Amazon says over 400 million people have used its Alexa shopping helper in a year, and they spend 50% more. Here is what that means when you shop.
More than 400 million Amazon customers have used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months. Amazon shared the figure on its earnings call on Thursday. At the end of July, the number was 350 million. CEO Andy Jassy also said people who use the tool spend 50% more than people who do not.
It is Amazon's AI shopping assistant. You can ask it questions in plain language while you shop on Amazon's website or app. Amazon launched it in February 2024 under the name Rufus. In May, it renamed the tool Alexa for Shopping, borrowing the name of its voice assistant that many shoppers already know. Amazon has since made it more visible and added new features.
The numbers show how important AI shopping has become to Amazon. The company is mature, and growth is harder to find in other areas. In the third quarter, net sales were $201.9 billion, up 12% from last year. Most of that growth came from Amazon Web Services, which grew 39%.
Shopping itself looked slower. Online Stores revenue grew 2%, compared with 10% a year earlier. Third-party seller services grew 9% and advertising grew 11%, down from 12% and 24% the year before. Amazon says much of the slowdown comes from timing. Prime Day moved to late June, so its sales landed in the second quarter this year.
Amazon blocks outside AI tools, including ChatGPT and Meta's Muse shopping agent, from scraping its site. Scraping means automatically collecting information from a website. Jassy hinted this may change eventually, as he has said before. He was clear about the goal, though.
"Though we anticipate working with horizontal agents, we believe Alexa for Shopping is going to be the primary shopping agent customers use to shop Amazon," Jassy said. Horizontal agents are general AI helpers that are not tied to one store.
Amazon wants as many shoppers as possible using its own assistant. Whether outside AI tools get access to Amazon is still open. Jassy gave no timeline for that.
Amazon is steering shoppers to its own AI helper, so use it as a guide and still compare prices before you buy.
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