Who leads AI at Amazon?

AI at Amazon is led by Peter DeSantis (SVP, Foundational AI Models, Custom Silicon, Quantum Computing); Pieter Abbeel (Leads Frontier Model Research in AGI); Swami Sivasubramanian (VP, Agentic AI, AWS). Ownership of AI on the org chart: CEO Andy Jassy; models and chips under SVP Peter DeSantis; agent tools under AWS.

What AI platform does Amazon use?

Amazon builds its internal AI tools on AWS: Kiro for coding, Quick as the work assistant, Aza for HR and IT questions, MeshClaw for agents that act in workplace apps, and Cedric, a Claude-based chatbot opened to all employees in 2024.

Which AI models does Amazon use?

Amazon runs its own Nova models alongside Anthropic's Claude, which runs Cedric and parts of Alexa+, and OpenAI models, both offered in Kiro; Claude Code and Codex reached all Amazon builders in May 2026 through Bedrock.

How many Amazon employees use AI?

Amazon said 83% of its engineers used Kiro in May 2026, and more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping, the successor to Rufus, in the 12 months to Oct 2026.

How far has AI spread at Amazon?

Amazon has reported one business return it credits to AI, which places it in Piloting: Amazon said in Feb 2026 that Rufus, its AI shopping assistant, helped deliver nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in 2025, and it has published no firm-level figure for AI's financial effect. Amazon has not said how many of its 1,638,000 employees use its AI tools: a spokesperson said in May 2026 that 83% of its engineers use Kiro, and Beth Galetti wrote in Aug 2026 that every employee has access to AI tools, but no single executive owns AI. Amazon falls short of Scaling because it reports no AI-credited return in a second function, such as Kiro in engineering or its forecasting and robotics models in operations, where executives say AI lowers cost to serve without a figure.

Verified Nov 1, 2026

Amazon

Piloting

Retail and cloud
1,638,000 employees
Kiro, Quick, Nova built in-house
1,000+ AI apps
83% of engineers on Kiro
~$220B capex (2026)

Amazon deploys AI on its own AWS infrastructure: engineers code with Kiro, its in-house agent, which Amazon said 83% of them used in May 2026, alongside Claude Code and Codex, while staff use internal assistants such as Quick, Aza and MeshClaw. Andy Jassy counted more than 1,000 AI applications deployed or in progress in Feb 2026, and Amazon credited its Rufus shopping assistant with nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in 2025. No single executive owns AI; Peter DeSantis runs Amazon's models and chips.

aboutamazon.com

Their approach to AI

The platform: Amazon builds its internal AI tools on AWS: Kiro for coding, Quick as the work assistant, Aza for HR and IT questions, MeshClaw for agents that act in workplace apps, and Cedric, a Claude-based chatbot opened to all employees in 2024.
The models: Amazon runs its own Nova models alongside Anthropic's Claude, which runs Cedric and parts of Alexa+, and OpenAI models, both offered in Kiro; Claude Code and Codex reached all Amazon builders in May 2026 through Bedrock.
The reach: Amazon said 83% of its engineers used Kiro in May 2026, and more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping, the successor to Rufus, in the 12 months to Oct 2026.
The catch: Amazon has credited a business return to one AI tool, Rufus, and publishes neither a firm-level AI figure nor a count of employees using AI each week; its push for Kiro drew pushback from engineers who wanted Claude Code.

Snapshot

Employees: 1,638,000; Full- and part-time, Sep 30, 2026 (Q3 2026 results); roughly 350,000 corporate staff (Business Insider, Jan 2026)
Technology budget: $108.5B (2025); Technology and infrastructure expense; cash capex $128.3B in 2025 and about $220B expected in 2026
AI/ML headcount: Not disclosed; More than 2,100 engineering teams in the retail business alone were set AI-native targets for 2026
Who owns AI: No single AI chief; Andy Jassy sets direction; Peter DeSantis runs models, chips and quantum; AWS's Swami Sivasubramanian runs Kiro and Quick; Matt Wood is AWS's Chief AI and Technology Officer
Platform: Built on AWS; Kiro, Quick, Aza, MeshClaw, Cedric, Pippin and AI Teammate, plus Claude Code and Codex served through Bedrock
Models: Nova, Claude, OpenAI; Most Nova models wound down in Jul 2026 for a new frontier model, Business Insider reported
Reach: 83% of engineers use Kiro; Amazon spokesperson, May 2026; Cedric open to all employees since 2024
Use cases: 1,000+ AI applications; Deployed or in progress (Feb 2026); more than 1,000 built or in progress in Jun 2025

Key findings

Amazon credited Rufus, its AI shopping assistant, with nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in 2025 after more than 300 million customers used it, then merged Rufus with Alexa+ into Alexa for Shopping in May 2026, which more than 400 million customers used in the 12 months to Oct 2026.
An Amazon spokesperson said in May 2026 that 83% of Amazon's engineers use Kiro, its in-house agentic coding tool, without defining the measure (about 70% had used Kiro at least once in Jan 2026), and Amazon opened Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex to all builders in May 2026 after about 1,500 employees backed formal Claude Code adoption.
Amazon expects about $220 billion of cash capital expenditure in 2026, mostly for AWS and AI infrastructure, up from $128.3 billion in 2025, and said in Oct 2026 that the figure will rise meaningfully again in 2027.
Andy Jassy told employees in Jun 2025 that generative AI would shrink Amazon's corporate workforce over the next few years; Amazon cut about 14,000 corporate roles in Oct 2025 and 16,000 in Jan 2026, while Jassy said the first round was not really AI-driven, not yet.
Amazon put its AI models, custom chips and quantum computing under SVP Peter DeSantis in Dec 2025 as AGI head Rohit Prasad prepared to leave at year end, and Business Insider reported in Jul 2026 that Amazon was winding down most Nova models to focus on a new frontier model led by Pieter Abbeel.

