Amazon CEO Andy Jassy spoke with CNBC for a wide-ranging interview about AI, Prime Video, and more. Here were some of the key takeaways (comments edited for brevity and clarity):
On generative AI and competing with cloud rivals Microsoft and Google: “Hype cycle is pretty different than substance cycle. I see generative AI as one of the biggest technical transformations in our lifetimes. I think it has the ability to transform virtually every customer experience that we know.”
On Amazon developing its own AI chips:
- “I think of generative AI as having three macro layers, and they are all really big and important.”
- “The bottom layer is the compute, all the machine learning training and inference. What matters in that compute is the chip in there.”
- “There has really been one chip provider … supply is more scarce and it’s expensive. It’s why we’ve invested over the last few years in our own customized training chips and inference chips, which will have much better price performance than anywhere else.”
- “We are quite optimistic that a lot of the machine learning training and inference will be done on AWS chips and compute.”
On spinning out AWS from Amazon: “We have no intention or plan to do so.”
On shipping speed:
- “This year we’re shipping products faster than we ever have before. We expect 2023 to be the fastest shipping times for Prime customers we’ve ever had.”
- “Over and over we’ve learned that when we make a faster promise on a product detail page, customers convert at a higher rate. They really care about faster delivery.”
- “It turns out that faster speeds equal lower costs for us when we have the right underlying infrastructure.”
- “We spent the past year reevaluating every part of our fulfilment network and doing a bunch of redesigning. We are getting products to customers much faster than ever before.”
On Prime Video and reports about Amazon scrutinizing spend:
- “I’m looking hard at the cost of every one of our businesses all the time. Good leadership teams do that. We have a pretty significant number of long-term bets that we’re making. You always have to look at whether you’re allocating the resource as efficiently as you possibly could.”
- “In the case of Prime Video, I’m very bullish on where we’re headed. The content continues to get better and better.”
- “The marketplace part of the business is significant. While Prime Video is really good at driving our Prime value for our consumer business, I also think it will have good standalone economics.”
On whether he’ll join the CEO cage fight action: “I wouldn’t bet on that.”
