a16z@a16z1d ago

Five years into his run as CEO, Andy Jassy has nearly tripled the size of AWS, grown Amazon's revenue by about 80%, and expects to spend $220 billion this year to win AI. Amazon's AI business hit a $25 billion run rate in three years, growing several hundred times faster than early AWS. Jassy joins a16z's Ben Horowitz and Erik Torenberg to discuss the decisions behind that run, from rebuilding Amazon's fulfillment network after the pandemic to the AWS origin story. They also cover why data centers became a political fight, Amazon's custom chips, its stakes in Anthropic and OpenAI, why inference needs to get 10x cheaper, AI's most underrated risk, and why every company will have to reinvent its products from scratch, plus Jassy's advice for anyone who's 18 today. 0:47 How Amazon has changed since 2021 1:51 How the pandemic reshaped retail 3:30 Why AI supercharged AWS's growth 5:20 When leadership principles clash 9:36 $60M vs. $25B: early AWS vs. early AI 13:20 How the AI CapEx cash cycle works 15:44 Why the US must build data centers 20:55 The labs-to-enterprise AI barbell 23:12 Demand vs. longtime AWS customers 28:11 Annapurna, Graviton, and Trainium 33:55 Backing Anthropic and OpenAI 37:15 Why AI means smaller teams 42:13 AI's underrated risk: security 46:29 Why Amazon rewired Alexa's brain 53:07 What Jassy tells his kids about AI 56:36 Betting on AI, robotics, and space YouTube: https://youtu.be/-YMMRQ1qscI @ajassy @Amazon @bhorowitz @eriktorenberg