Where Amazon sits

Stage: Piloting
Amazon has reported one business return it credits to AI, which places it in Piloting: Amazon said in Feb 2026 that Rufus, its AI shopping assistant, helped deliver nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in 2025, and it has published no firm-level figure for AI's financial effect. Amazon has not said how many of its 1,638,000 employees use its AI tools: a spokesperson said in May 2026 that 83% of its engineers use Kiro, and Beth Galetti wrote in Aug 2026 that every employee has access to AI tools, but no single executive owns AI. Amazon falls short of Scaling because it reports no AI-credited return in a second function, such as Kiro in engineering or its forecasting and robotics models in operations, where executives say AI lowers cost to serve without a figure.
How the stages are defined
Ownership: CEO Andy Jassy; models and chips under SVP Peter DeSantis; agent tools under AWS
Platform: Hybrid: Kiro, Quick, Aza and Nova built in-house; Claude Code and Codex bought
Models: Amazon Nova, Anthropic Claude and OpenAI models, chosen per job
Hosting: AWS, in Amazon's own data centers, on Trainium, Inferentia and Nvidia GPUs; Claude and OpenAI models served through Bedrock
Reach: 83% of engineers use Kiro (May 2026)

How they deploy

Reinvent every customer experience

Andy Jassy's Apr 2026 shareholder letter says every customer experience will be reinvented by AI and calls AI a multiplier, not a standalone initiative. Jassy wrote that Amazon is reimagining all of its consumer experiences from a clean sheet, and his Jun 2025 memo to employees said Amazon uses generative AI in virtually every corner of the company, with more than 1,000 generative AI services and applications built or in progress.

Build on its own stack

Amazon builds most of its internal AI tools on AWS and serves them from its own data centers: Cedric, the employee chatbot, runs on Bedrock and Anthropic's Claude (2024), Kiro and Quick are AWS products used inside Amazon, and Claude Code and Codex run through Bedrock, where all inference runs (May 2026). Jassy's Apr 2026 letter says Bedrock runs most of its inference on Amazon's Trainium chips and that Trainium should save Amazon tens of billions of dollars of capex a year at scale.

Model choice by cost

Amazon uses its own Nova models, Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI models, and internal documents reported by Business Insider in Jul 2026 show Alexa+ moving specialized tasks from Claude Sonnet to Amazon's own models and caching answers to cut AWS cloud costs. Andy Jassy said on Jul 30, 2026 that Amazon can succeed without its own frontier model but keeps building one, partly to control the costs of its consumer applications. The AI-native engineering tenets in an internal Stores document, reported in Apr 2026, say the team will not try to keep pace with AI technology and will switch tools when the benefits outweigh the costs.

Smaller teams doing more

Andy Jassy wrote in Jun 2025 that as Amazon rolls out generative AI and agents it will need fewer people in some of today's jobs, expects its corporate workforce to shrink over the next few years, and urged staff to get more done with scrappier teams. Jassy's Apr 2026 letter gives the example of Mantle, a new Bedrock inference engine that six engineers built with Kiro in 76 days, work Amazon says would normally take about 40 people a year.

AI in the fulfillment network

Amazon runs more than one million robots in its fulfillment centers (Apr 2026), and Andy Jassy said in Jun 2025 that AI has improved inventory placement, demand forecasting and robot efficiency, lowering cost to serve. CFO Brian Olsavsky said on Oct 29, 2026 that Amazon doubled its fleet of robotic arms in 2026 and is developing robotics foundation models, and Jassy said Amazon deploys a robot at scale when it gives comparable or better productivity, safety, cost structure and delivery time.

Deployment model: Amazon runs AI through its business units on shared AWS infrastructure rather than through a central AI office. AWS's Agentic AI group under Swami Sivasubramanian builds Kiro and Quick, which Amazon's own staff use; Peter DeSantis's organization builds the Nova models and the Trainium chips; Worldwide Amazon Stores under Doug Herrington runs Rufus and Alexa for Shopping and an AI-native engineering program across its teams; Worldwide Operations and Amazon Robotics run the forecasting, mapping and robot-coordination models; and Beth Galetti, who leads People Experience and Technology, has promoted Aza, an internal assistant for HR and IT questions. Internal developer tools sit with Amazon Software Builder Experience, whose vice president, Jim Haughwout, opened Claude Code to all builders in May 2026.
Model providers: Amazon builds its own Nova models (launched in 2024, with Nova 2 in Dec 2025), and Business Insider reported in Jul 2026 that Amazon is winding down most of them, keeping Nova 2 Lite, Nova 2 Sonic, Nova Forge and Nova Act, while Pieter Abbeel's Frontier Model Research team builds a new flagship model. Anthropic's Claude runs Cedric, and Amazon says Alexa+ runs on models from Amazon Nova and Anthropic. Kiro offered Claude, OpenAI GPT and open-weight models such as GLM-5 and MiniMax in Oct 2026, with an Auto mode that picks among them. Claude Code became available to all Amazon builders on May 4, 2026, with OpenAI's Codex following on May 12. Under a Feb 2026 partnership, OpenAI and Amazon will build customized models that Amazon teams can use in customer-facing applications. Rufus runs on an Amazon large language model trained on its product catalog and web information.
Data and infrastructure: Amazon's internal AI runs on AWS, in Amazon's own data centers: Rufus was served on Prime Day 2024 from more than 80,000 Inferentia and Trainium chips across three AWS Regions, Alexa+ planning documents show Nvidia GPUs for its agent project, and Claude Code and Codex run through Bedrock so that usage stays inside Amazon's cloud. Internal documents reported by Business Insider in Aug 2026 show Amazon joining data centers on its Indiana campus into an AGI SuperCluster, including a request to deploy more than 6,000 Trainium servers, to train its next frontier model. Andy Jassy said in Feb 2026 that Amazon's own businesses use a very small fraction of AWS's AI capacity. Amazon's 2024 internal policy barred staff from putting confidential data into third-party generative AI tools and required director and legal approval to use third-party models for work.

