbots serving sellers, businesses and consumers. Last month, after multiple delays and billions of dollars of investment, it unveiled an AI-infused revamp of its Alexa voice assistant. Amazon has also invested about $8 billion in the AI startup Anthropic, and has incorporated its Claude AI models into what it is calling Alexa+. During its fourth quarter earnings call in February, Amazon revealed plans to increase its capital expenditure in fiscal 2025 to more than $100 billion, with the "vast majority" of that money to be spent on building out its data center capabilities for AI. Explaining the need for this investment, Jassy reiterated his belief that generative AI is going to "reinvent virtually every customer experience" and enable newer experiences that were previously only fantasized about. "The early AI workloads being deployed focus on productivity and cost avoidance (e.g. customer service, business process orchestration, workflow, translation, etc.)," Jassy wrote. "This is saving companies a lot of money. Increasingly, you'll see AI change the norms in coding, search, shopping, personal assistants, primary care, cancer and drug research, biology, robotics, space, financial services, neighborhood networks -- everything." While AI in some of these areas is making rapid progress, it's still in its infancy in many of the others, Jassy said. But he warned that if companies aren't already planning to leverage AI and its future "agentic capabilities" in the near-term future, they will not be able to keep up with the competition. "If your mission is to make customer's lives better and easier every day, and you believe customer experience will be reinvented by AI, you're going to invest deeply and broadly in AI," Jassy explained. That's why Amazon Web Services Inc., the company's cloud computing business, is working so hard to develop the key primitives, or building blocks for AI, Jassy said. An example of this is AWS's custom AI training chips, known as Amazon Trainium, which he said provide better price-performance on training and inference workloads. Other examples include Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, and the company's Amazon Nova frontier models. "The faster demand grows, the more data centers, chips, and hardware we need to procure,' he wrote. "We spend this capital upfront, even though these assets are useful for many years." Besides the significant investment, Amazon must also strive to reduce the costs of AI for customers too, Jassy said. He explained that the latest generation of Amazon's AI training chips, Trainium2, already provides 30% to 40% better price-performance than existing graphics processing unit-based computing instances. But in future, the most important goal is to reduce the cost of AI inference, which refers to the outputs or predictions of AI models. "We feel a strong urgency to make inference less expensive for customers," Jassy said. Importantly, he believes this can be achieved through a combination of more efficient chips and improvements in areas such as model distillation, model architectures and prompt caching. "It's like what happened with AWS," Jassy continued. "Revolutionizing the cost of compute and storage happily led to lower cost per unit, and more invention, better customer experiences, and more absolute infrastructure spend."

Amazon CEO sets out AI investment mission in annual shareholder letter

Like rivals, Amazon is investing heavily in generative artificial intelligence, including releasing a variety of chatbots serving sellers, businesses and consumers. Last month, after multiple delays and billions of dollars of investment, it unveiled an AI-infused revamp of its Alexa voice assistant and has said it will be rolling it out to select users in the coming weeks.Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy on Thursday justified the company's billions of dollars in outlays for artificial intelligence development, saying the investment was necessary to remain competitive. "If your mission is to make customers' lives better and easier every day, and you believe every customer experience will be reinvented by AI, you're going to invest deeply and broadly in AI," wrote Jassy in his letter to shareholders, an annual rite of passage for the top boss at the Seattle retailer. He said substantial capital investment is necessary to obtain AI chips and build datacenters. "Our customers, shareholders, and business will be well-served by our investing aggressively now." Like rivals, Amazon is investing heavily in generative artificial intelligence, including releasing a variety of chatbots serving sellers, businesses and consumers. Last month, after multiple delays and billions of dollars of investment, it unveiled an AI-infused revamp of its Alexa voice assistant and has said it will be rolling it out to select users in the coming weeks. Amazon has invested about $8 billion into AI startup Anthropic and has incorporated its Claude software into what it is calling Alexa+. The letter is aimed at shareholders, but is closely read by employees, competitors and analysts. As is tradition, Amazon included the first shareholder letter from 1997 signed by founder and chairman Jeff Bezos.

