What are CEO Andy Jassy’s Six ‘Truths’ for AI?

Following the release of Andy Jassy’s shareholder letter, the Amazon CEO has outlined his thoughts on the future of AI at the company, highlighting six “key truths” regarding how the technology will transform business operations.

“Every customer experience will be reinvented by AI, and there will be a slew of new experiences only possible because of AI,” Andy said in the blog.

“I’ve followed the public debate on whether this technology is over-hyped, whether we’re in ‘a bubble’, and if the margins and ROIC will be appealing. My strong conviction, at least for Amazon, is that the answers are no, no, and yes.”

Andy added that AI will be fundamental in enhancing the customer experience, despite discourse around the financial concerns and “over-hyped” nature of the technology and discusses six inevitable developments that are “hard to debate”.

1. The speed of AI adoption

Andy details the rise in companies integrating AI into their systems, claiming that industries have “never seen a technology more quickly adopted than AI”. 

He highlights ChatGPT’s November 2022 launch as a key indicator of this, saying that the platform reached 100 million users in two months – four times faster than TikTok and 15 times faster than Instagram.

Other AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic have reported revenue rates approaching US$30bn, which Andy says are “breathtaking numbers for companies” to achieve so soon after launch.

Using Thomas Edison’s first commercial power station in 1882 and how the technology eventually reached industry proportions as a comparison, Andy said that the difference between this example and AI, is that “electricity took 40 years to get where it was going. AI appears to be moving 10 times faster”.

2. An industry-wide rush for technology

Andy describes this race for technology as a “land rush” and says that Amazon is “smack in the middle” of it.

Three years after AWS (Amazon Web Services) launched in 2006, it had a revenue run rate of US$58m. Three years into the AI wave, AWS’s AI revenue run rate was reported as more than US$15bn in the first quarter of 2026 alone.

Andy cites several reasons as to why customers are choosing AWS’s AI over competitors, such as “broader capabilities than others” like model customisation, AI that can work harmoniously with other workflow programmes, AWS’s additional offerings beyond its AI software and the strongest AI security and performance of any AI provider.

3. The potential for faster growth

AWS added 3.9GW to its power capacity in 2025 and expects to double it by the end of 2027. Andy said the company is “monetising that capacity as fast as it’s installed.”

He adds that AWS reported a 24% YoY growth with a US$142bn revenue run rate in Q4 2025 and that the company still has capacity constraints with unserved demand.

“Two large AWS customers have already asked if they could buy *all* of our Graviton instance capacity in 2026 – we can’t agree to these requests given other customers’ needs, but it gives you an idea of the demand,” he says.

4. The AI chip boom

AWS’s partnership with NVIDIA has allowed it to scale services across a wider customer base and enhance the price-performance of its own custom AI silicon.

“Having our own hotly demanded AI chip opens up many possibilities, but perhaps none larger than the ability to lower costs for customers and secure better economics for AWS,” Andy said.

“Our annual revenue run rate for our chips business (inclusive of Graviton, Trainium, and Nitro—our EC2 NIC) is now over $20 billion, and growing triple digit percentages YoY.

“If our chips business was a stand-alone business, and sold chips produced this year to AWS and other third parties (as other leading chips companies do), our annual run rate would be ~$50 billion.”

5. The increase of capex over time

Andy states that the way in which AWS’s cash cycle works is that the faster the company grows, the more short-term capex it plans to spend.

To monetise its AI, AWS plans to lay out funding for land, power, buildings, chips, servers and networking gear, with an estimated 6- to 24-month development period before it can start to bill customers.

However, Andy says these capex investments will fund assets with long-term uses, such as data centres (with a life of 30+ years) and chips, servers and networking gear (approximately 5-6 years).

He adds: “The FCF and ROIC for these investments are cumulatively quite attractive a couple years after being in service; however, in times of very high growth (like now), where the capex growth meaningfully outpaces the revenue growth, the early-years FCF is challenged until these initial tranches of capacity are being monetised and revenue growth out-paces capex growth.”

6. Customer commitments to help investments

Andy suggests that the company’s commitments to customers will allow for AWS to invest capex accordingly.

“We’re not investing approximately $200 billion in capex in 2026 on a hunch,” he says, noting OpenAI’s recent US$110bn funding round with backing from Amazon, NVIDIA and Softbank.

“Of the AWS capex we expect to spend in 2026, much of which will be monetized in 2027-2028, we already have customer commitments for a substantial portion of it.”

He adds that AWS is willing to make large capex investments and endure short-term FCF headwinds for the “substantial medium to long-term FCF surplus”.

“AWS has a significant leadership position with the broadest functionality, strongest security and operational performance, largest share of customers and revenue, strong desire from customers to run their AI in AWS, and an opportunity to build what could be a new pillar for Amazon in chips,” Andy states.

“AI is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where the current growth is unprecedented and the future growth even bigger.”