Platforms and internal tools

Kiro2025
Kiro is AWS's spec-driven agentic coding environment, which Amazon also sells; in Oct 2026 it offered Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's GPT and open-weight models, with an Auto mode that picks one. A Nov 2025 memo told Amazon engineers to standardize on Kiro, and Andy Jassy's Apr 2026 letter credits a six-engineer team using Kiro with rebuilding Bedrock's inference engine in 76 days.
Users
83% of Amazon engineers, by a measure Amazon did not define (spokesperson, May 2026); about 70% used it at least once in Jan 2026
Models
Anthropic Claude, OpenAI GPT and open-weight models (Oct 2026)
Source
Claude Code and Codex on BedrockMay 2026
Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex became standard tools for all Amazon builders in May 2026, without separate approval, running through Bedrock so usage stays in Amazon's cloud. Before then, Claude Code needed formal approval for production code.
Users
All Amazon builders
Models
Anthropic Claude, OpenAI Codex
Source
Amazon QuickOct 2025
Quick is the AI assistant for work that Beth Galetti says Amazon teams use to query data, run research that used to take weeks and build automated workflows; AWS also sells it, and its desktop app, previewed in Apr 2026, became generally available in Sep 2026.
Source
MeshClaw2026
MeshClaw is an internal Amazon tool that lets employees build AI agents that work in workplace applications such as Slack, triage email and can start code deployments. The Financial Times reported in May 2026 that Amazon was rolling it out, and Amazon said it helps thousands of employees automate repetitive tasks each day.
Users
Thousands of employees each day (May 2026)
Source
Aza
Aza is Amazon's internal AI workplace assistant, which answers employee questions about benefits, workplace accommodations, compensation and IT, and can book meeting rooms, apply for leave and search open roles (Aug 2026).
Source
Cedric2024
Cedric is a general-purpose internal chatbot that Amazon opened to all employees in 2024 for questions, document summaries and brainstorming, built on Bedrock and Anthropic's Claude; its output may not be used outside Amazon.
Users
Open to all employees (Oct 2024)
Models
Anthropic Claude
Source
Pippin and AI Teammate
Pippin turns ideas into technical designs and documents and is used for writing and reviewing documents; AI Teammate is a Slack-integrated agent that automates tasks from chats, documents and tickets. Both are homegrown Amazon tools, and parts of AWS have adopted Pippin beyond the retail business (Feb 2026).
Users
AI Teammate: more than 700 active teams (Feb 2026)
Source
Rufus and Alexa for ShoppingFeb 2024
Rufus, Amazon's generative AI shopping assistant, launched in beta in Feb 2024 and became agentic in 2025, with price tracking, auto-buy and Buy for Me. Amazon merged Rufus with Alexa+ into Alexa for Shopping on May 13, 2026, and added more than 100 account and shopping actions in Oct 2026.
Users
300M+ customers in 2025 (Rufus); 400M+ in the 12 months to Oct 2026 (Alexa for Shopping)
Models
Amazon's own shopping language model (2024)
Source
DeepFleetJul 2025
DeepFleet is a generative AI foundation model that coordinates the movement of Amazon's robots across its fulfillment network, built on Amazon's inventory-movement data with AWS tools; Amazon said at launch that it would improve robot fleet travel time by 10%.
Source
Supply chain forecasting model and WellspringJun 2025
Amazon's foundation forecasting model predicts demand for hundreds of millions of products a day using weather and holiday data, and Wellspring is a generative AI mapping system that pinpoints building entrances, parking and mailrooms for delivery drivers.
Source
Amazon Nova2024
Nova is Amazon's own family of foundation models, which Peter DeSantis said in Jan 2026 is meant to be shaped by each business, from retail to Alexa, ads and fulfillment. Business Insider reported in Jul 2026 that most Nova models had moved to maintenance only.
Source

Vendors and partners

Anthropic
Model provider for Cedric, Kiro, Alexa+ and Claude Code; Amazon is a major investor · Amazon invested $8 billion in Anthropic before Apr 2026, then $5 billion more on Apr 20, 2026 with up to $20 billion to follow, as Anthropic committed more than $100 billion to AWS over ten years.
OpenAIFeb 2026
Codex for Amazon builders; customized models for Amazon's customer-facing applications · Amazon agreed on Feb 27, 2026 to invest $50 billion in OpenAI, $15 billion at first, and the two companies will build customized models that Amazon teams can use in products serving customers.
Nvidia
GPUs for Alexa+ and inference software for Rufus · Alexa+ planning documents reported by Business Insider in Jul 2026 show Nvidia GPUs for its agent project, and Rufus used Nvidia's Triton Inference Server on AWS chips (Oct 2024).

Leadership

AI, data and platform leaders

Peter DeSantis

SVP, Foundational AI Models, Custom Silicon, Quantum Computing

Peter DeSantis joined Amazon in 1998, led the launch of EC2 in 2006 and the 2015 acquisition of Annapurna Labs, and later ran AWS Infrastructure and Utility Computing. Since Dec 2025 DeSantis has led a new organization reporting to Andy Jassy that combines the AGI team and Nova models, the Trainium and Graviton chips, and quantum computing.

Pieter Abbeel

Leads Frontier Model Research in AGI

Pieter Abbeel, a co-founder of the robotics AI company Covariant, has led the team that builds Amazon's base model since Dec 2025 and also works with the Robotics team. Business Insider reported in Jul 2026 that his Frontier Model Research group has become the AGI organization's top priority.

Swami Sivasubramanian

VP, Agentic AI, AWS

Swami Sivasubramanian, an S-team member, runs the Agentic AI team at AWS that builds Kiro, Quick and AgentCore. Sivasubramanian wrote in Oct 2026 that Kiro's user base doubled and Quick's monthly AI users grew fourfold from the first to the second quarter of 2026.

Colleen Aubrey

SVP, AWS Applied AI Solutions

Colleen Aubrey sits on Amazon's S-team, its senior leadership group, as SVP of AWS Applied AI Solutions, according to the S-team list Amazon updated in Aug 2026.

Matt Wood

Chief AI and Technology Officer, AWS

Matt Wood helped lead AI and machine learning at AWS for more than 14 years before leaving in 2024, and returned in May 2026 in a newly created role as AWS's Chief AI and Technology Officer, reporting to AWS's chief marketing officer, GeekWire reported. Wood told AWS employees on Sep 17, 2026 that AWS aims to make building AI systems as easy, cheap and fast as building a website.

