Amazon is signaling a major shift in how it plans to serve customers, starting with rewriting parts of its own playbook.
CEO Andy Jassy released his annual letter to shareholders on Thursday, writing that the tech giant is not content to simply add artificial intelligence features to its existing retail business. Instead, Jassy said Amazon is preparing to rebuild the customer shopping experience from the ground up, even if it means disrupting products and systems that already work at massive scale.
“The temptation is to just add a little AI to the existing experience,” Jassy wrote, adding that the “trick” leaders must learn is “reimagining your experiences from a clean sheet of paper.”
“When you have a product that’s working at scale, one of the hardest decisions to make is to go back to the starting line,” Jassy wrote.
Jassy suggested that “the interface with which customers want to interact with a retailer could be substantially different over time.”
The CEO acknowledged that rebuilding systems at scale can feel like “going backwards,” especially when those systems are already widely used.
But he argued that standing still in a moment of rapid technological change is riskier.
“AI is not a standalone initiative—it’s a multiplier,” Jassy wrote. “It will reshape every customer experience we offer and unlock entirely new ones.”
Jassy concluded his letter sharing his optimism for what lay ahead for the tech giant, underscoring Amazon’s strong finish to 2025, which saw revenue grow 12% year-over-year from $638 billion to $717 billion.