Amazon CEO Justifies Large AI Investments As 'Once-In-A-Lifetime Reinvention Of Everything We Know' - Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Feel unsure about the market's next move? Copy trade alerts from Matt Maley -- a Wall Street veteran who consistently finds profits in volatile markets. Claim your 7-day free trial now. Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN CEO Andy Jassy gave some insight into the company's artificial intelligence strategy in his annual letter to shareholders released Thursday. The Details: Jassy outlined the company's strategic focus on generative AI as a transformative force and emphasized its potential to "reinvent virtually every customer experience." He highlighted the need for substantial capital to secure AI chips and build data centers, calling these investments "proactive" and beneficial for customers, shareholders and long-term growth. Read Next: Inflation Cools, But 'Too Soon To Blow The All Clear,' Economist Says "We continue to believe AI is a once-in-a-lifetime reinvention of everything we know, the demand is unlike anything we've seen before, and our customers, shareholders, and business will be well-served by our investing aggressively now," Jassy wrote to shareholders. The Amazon CEO stressed a "strong urgency to make inference less expensive for customers' pointed to the company's new Trainium2 chips as 30% to 40% less expensive than currently available GPU options. He predicted that more affordable AI training will ultimately lead to more overall AI spending and translate into a profitable business segment much like AWS. "It's like what happened with AWS. Revolutionizing the cost of compute and storage happily led to lower cost per unit, and more invention, better customer experiences, and more absolute infrastructure spend," he wrote. Jassy reiterated the need for large capital investments during the current period of "high demand" in order to remain competitive in the rapidly changing AI landscape. "It won't all happen in a year or two, but it won't take 10 either. It's moving faster than almost anything technology has ever seen," Jassy said. AMZN Stock Price Action: According to Benzinga Pro, Amazon shares are down 5.30% at $180.98 amid a broad market sell-off at the time of publication Thursday. Read Next: Elon Musk Calls Trump Trade Advisor Peter Navarro 'Dumber Than Sack Of Bricks,' Defends Tesla As 'Most American-Made Cars' Photo: Shutterstock AMZNAmazon.com Inc$181.06-5.25%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum76.49Growth94.18Quality79.39Value47.34Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewGot Questions? AskWhich AI chip manufacturers could benefit from Amazon's strategy?How will data center companies respond to rising demand?What impact will Amazon's AI investments have on tech stocks?Could cloud computing firms gain from Amazon's AI push?Which generative AI startups may attract investment interest?How might consumer electronics companies adapt to AI shifts?What role will software development firms play in AI advancements?Which sectors will see growth due to lower AI training costs?How will e-commerce platforms evolve with AI integration?What new opportunities arise for venture capitalists in AI?Powered ByMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Amazon CEO sets out AI investment mission in annual shareholder letter

(Reuters) -Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy on Thursday justified the company's billions of dollars in outlays for artificial intelligence development, saying the investment was necessary to remain competitive. "If your mission is to make customers' lives better and easier every day, and you believe every customer experience will be reinvented by AI, you're going to invest deeply and broadly in AI," Jassy wrote in his letter to shareholders, an annual rite of passage for the top boss at the Seattle retailer. He said substantial capital investment is necessary to obtain AI chips and build datacenters. "Our customers, shareholders, and business will be well-served by our investing aggressively now," he said. Like rivals, Amazon is investing heavily in generative artificial intelligence, including releasing a variety of chatbots serving sellers, businesses and consumers. Last month, after multiple delays and billions of dollars of investment, it unveiled an AI-infused revamp of its Alexa voice assistant and has said it will be rolling it out to select users in the coming weeks. Amazon has invested about $8 billion into AI startup Anthropic and has incorporated its Claude software into what it is calling Alexa+. Jassy's comments on Amazon's AI spending echo what Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said on Wednesday at a Google Cloud event. Pichai reiterated his company's plans to spend some $75 billion this year to build out data center capacity and justified Alphabet's massive jump in capital expenditure, saying "the opportunity with AI is as big as it gets". The Amazon letter is aimed at shareholders but is closely read by employees, competitors and analysts. As is tradition, Amazon included the first shareholder letter from 1997 signed by founder and chairman Jeff Bezos. Though the threat of long-term U.S. import tariffs, particularly those targeting goods from China, has roiled global markets in recent days, Jassy made no mention of the levies. Amazon shares have slid by 13% this year, less than some of its rivals including Alphabet and Apple but sharper than Microsoft's 7% through Wednesday. (Reporting by Greg Bensinger and Deborah Sophia; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Joe Bavier)