Dave Treadwell

SVP, AWS Compute and ML Services; formerly SVP, eCommerce Foundation

Dave Treadwell ran Amazon's eCommerce Foundation, the technology platform behind the retail business, for nearly a decade, co-signed the Nov 2025 memo that told engineers to standardize on Kiro, led the response to retail outages in Mar 2026, and told staff in May 2026 not to use AI for its own sake. Treadwell moved to AWS on Aug 1, 2026 to lead Compute and ML Services.

Jim Haughwout

VP, Amazon Software Builder Experience

Jim Haughwout told Amazon staff on May 4, 2026 that Claude Code was available company-wide and that Codex would follow, both running on Bedrock.

Rajiv Mehta

VP, Conversational Shopping

Rajiv Mehta announced Rufus in Feb 2024 and Alexa for Shopping in May 2026, and leads Amazon's conversational shopping assistant.

Tye Brady

Chief Technologist, Amazon Robotics

Tye Brady speaks for Amazon Robotics on its AI systems, including the Project Eluna operations agent and the Blue Jay robot unveiled in Oct 2025; Amazon stopped using Blue Jay in operations in early 2026.

Executives

Jeff Bezos

Founder and Executive Chair

Jeff Bezos was Amazon's chief executive from May 1996 to July 2021 and has been Executive Chair since. Amazon's 2026 proxy statement says Bezos co-founded Project Prometheus, an AI company, in Feb 2025 and has been its co-CEO since Nov 2025.

Andy Jassy

President and Chief Executive Officer

Andy Jassy joined Amazon in May 1997, led AWS as its chief executive, and became Amazon's CEO in 2021. Jassy sets Amazon's AI direction in his shareholder letters and his Jun 2025 memo to employees, which said AI would reduce Amazon's corporate workforce over the next few years.

Brian Olsavsky

SVP and Chief Financial Officer

Brian Olsavsky gives Amazon's capital spending outlook on earnings calls, and said on Oct 29, 2026 that robotics and AI are delivering measurable productivity and safety gains in the fulfillment network.

Doug Herrington

CEO, Worldwide Amazon Stores

Doug Herrington runs Worldwide Amazon Stores, which owns Rufus and Alexa for Shopping and the retail engineering teams' AI-native program, and appointed Udit Madan to lead Worldwide Operations in Jan 2024.

Matt Garman

CEO, Amazon Web Services

Matt Garman joined AWS as an intern in 2005, was its first product manager, and became AWS's third chief executive in 2024. Garman's AWS builds and runs Kiro, Quick and Bedrock, the tools and infrastructure Amazon's own teams use.

Beth Galetti

SVP, People Experience and Technology

Beth Galetti began her career as a software developer and transportation CIO and joined Amazon's HR organization in 2013. Galetti announced the 14,000 and 16,000 corporate role cuts in Oct 2025 and Jan 2026, and wrote in Aug 2026 that she has written more than 100,000 lines of code with AI.

Udit Madan

SVP, Worldwide Operations

Udit Madan has led Worldwide Operations since Jan 2024 after more than 15 years at Amazon, most recently running its global delivery services. Madan's network uses the DeepFleet, forecasting and Wellspring models.

Panos Panay

SVP, Devices and Services

Panos Panay joined Amazon from Microsoft in 2023 to lead Devices and Services, which builds Alexa+, Amazon's generative AI assistant running on Amazon Nova and Anthropic models. Panay sits on the S-team; in Oct 2026 Amazon named Aidan Marcuss, its vice president of Fire TV, to lead Alexa and Echo.

Board

Andrew Ng

Director; Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee

Andrew Ng, founding lead of Google Brain and managing general partner of AI Fund, joined Amazon's board in Apr 2024 and sits on the committee that oversees responsible AI development and AI governance.

AI org map

No central AI office; models and chips in one organization, agent tools in AWS, delivery inside each business

Amazon has no company-wide chief AI officer; AWS gave Matt Wood the title Chief AI and Technology Officer in 2026. Andy Jassy created a new organization under SVP Peter DeSantis in Dec 2025 that combines the AGI team and Nova models, custom silicon and quantum computing, and reports to Jassy. AWS, under Matt Garman, builds the agent tools Amazon's own staff use through Swami Sivasubramanian's Agentic AI group, and each business, from Worldwide Amazon Stores to Worldwide Operations, runs its own AI applications.

Amazon has not published a count of its AI and machine learning staff. Amazon's AI work sits in several places: Peter DeSantis's organization of model builders and chip designers, AWS's Agentic AI group under Swami Sivasubramanian, Amazon Robotics, and engineering teams in each business, where more than 2,100 retail engineering teams were asked to triple code release velocity with AI-native practices in 2026, according to an internal document reported by Business Insider. Amazon had 1,638,000 employees at Sep 30, 2026, and Business Insider put its corporate workforce at roughly 350,000 in Jan 2026.

Reporting lines

President and CEO
Andy Jassy
- Foundational AI Models, Custom Silicon, Quantum Computing
  Peter DeSantis, SVP
  Created Dec 2025; includes the AGI team, Nova, Annapurna Labs chips and quantum
  - Frontier Model Research
    Pieter Abbeel
    Builds Amazon's base model; AGI Lab was closed in Jul 2026, Business Insider reported
- Amazon Web Services
  Matt Garman, CEO
  Line to the CEO inferred from Garman's S-team seat
  - Agentic AI
    Swami Sivasubramanian, VP
    Kiro, Quick and AgentCore
  - AWS Compute and ML Services
    Dave Treadwell, SVP
    Since Aug 1, 2026
- Worldwide Amazon Stores
  Doug Herrington, CEO
  Line to the CEO inferred from Herrington's S-team seat
  - Conversational Shopping
    Rajiv Mehta, VP
    Rufus and Alexa for Shopping; reporting line inferred, not published
  - Worldwide Operations
    Udit Madan, SVP
    Doug Herrington announced Madan's appointment in Jan 2024
    - Amazon Robotics
      Tye Brady, Chief Technologist; Scott Dresser, VP
      Reporting line inferred, not published
- Devices and Services
  Panos Panay, SVP
  Alexa+ and Echo; Aidan Marcuss named to lead Alexa and Echo in Oct 2026; line to the CEO inferred from Panay's S-team seat
- People Experience and Technology
  Beth Galetti, SVP
  HR, including free AI training for every employee; line to the CEO inferred from Galetti's S-team seat
Amazon Software Builder Experience
Jim Haughwout, VP
Internal developer tools, including the Claude Code and Codex rollout; reporting line not published

Amazon publishes its S-team membership but not a full reporting chart. The S-team page, last updated Aug 1, 2026 and checked Nov 1, 2026, includes Peter DeSantis, Matt Garman, Doug Herrington, Udit Madan, Beth Galetti, Panos Panay, Colleen Aubrey, Dave Treadwell and Swami Sivasubramanian among its members. Matt Wood reports to AWS's chief marketing officer, GeekWire reported in May 2026. Amazon has not said who leads eCommerce Foundation after Dave Treadwell's move to AWS in Aug 2026 or where Amazon Software Builder Experience reports.

