Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Thursday published his annual shareholder letter, where he pledged to keep looking for ways to keep costs in check even as the company doubles down on investing in new growth areas like artificial intelligence.
“I think every one of us at Amazon believes that we have a long way to go, in every one of our businesses, before we exhaust how we can make customers’ lives better and easier, and there is considerable upside in each of the businesses in which we’re investing,” Jassy wrote in his third shareholder letter since taking the helm at Amazon from former CEO Jeff Bezos, who stepped down in 2021.
Under Jassy, Amazon has morphed into a leaner version of itself, as slowing sales and a challenging economy pushed the company to eschew the relentless growth of the Bezos years. Beginning at the end of 2022 and continuing through 2023, Amazon initiated the largest layoffs in its history, cutting more than 27,000 jobs. Those cuts have continued this year, with Amazon announcing layoffs in its cloud computing, Prime Video and Twitch livestreaming units, among others.
Even amid a period of retrenchment in some areas, Jassy said he’s focused on finding new areas of growth within the company so that Amazon remains “resilient.” He stressed the importance of building “primitive services,” which he described as “discrete, foundational building blocks” that can spur new projects and businesses.
Jassy used Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing division, as an example. Before he became Amazon’s CEO, Jassy oversaw the creation of AWS, which grew from an internal tool to become the dominant cloud service and one of Amazon’s most profitable businesses.
He said he believes generative artificial intelligence stands to be Amazon’s next “primitive service” that could transform the company. “We’re optimistic that much of this world-changing AI will be built on top of AWS,” Jassy wrote.
Amazon on Thursday added Andrew Ng, a renowned AI pioneer who previously led Google Brain and was a scientist at Baidu, to its board. Ng will replace Judy McGrath, who has sat on the board since 2014.
In the past year, Amazon has made a flurry of AI announcements as the field exploded, causing tech companies to pour money into the space. Last month, Amazon added $2.75 billion to its stake in AI startup Anthropic in its largest venture investment yet. Jassy has also pledged to infuse AI into every one of Amazon’s businesses.
(See source for full letter content)
