What Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Said In His Annual Shareholder Letter (Image: X/@ajassy)On Thursday, Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy released his annual letter to shareholders. Andy Jassy said that artificial intelligence (AI) technology may be the largest transformation since the internet. Notably, it was Andy Jassy’s third shareholder letter since taking the crucial role at e-commerce from former CEO Jeff Bezos.
The Amazon CEO said that the company’s total revenue grew 12 percent year-over-year (“YoY”) from $514 billion to $575 billion in 2023. Meanwhile, AWS revenue surged 13 percent YoY from $80 billion to $91 billion. Andy Jassy also highlighted that the operating income and free cash flow of the company “dramatically” improved.
The annual shareholder letter also claimed that Amazon customers saved nearly $24 billion across millions of deals and coupons on the e-commerce platform, which is almost 70 percent more than the prior year.
“Generative AI may be the largest technology transformation since the cloud (which itself, is still in the early stages), and perhaps since the Internet,” said Andy Jassy in the letter. The CEO of Amazon also added that he believes generative AI is shaping up to become the company’s next big primitive service. Amazon has been in search of its next “pillar.” According to CNBC, “pillar” is an internal phrase Amazon often uses to describe its most successful businesses. As per the report, retail, Prime subscriptions, and cloud computing units are the first three pillars of Amazon.
“While we’re building a substantial number of GenAI applications ourselves, the vast majority will ultimately be built by other companies. However, what we’re building in AWS is not just a compelling app or foundation model,” added the CEO. He also highlighted that Amazon’s cloud computing service will be a major player in the AI boom. It is worth mentioning that, amid the intense AI competition among tech companies, Amazon has added AI heavyweight Andrew Ng to its board of directors.