Where the AI workforce sits

Retail engineering teams adopting AI-native practices
Business Insider, Apr 2026: about 60% of retail engineering teams had adopted AI-native practices by Feb 2026, against a goal of 80%.
2,100+ teams
Foundation models, AGI and Frontier Model Research
Under Peter DeSantis since Dec 2025; Business Insider reported layoffs in the organization and the closure of AGI Lab in Jul 2026.
Not disclosed
Agentic AI products at AWS
Swami Sivasubramanian's group builds Kiro and Quick for customers and for Amazon's own staff.
Not disclosed
Amazon Robotics and operations AI
Amazon formed a new agentic AI team inside Amazon Robotics in Jun 2025.
Not disclosed

Named people

Executive sponsors

Andy Jassy
President and CEO
Brian Olsavsky
SVP and CFO
Beth Galetti
SVP, People Experience and Technology · Described Aza, Quick and Kiro to staff in Aug 2026

Models and chips

Peter DeSantis
SVP, Foundational AI Models, Custom Silicon, Quantum Computing
Pieter Abbeel
Leads Frontier Model Research in AGI

Agent tools and infrastructure (AWS)

Matt Garman
CEO, Amazon Web Services
Swami Sivasubramanian
VP, Agentic AI · Kiro, Quick and AgentCore
Colleen Aubrey
SVP, AWS Applied AI Solutions · S-team member
Matt Wood
Chief AI and Technology Officer, AWS · Returned to AWS in May 2026
Dave Treadwell
SVP, AWS Compute and ML Services (since Aug 2026)

Stores and builder tools

More than 2,100 retail engineering teams (2026)

Doug Herrington
CEO, Worldwide Amazon Stores
Rajiv Mehta
VP, Conversational Shopping
Jim Haughwout
VP, Amazon Software Builder Experience
Terk Terkowitz
VP and Distinguished Engineer, Worldwide Amazon Stores · Published the revised software engineer role guideline on Oct 27, 2026

Operations and robotics

More than one million robots in fulfillment centers (2026)

Udit Madan
SVP, Worldwide Operations
Tye Brady
Chief Technologist, Amazon Robotics
Scott Dresser
VP, Amazon Robotics · Announced DeepFleet in Jul 2025; presented a Proteus robot that takes natural-language commands in Jun 2026

Devices and Alexa+

Panos Panay
SVP, Devices and Services · S-team member; Alexa+ and Echo devices
Daniel Rausch
VP, Alexa and Echo · Leaving the role in Nov 2026 for another Devices and Services role in 2027, Reuters reported
Aidan Marcuss
VP, Fire TV; named to lead Alexa and Echo (Oct 2026)

Use cases

Amazon had more than 1,000 AI applications deployed or being built in Feb 2026, Andy Jassy said, from Rufus and Alexa+ to fulfillment forecasting, the customer service chatbot and advertising tools. Amazon has published a current business return for one of them: Rufus, credited with nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in 2025. Amazon reports no firm-level AI return; its executives say robotics and AI lower cost to serve without putting a number on AI's share.

Use case	Area	Status	ROI
Rufus and Alexa for Shopping Amazon's shopping assistant researches and compares products, tracks prices, auto-buys at a set price and buys from other stores; Rufus became Alexa for Shopping in May 2026 and was used by more than 400 million customers in the 12 months to Oct 2026.	Stores	In production	Nearly $12B in incremental annualized sales in 2025, credited to Rufus (Feb 2026)Source
Java upgrades with Amazon Q Developer Amazon used its Amazon Q Developer agent in 2024 to upgrade internal applications to Java 17, cutting a typical upgrade from about 50 developer-days to a few hours. Andy Jassy estimated in Aug 2024 that the work saved the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years and that the upgrades, by improving security and cutting infrastructure costs, brought about $260 million a year in efficiency gains.	Software engineering	In production
Agentic coding with Kiro, Claude Code and Codex Amazon engineers build with Kiro, its own agentic coding tool, and since May 2026 with Claude Code and Codex; a six-engineer team rebuilt Bedrock's inference engine with Kiro in 76 days.	Software engineering	In production
AI-native engineering in Stores Amazon's retail business asked more than 2,100 engineering teams to triple code release velocity with AI-native practices in 2026, and at least 25 teams to raise output tenfold, tracked by the S-team.	Software engineering	In production
Quick work assistant Amazon teams use Quick to ask questions of company data, run research and build automated workflows across email, documents and business applications.	Corporate functions	In production
Aza employee assistant Aza answers Amazon employees' questions on benefits, accommodations, compensation and IT, and books rooms, files leave requests and searches open roles.	People Experience and Technology	In production
Compliance transaction agents Amazon's Compliance team runs AI agents that handle 2 billion transactions a day with 96% accuracy, Amazon said in May 2026.	Compliance	In production
Customer service chatbot Amazon rebuilt its customer service chatbot with generative AI, Andy Jassy said in Jun 2025, and Alexa for Shopping took on billing and account questions in Oct 2026.	Customer service	In production
AI-generated product detail pages Amazon assembles product detail pages with generative AI, and Business Insider reported in Jul 2025 that a project called Starfish uses language models to fill gaps and fix errors in catalog listings.	Stores	In production
Seller Assistant Seller Assistant, built on Bedrock, became an agentic assistant in Sep 2025 that monitors account health, manages inventory and creates ads with a seller's permission; more than 90% of sellers have access.	Selling partners	In production
Ads Agent and Creative Agent Amazon Ads offers AI agents that plan, create and optimize campaigns for advertisers, including Full-Funnel Campaigns launched for all U.S. advertisers in Q3 2026.	Advertising	In production
DeepFleet robot coordination DeepFleet, a generative AI foundation model, coordinates Amazon's robot fleet, which spanned more than 300 facilities in Jul 2025, when Amazon said DeepFleet would improve robot travel time by 10%.	Operations	In production
Demand forecasting foundation model Amazon's forecasting foundation model predicts demand for hundreds of millions of products a day, adding weather and holiday data, and runs in its U.S., Canada, Mexico and Brazil networks; Amazon says it improved regional forecasts for millions of popular items by 20%.	Supply chain	In production
Wellspring delivery mapping Wellspring uses generative AI on satellite imagery, delivery photos and past deliveries to map building entrances, parking and mailrooms; it mapped 2.8 million apartment addresses in testing from Oct 2024.	Delivery	In production
Robotic arms and physical AI Amazon doubled its fleet of robotic arms such as Sparrow and Cardinal in 2026 and is developing robotics foundation models that make the robots faster to program, CFO Brian Olsavsky said in Oct 2026.	Operations	In production
Project Eluna operations agent Project Eluna is an agentic AI system that recommends actions to fulfillment center operators, such as where to move staff to avoid a sortation bottleneck; Amazon planned its first pilot in a Tennessee fulfillment center for the 2025 holiday season.	Operations	Pilot
Alexa+ Alexa+ is Amazon's generative AI assistant, opened to all U.S. customers in early 2026 and free with Prime; Andy Jassy wrote in Apr 2026 that customers talk to Alexa twice as much as before.	Devices	In production
Health AI Health AI, a personal health agent built on Bedrock models that opened to all One Medical members in Jan 2026 and came to the Amazon website and app in Mar 2026, answers health questions, books appointments and manages prescription renewals, handing off to One Medical clinicians when needed.	Health	In production

