Amazon's Project Moonraker aims to turn Alexa into an AI agent, with GPU costs exceeding $100M

Amazon is reportedly working on a more powerful agentic Alexa assistant - Engadget

The project is codenamed 'Moonraker' and would enable the AI assistant to handle multi-step tasks more effectively. Amazon is reportedly working on an updated version of Alexa that would expand on the capabilities of its existing Alexa+ assistant. Business Insider claims to have seen internal planning documents that detail a project codenamed Moonraker, which is designed to handle more complex interactions that contain multiple simultaneous requests. The main focus of Moonraker seems to be building out Alexa's agentic abilities. In the documents seen by Business Insider, listed examples include asking the assistant to book a ride and text a friend in a single interaction. It's a move that would enable Alexa to better compete with agentic AI models from the likes of Google, Anthropic and OpenAI. The other key takeaway from Amazon's plans is the cost of such an endeavor. They projected GPU costs of more than $100 million in 2026, and the document also suggested either delaying or scaling back Moonraker's ambitions. Business Insider was told by someone familiar with the matter that some senior people within Amazon think the company has spent too much on the AI models that power the current iteration of Alexa. The publication also claims to have seen a separate document from late 2025 that detail Amazon's plans to use "hundreds" of NVIDIA GPUs to power the Moonraker project, as well as an Anthropic Sonnet model for testing advanced reasoning and visual responses. Alexa+ only officially launched nationwide in the US at the beginning of 2026, and in countries like the UK it remains in Early Access. The rollout hasn't been entirely smooth, with a number of users reporting issues with the assistant handling basic requests that they had not encountered with previous versions. In her own early impressions review last year, Engadget's Cherlynn Low was impressed with Alexa+'s improved conversational abilities, but noted that it would often struggle with remembering previous conversations and requests when using apps like Uber. Despite the new Moonraker leaks, Amazon appears to be committed to building out Alexa+'s features. Back in February it introduced three new personality styles that let you customize how the AI assistant interacts with you. A "sassy" option arrived later, which gives Alexa a foul-mouthed makeover. A few months ago, Amazon also added natural language food delivery orders through apps such as GrubHub and Uber Eats.

The AI Voice Assistant Arms Race Is Far From Over

If you were underwhelmed by Amazon's next-gen voice assistant, Alexa+, there may be good news: Amazon is reportedly already working on taking things up a notch -- or at least trying to. According to documents seen by Business Insider, Amazon is in the process of developing an Alexa project codenamed "Moonraker," which aims to imbue Alexa with more agentic capabilities. While Alexa+ can already handle some tasks (ordering food online, for example), Moonraker -- which is the name of a James Bond film from 1979, by the way -- is reportedly aiming to expand those capabilities. One of the intended improvements of Moonraker is the ability to handle more sophisticated multistep commands, like "book me a ride and text my friend," allowing users to cram more into a single query. There's not much detail about the Moonraker project outside of its goal for dialing up the AI agent of it all, but Business Insider notes that it's shaping up to be costly. Planning documents suggest that Moonraker could be the company's "highest cost" initiative, projecting upwards of $100 million in GPU costs in 2026. Even without much detail, the interest in spending even more time and money on Alexa says a lot about how the current crop of voice assistants has been received. While companies like Google and Amazon have billed their new voice assistants as being more sophisticated and intuitive, that sentiment hasn't exactly been echoed by most people using them. I haven't gotten a chance to put Alexa+ through its paces, but I have used Google's next-gen Gemini for Home at length and have been pretty consistently underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, it does improve on some aspects of the smart home experience, like being able to understand natural language and handle multistep commands more adeptly, but the pain points are about the same as they were before. Queries are misunderstood or misheard, information can be inaccurate, and there's overall just a lot of variability between interactions, which doesn't instill trust or compel me to use Gemini for Home more than I used Google Assistant. And sure, making Alexa or Gemini for Home more agentic could add some utility, but if the results are as finicky as they are in the current iteration, would anyone really trust new models or features to take the wheel? Amazon, for its part, seems to think they might, which means its penchant for pouring money into Alexa looks like it may continue forth. And if Apple's Siri AI is as useful as some early test results would suggest, the race for less sh*tty voice assistants could wage for a long, long time.

Amazon's secret 'Moonraker' project makes Alexa an AI agent

Leaked planning documents reveal Moonraker, an unreleased Amazon project to make Alexa chain tasks together like an AI agent. It is also one of the priciest bets in the Alexa+ overhaul, with more than $100m in GPU costs projected for 2026. Amazon has an agentic upgrade for Alexa in the works, codenamed Moonraker. Internal documents show it is also one of the priciest bets in the Alexa+ overhaul. Amazon wants Alexa to act, not just answer. The company has a previously unreported project, codenamed Moonraker, that would let Alexa handle complex, multistep tasks, Business Insider reports, citing internal planning documents. The push drops Alexa into the AI agent race. Alexa+, the assistant's AI-powered version, already books rides and buys tickets through partners such as Uber and Ticketmaster. Moonraker goes further. It aims to complete several linked actions from a single request, like "book me a ride and text my friend". That mirrors the agentic products from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, which can browse the web and run multistep workflows. The whole industry chases the same goal. The price of a smarter Alexa The catch is the cost. One planning document from earlier this year called Moonraker Alexa+'s "highest cost" new initiative. It projected more than $100m in GPU costs for 2026 alone. The same document floated delaying or scaling the project back to ease the pressure. Some Amazon leaders feel the team has overspent on the AI models behind Alexa. A person familiar with the matter said the running costs are a growing concern. The worry runs wider than Amazon. It reflects a broader reckoning over the cost of running advanced AI. The same pressure now weighs on Amazon's record AI build-out. To power Moonraker, Amazon lined up hundreds of Nvidia GPUs. Engineers tested it using an Anthropic Sonnet model for advanced reasoning and visual responses, the documents show. Growing pains Alexa+ has had a bumpy path. Amazon delayed it several times before expanding in the US earlier this year. Beta testers hit hallucinations and odd behaviour. One said Alexa turned off a fish-tank filter and killed their fish. Amazon presses on. In his latest shareholder letter, chief executive Andy Jassy struck an upbeat note. People talk to Alexa+ twice as much as before, he said, and order three times as often. "Alexa is still early in its journey to be the world's best personal assistant," he wrote. Amazon declined to comment. Why it matters Voice assistants have promised to run our errands for a decade and mostly just set timers. An agentic Alexa that shops and acts on your behalf could finally change that. It would also put Amazon's huge base of devices to work. But the $100m question is whether the payoff justifies the bill. Amazon's own documents already ask it.