How CEO Andy Jassy is Steering Amazon Through Tariffs and AI

Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, is among the leaders talking at the World Economic Forum, sharing his perspective on aspects of the global economy.

Speaking in an interview with CNBC at the WEF, Andy shared an honest update about the effect of President Donald Trump’s tariffs with “some of the tariffs creeping into some of the prices”.

As CEO since 2021, he is experienced in leading companies through uncertainty, including stepping into the top seat shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic. Responding to Trump’s tariffs, he said: “We did a lot of pre-buying in the early part of 2025 to enable us to try and keep prices as low as possible for customers.

“And a lot of our third-party sellers did a lot of forward staging in our fulfilment network for the same reasons.”

He added that that some supply ran out in autumn. As a result, Andy explained: “Some sellers are deciding that they’re passing on those higher costs to consumers in the form of high prices, some are deciding that they’ll absorb it to drive demand and some are doing something in between.”

This change is being seen across the consumer goods market with the tariffs also significantly affecting the EV market by increasing costs for battery components, pushing up consumer prices and disrupting supply chains.

He said consumers have dealt with the changes at Amazon so far but added: “We’ll have to wait and see what happens in 2026.”

Continuing growth at Amazon

At the WEF, Andy also spoke to The Information’s CEO Jessica Lessin about Amazon’s continued commitment to growing in other avenues, particularly within the AI-space.

Andy said: “We had a lot of conversations with OpenAI and we have a lot of respect for them, and I think both teams really wanted to find a way to work together and we were both happy that we were able to build that agreement.

“I hope we have a chance to deepen that relationship over time.”

The agreement the CEO is referring to is a seven-year US$38bn strategic partnership with the AI firm, agreed between Andy and OpenAI's Sam Altman, where Amazon Web Services will provide massive computing power for OpenAI to train and run its AI modes.

This includes ChatGPT, securing AWS a key infrastructure provider and boosting its standing in the AI race.

AI in the e-commerce space

OpenAI has recently announced the introduction of adverts in ChatGPT, which the firm says aligns with its mission “to ensure AGI benefits for all of humanity; our pursuit of advertising is always in support of that mission and making AI more accessible”.

While OpenAI says the adverts will be clearly marked and will not influence the chatbot’s answers, Jessica asked Andy how that will affect Amazon’s advertising business.

“There have always been a lot of ways that you can find products,” he responded. “There’s lots of places you can do research on products, that you can choose to buy products.”

He added that he does not believe it will massively affect Amazon as “people still largely start with Amazon who shop on Amazon” because of “such broad selection and low prices and really fast shipping”.

Discussing his team’s own advertising strategy, he said that his advertising department is made up of “AI and machine learning experts to make sure that we’re putting items in front of people that are relevant to what they’ve searched for and what they’ve bought before”.