Adoption

Amazon has used machine learning for more than 25 years in recommendations and fulfillment, and generative AI spread through Amazon in layers: restrictions on third-party chatbots in 2023 and 2024, Cedric for every employee in 2024, coding agents from 2024, and Kiro as the preferred coding tool from fall 2025. About 70% of Amazon's software engineers used Kiro at least once in Jan 2026, and a spokesperson said 83% used it in May 2026, when Claude Code and Codex opened to all builders; Amazon had set a target for more than 80% of developers to use AI each week, the Financial Times reported in May 2026. In the retail business about 60% of engineering teams had adopted AI-native practices by Feb 2026 against a goal of 80%, and more than 1,500 people in Beth Galetti's HR organization were building apps with AI within weeks of an internal contest she described in Aug 2026. Amazon has not published a weekly AI usage figure for its whole workforce.

By the numbers

Engineers using Kiro: 83%; Amazon spokesperson to Business Insider, May 2026, measure not defined; about 70% had used it at least once in Jan 2026

AI applications deployed or in progress: 1,000+; Andy Jassy on the Q4 2025 earnings call, Feb 5, 2026

Incremental annualized sales from Rufus: ~$12B; 2025, reported with Q4 2025 results on Feb 5, 2026

Alexa for Shopping customers: 400M+; 12 months to Q3 2026, with interactions up 570% (Oct 29, 2026)

2026 cash capital expenditure: ~$220B; Mostly AWS and AI infrastructure; $128.3B in 2025 (Oct 2026 guidance)

Technology and infrastructure expense: $108.5B; 2025, up 23% from $88.5B (2025 Form 10-K)

Rollout, first pilot to today

Feb 2024
Amazon told employees not to put confidential data into third-party generative AI tools and required director and legal approval to use third-party models for work.
Business Insider
Feb 2024
Amazon launched Rufus, its generative AI shopping assistant, in beta to a subset of U.S. customers.
Amazon
Aug 2024
Andy Jassy said Amazon Q Developer had upgraded internal applications to Java 17, saving the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years.
Business Insider
Oct 2024
Amazon opened Cedric, a Claude-based internal chatbot built on Bedrock, to all employees after a pilot.
Business Insider
Apr 2025
Andy Jassy's shareholder letter said more than 1,000 generative AI applications were being built across Amazon.
Letter to shareholders
Jun 2025
Andy Jassy told employees Amazon uses generative AI in virtually every corner of the company and expects it to reduce the corporate workforce over the next few years.
Amazon
Jul 2025
Amazon deployed its millionth robot and launched DeepFleet, a generative AI model that coordinates the robot fleet.
Amazon
Oct 2025
Amazon cut about 14,000 corporate roles, and Andy Jassy said the cuts were driven by culture and layers rather than by AI, not yet.
Business Insider
Nov 2025
A memo signed by Peter DeSantis and Dave Treadwell told Amazon engineers to standardize on Kiro and stop adopting new outside AI coding tools, Reuters reported.
Reuters
Feb 2026
Amazon credited Rufus with nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in 2025, and Andy Jassy counted more than 1,000 AI applications deployed or in progress.
Q4 2025 results
May 2026
Amazon made Claude Code and Codex standard for all builders, said 83% of engineers used Kiro, and merged Rufus and Alexa+ into Alexa for Shopping.
Business Insider
Oct 2026
Amazon revised its software engineer role guideline around outcomes from AI-assisted work and reported more than 400 million Alexa for Shopping customers over 12 months.
Amazon

Economics & controls

Spend and ROI

Technology budget

Amazon's technology and infrastructure expense was $108.5 billion in 2025, up 23% from $88.5 billion, and $97.5 billion in the first nine months of 2026, according to its filings. Amazon's cash capital expenditure was $128.3 billion in 2025 and $172.2 billion in the first nine months of 2026; Amazon guided to about $200 billion for 2026 in Feb 2026, raised that to about $220 billion on Jul 30, 2026, still expected it in Oct 2026, and expects to spend meaningfully more in 2027, mostly for AWS and AI infrastructure. Amazon's free cash flow was an outflow of $42.4 billion for the 12 months to Sep 30, 2026, after a $94.8 billion rise in equipment purchases that Amazon said primarily reflects investment in AI. Andy Jassy said in Feb 2026 that Amazon's own businesses use a very small fraction of AWS's AI capacity.

