Amazon CEO Pens Letter To Shareholders Sharing AI Plans, Innovation Strategies & More

The one thing shareholders enjoy as much as hearing from their customers is hearing from the CEO.

Gathering the thought process of the company’s leader is key to driving investor confidence.

Moreover, big companies tend to publish such letters on open forums (usually their websites), for everyone, including their customers, to see, providing them with an insight into a company’s goals, aspirations, achievements, successes, failures, reparation efforts, and more.

Recently, the CEO of E-commerce giant Amazon published a letter addressed to the shareholders, one that highlighted how the company performed in the previous year, i.e., 2024, as well as its growth plans and how far it’s come. The letter also reiterates that Amazon has stayed true to its original purpose—enhancing customer experiences with innovation.

Through it, Jassy answered a wide range of FAQs shareholders would have about Amazon’s investments, products, and services.

These included questions about AI’s importance and Amazon’s investments in it, personal assistants and Alexa, fulfillment speeds across cities and rural areas, how Amazon’s Project Kuiper (low Earth orbit satellite network) will help hundreds of millions of people without broadband connectivity, Amazon’s healthcare initiatives and how Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical will help, and more.


The letter began with the leader talking about the financial growth in 2024.

Amazon’s total revenue grew 11% year-over-year (YoY), going from $575 billion to $638 billion, which included an increase of 10% for North America ($353 billion to $387 billion) and 9% internationally ($91 billion to $108 billion). Amazon’s AWS (Amazon Web Services) grew 19% YoY ($91 billion to $108 billion)—ten years ago, it was $4.6 billion. Ahead of this, the company’s operating income grew from $36.9 billion to $68.6 billion—an 86% increase—and Free Cash Flow also improved.

Next, the CEO moved on to talk about how the company has made its customers’ lives “meaningfully better and easier” across numerous facets.

In its Stores business, Amazon expanded its selection, achieved record shipping speeds, and lowered prices—independent research firm, Profitero, found Amazon to be the lowest-priced online U.S. Retailer for the eighth year in a row.

The company’s entertainment hub—Prime Video—expanded its options across movies, TV shows, live sports, and more. Meanwhile, Kindle saw a new color version, a larger Scribe option, and its fastest Paperwhites ever.

Coming to its cloud computing platform, AWS introduced a wide range of new products and services, including the highly anticipated all-new Alexa, bringing in the first major overhaul to the Alexa series since its debut over a decade ago.

The company also launched its latest custom AI silicon (Trainium2), new AI models Amazon Nova, and new features to its generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) services Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock, all of which were announced at the AWS Re:Invent 2024 event, along with other announcements.

According to Jassy, artificial intelligence (AI) will play a major role in reinventing “virtually every customer experience.” Its productivity-enhancing, timesaving, and cost-cutting nature will see it seep into every process, workflow, and task, leading to AI changing the norms in “coding, search, shopping, personal assistants, primary care, cancer and drug research, biology, robotics, space, financial services, neighborhood networks—everything.”

As such, AI is also revolutionizing customer experiences and driving change in “personal assistants, streaming video and music, advertising, healthcare, reading, and home devices, to name a few.”

“Fundamentally, if your mission is to make customers’ lives better and easier every day, and you believe every customer experience will be reinvented by AI, you’re going to invest deeply and broadly in AI,” read the CEO’s letter to the question asking why Amazon is investing a lot in AI quickly.

Amazon is also looking to enhance fulfillment with AI.

Jassy labeled Amazon as a YQ company, where YQ stands for WhyQ or Why Quotient. It’s a play on words meant to denote that Amazon is a Why company.

“We ask why, and why not, constantly. It helps us deconstruct problems, get to root causes, understand blockers, and unlock doors that might have previously seemed impenetrable.”

Since 1995, this word has dictated the company’s path and success, taking it from a business that offer customers every in-print book, to every out-of-print book, to the largest collection of digital books (Kindle), to enabling customer reviews or experts, to offering “practically everything”—Music, Video, Electronics, Tools, Kitchen, Apparel, Home Furnishings, and more.

This word has driven Amazon’s innovation strategies since its inception and is expected to continue to do so.

In addition to enabling a “Why Culture,” Jassy further spoke about sixteen leadership principles that guide how the company functions, highlighting three in the letter—leaders are right a lot; leaders continue to learn and should be curious; and leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions but must fully commit once the decision has been made.

Like the principles, he mentioned norms that direct the flow of operations in the company—writing extensive narratives; working backwards; being together whenever possible; tolerating messy meetings.

Andy Jassy also shared seven ways Amazon operates like the largest startup—its products are focused on solving a real customer problem or meaningfully improving a customer experience; it has a “disproportionate need for builders” and inventors; it hires “smart, motivated, inventive, ambitious people” who act as “owners”; it prioritizes speed; it requires its workers to be “scrappy”; its employees must be bold but effective risk-takers; its workers must “care most about delivering compelling results for customers.”


Amazon’s good work extends beyond just its business operations, touching numerous charities and financial aid programs.

The company recently announced it awarded 400 high school seniors with a $40,000 Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship to study computer science at a U.S. college or university of their choice in 2025. Each recipient will also receive a paid internship offer at Amazon after their freshman year.

This scholarship witnessed $16 million being pledged in total college tuition.

Scholars were selected based on academic achievement, demonstrated leadership, community involvement, work experience, future goals, and financial need, spanning nearly 40 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

“Amazon Future Engineer scholarships combine educational funding with tangible work experience,” said Alice Shobe, Global Director of Community Impact at Amazon. “We believe these scholars will help shape the future through innovation and leadership for years to come.”

Since 2019, Amazon has awarded 1,650 AFE scholarships, totaling $66 million in college tuition.

What do you think about Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s letter to shareholders and the insights shared through it?

Let us know in the comments below!