What AI itself costs

Amazon does not disclose what it spends on AI for its own operations. Internal forecasts reported by Business Insider in Jul 2026 put AWS cloud costs for Alexa+ at about $1.7 billion in 2026, nearly triple the year before, and an Alexa agent project at more than $100 million in GPU costs in 2026; Amazon declined to comment. Amazon said in Oct 2024 that serving Rufus on its own Inferentia and Trainium chips cost 4.5 times less than other options it evaluated, and an Amazon spokesperson said in May 2026 that the company tracks token usage to measure costs.

Reported ROI

Amazon credited Rufus with nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in 2025 (Feb 2026), after Andy Jassy said in Oct 2025 it was on track for more than $10 billion. Amazon reports no firm-level AI return: CFO Brian Olsavsky said on Oct 29, 2026 that robotics and AI deliver measurable productivity and safety gains, and Jassy said robots have a very significant effect on Amazon's cost structure, without figures for either.

Productivity markers

Andy Jassy's Apr 2026 letter says six engineers using Kiro rebuilt Bedrock's inference engine in 76 days, work that would normally take about 40 people a year; on the Apr 2026 earnings call Jassy described an engine rebuild, without naming the service, as five people in 65 days against 40 or 50 people over about a year. Jassy estimated in Aug 2024 that AI-led Java upgrades saved the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years, a one-off migration figure Amazon has not updated. Amazon said DeepFleet would improve robot travel time by 10% (Jul 2025) and its forecasting model improved regional forecasts by 20% (Jun 2025). U.S. customers using Alexa for Shopping spend 50% more per order than those who do not (Oct 2026), a comparison Amazon does not present as a return.

Headcount

Amazon had about 1,576,000 employees at Dec 31, 2025 and 1,638,000 at Sep 30, 2026, and recorded about $2.7 billion of severance costs in 2025 for planned role eliminations. Amazon cut about 14,000 corporate roles in Oct 2025 and 16,000 in Jan 2026, and fewer than 1,000 more, mostly in Stores, in Oct 2026, without tying the latest cuts to AI. Andy Jassy said in Oct 2025 that the cuts were not really AI-driven, not yet, and told CNBC in Feb 2026 that many jobs will not need as many people as before; a late-2024 internal document reported by Business Insider called warehouse robots critical to flattening Amazon's hiring curve over ten years.

Governance and risk

Board oversight

Amazon's Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee oversees risks related to responsible AI development and AI governance, according to the 2026 proxy statement. Andrew Ng, managing general partner of AI Fund, has sat on that committee since joining Amazon's board in Apr 2024.

Responsible AI program

Amazon's 2026 proxy statement says its responsible AI commitment has eight core priorities, including privacy and security, safety, fairness, transparency and governance. Amazon reports more than 70 internal and external responsible AI tools and mechanisms and tens of thousands of responsible AI training hours for employees, and takes part in the Frontier Model Forum and the Partnership on AI.

Approved tools and the data boundary

Amazon's 2024 policy barred employees from putting confidential data into third-party generative AI tools and required director and legal approval for third-party models, and Cedric's output may not be used outside Amazon. Amazon applied stricter rules to tools for production code, steering engineers to Kiro until May 2026, when it standardized Claude Code and Codex on Bedrock so inference stays in Amazon's own cloud.

Code safety after outages

Dave Treadwell told staff in Mar 2026 of a trend of retail incidents since the third quarter of 2025, and Amazon introduced a 90-day safety guideline for about 335 Tier-1 systems requiring two-person review and documented approval of code changes. Amazon said only one of the incidents involved AI-assisted tooling, where an engineer followed inaccurate advice an AI tool drew from an outdated internal wiki, and none involved AI-written code; an internal review reported by Business Insider named Amazon's Q tool as one of the primary contributors to a Mar 2 incident.

Measuring AI use

Amazon's revised software engineer role guideline (Oct 27, 2026) says input metrics such as token usage and AI tool adoption are deeply flawed if used as targets, though they correlate well with output, and asks leaders to study teams at the 10th and 90th percentiles of AI adoption. Amazon shut down KiroRank, an employee-built token leaderboard, in May 2026, and Dave Treadwell told staff not to use AI just for the sake of using it.

AI tool sprawl

An internal Amazon document reported by Business Insider in Apr 2026 said AI is making duplicated internal tools worse and that AI-derived copies of data can persist after the source is deleted or restricted, citing a system called Spec Studio. An Amazon spokesperson said the document reflects one team's view.

AI in promotions

Amazon's Ring, Blink, Key and Sidewalk organization began requiring promotion applicants to explain how they use AI in Jul 2025, and managers there to show how AI helped them do more with less; a Ring spokesperson said the rule applies only to that organization.

Recent signals

Oct 29, 2026
Amazon reported that more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in 12 months, that it doubled its fleet of robotic arms in 2026, and that it expects about $220 billion of capital expenditure in 2026.
Q3 2026 earnings call transcript
Oct 27, 2026
Amazon published a revised software engineer role guideline that measures engineers by outcomes and treats token usage and AI tool adoption as flawed targets.
Amazon
Oct 9, 2026
Amazon named Aidan Marcuss, its vice president of Fire TV, to lead Alexa and Echo, replacing Daniel Rausch, a day after unveiling its first tablets built around Alexa+.
Reuters
Oct 5, 2026
Amazon hired Pedram Rezaei, Microsoft's former Copilot CTO, as a distinguished engineer to work on Quick and Kiro; Swami Sivasubramanian wrote that Kiro's users doubled and Quick's monthly AI users grew fourfold from Q1 to Q2 2026.
Business Insider
Aug 25, 2026
Beth Galetti described Amazon's internal AI tools, Quick, Kiro and the Aza workplace assistant, and said AI training is free for every Amazon employee.
Amazon
Aug 6, 2026
Business Insider reported that Amazon is joining data centers on its Indiana campus into an AGI SuperCluster of Trainium servers to train its next frontier model before re:Invent.
Business Insider
Jul 28, 2026
Business Insider reported that Amazon is winding down most Nova models, closed AGI Lab and cut staff in its AGI organization to focus on a new frontier model under Pieter Abbeel.
Business Insider
Jul 23, 2026
Business Insider reported internal forecasts putting Alexa+ AWS cloud costs at about $1.7 billion in 2026, and plans to route more Alexa+ requests to Amazon's own models instead of Claude.
Business Insider
Jul 15, 2026
Amazon moved Dave Treadwell, head of the eCommerce Foundation technology platform, to lead AWS Compute and ML Services from Aug 1, 2026.
Amazon
May 29, 2026
Amazon shut down KiroRank, an employee-made AI token leaderboard, and Dave Treadwell told staff not to use AI just for the sake of using it.
Business Insider
May 13, 2026
Amazon merged Rufus and Alexa+ into Alexa for Shopping, an agentic shopping assistant on the Amazon app and website.
Amazon
May 12, 2026
The Financial Times reported that Amazon was rolling out MeshClaw, an internal tool for building agents that act in workplace apps, and had set a target for more than 80% of developers to use AI each week.
Retail Gazette, citing the Financial Times
May 4, 2026
Amazon made Claude Code available to all builders, with OpenAI's Codex following on May 12, both on Bedrock; a spokesperson said 83% of engineers use Kiro.
Business Insider
Apr 20, 2026
Amazon invested $5 billion more in Anthropic, with up to $20 billion to follow, as Anthropic committed more than $100 billion to AWS over ten years.
Amazon
Apr 9, 2026
Andy Jassy's shareholder letter said Amazon is reimagining all of its consumer experiences with AI and that six engineers using Kiro rebuilt Bedrock's inference engine in 76 days.
Letter to shareholders

Quick answers

How does Amazon deploy AI?: Amazon deploys AI on its own AWS infrastructure: engineers code with Kiro, its in-house agent, which Amazon said 83% of them used in May 2026, alongside Claude Code and Codex, while staff use internal assistants such as Quick, Aza and MeshClaw. Andy Jassy counted more than 1,000 AI applications deployed or in progress in Feb 2026, and Amazon credited its Rufus shopping assistant with nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in 2025. No single executive owns AI; Peter DeSantis runs Amazon's models and chips.
What does Amazon use AI for?: Amazon had more than 1,000 AI applications deployed or being built in Feb 2026, Andy Jassy said, from Rufus and Alexa+ to fulfillment forecasting, the customer service chatbot and advertising tools. Amazon has published a current business return for one of them: Rufus, credited with nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in 2025. Amazon reports no firm-level AI return; its executives say robotics and AI lower cost to serve without putting a number on AI's share.
Who leads AI at Amazon?: AI at Amazon is led by Peter DeSantis (SVP, Foundational AI Models, Custom Silicon, Quantum Computing); Pieter Abbeel (Leads Frontier Model Research in AGI); Swami Sivasubramanian (VP, Agentic AI, AWS). Ownership of AI on the org chart: CEO Andy Jassy; models and chips under SVP Peter DeSantis; agent tools under AWS.
What AI platform does Amazon use?: Amazon builds its internal AI tools on AWS: Kiro for coding, Quick as the work assistant, Aza for HR and IT questions, MeshClaw for agents that act in workplace apps, and Cedric, a Claude-based chatbot opened to all employees in 2024.
Which AI models does Amazon use?: Amazon runs its own Nova models alongside Anthropic's Claude, which runs Cedric and parts of Alexa+, and OpenAI models, both offered in Kiro; Claude Code and Codex reached all Amazon builders in May 2026 through Bedrock.
How many Amazon employees use AI?: Amazon said 83% of its engineers used Kiro in May 2026, and more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping, the successor to Rufus, in the 12 months to Oct 2026.
How far has AI spread at Amazon?: Amazon has reported one business return it credits to AI, which places it in Piloting: Amazon said in Feb 2026 that Rufus, its AI shopping assistant, helped deliver nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in 2025, and it has published no firm-level figure for AI's financial effect. Amazon has not said how many of its 1,638,000 employees use its AI tools: a spokesperson said in May 2026 that 83% of its engineers use Kiro, and Beth Galetti wrote in Aug 2026 that every employee has access to AI tools, but no single executive owns AI. Amazon falls short of Scaling because it reports no AI-credited return in a second function, such as Kiro in engineering or its forecasting and robotics models in operations, where executives say AI lowers cost to serve without a figure.

Open questions

How many of Amazon's roughly 350,000 corporate employees, and of its 1,638,000 staff overall, use AI tools every week?
Who owns internal AI adoption across Amazon now that no chief AI officer exists and Dave Treadwell has left eCommerce Foundation for AWS?
What business return do Kiro, Quick, Aza, the customer service chatbot, DeepFleet, the forecasting model and Seller Assistant deliver, given that Amazon has published none?
How did Amazon measure Rufus's nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales, and what has Alexa for Shopping delivered in 2026?
What does Amazon spend on AI inference for its own products, given that the Alexa+ cost figures come only from internal documents?
Which models will power Amazon's own products after most Nova models were wound down, and what share of internal work runs on Claude, OpenAI and Amazon's models?
How many of the roughly 30,000 corporate roles cut in Oct 2025 and Jan 2026 were tied to AI, given that Andy Jassy expects AI to shrink the corporate workforce?
Is Cedric still in use alongside Quick, and how many employees use each?
Did the 90-day code safety guideline of Mar 2026 become permanent, and how often have AI tools contributed to incidents since?
How much of the reduction in cost to serve per unit does Amazon attribute to robotics and AI?

Sources

Amazon

Filings and investor materials

News

Data confidence

Confirmed: Stated in a primary or reputable public source.
Estimated: Derived or approximated from public reporting.
Unconfirmed: Reported, but not yet corroborated.

Amazon profile · Enterprise AI diffusion report by Imagine · facts checked against their sources on Nov 1, 2026

More company profiles

All profiles