Amazon Q4 Results Show Agentic Shopping Push Beyond AI Spending

Amazon’s Q4 earnings call on Thursday (Feb. 5) produced the number everyone repeated: CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon expects to invest about $200 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, “predominantly in AWS,” to add capacity for AI and core cloud workloads.

But the call wasn’t only an AI-capex story. It also previewed how Amazon wants to use that infrastructure to make shopping faster and more frequent across Stores and grocery.

Jassy described the moment as something bigger than a typical tech cycle.

“As fast as we install this capacity, this AI capacity, we are monetizing it,” he told the company’s Q4 earnings call audience. “So it’s just a very unusual opportunity. I passionately believe that every customer experience that we know of today is going to be reinvented with AI … [and] if you really want to use AI in an expansive way, you need your data in the cloud and you need your application in the cloud.”

From there, the conversation shifted to what that means outside the data center. Amazon’s consumer pitch is still classic: broad selection, sharp prices and fast delivery. What’s changing is the interface. Amazon is betting that “agentic” AI will become a major way people shop.

On the enterprise side, Jassy said “the primary way companies will get value from AI is with agents,” and he emphasized the gating factor is trust. Agents have to connect to data and tools with controls around identity, policy and governance. On the retail side, those ideas show up in Rufus, Amazon’s shopping assistant. “We have 300 million customers who used Rufus in 2025,” Jassy said, adding that “customers who used Rufus are about 60% more likely to complete a purchase.”

Rufus can research products, track prices and auto-buy when an item hits a customer-set price. It can also shop tens of millions of items in other online stores and make purchases using its agentic Buy For Me feature.

Then Jassy turned to the retail driver he kept returning to: everyday essentials and grocery.

“In 2025, Everyday Essentials grew nearly twice as fast as all other categories in the U.S., representing 1 out of every 3 units sold in our store, and we’ve become a go-to grocery destination for over 150 million Americans, mostly through online shopping at Whole Foods,” he said. “With over $150 billion in gross sales, Amazon is clearly a large grocer at this point.”

The delivery piece matters. Amazon said customers in thousands of U.S. cities and towns can get perishables delivered same day alongside millions of other items and Jassy noted that shoppers who use same-day grocery shop more than twice as often as those who don’t. He also said Amazon plans to expand grocery delivery further in 2026 and “open more than 100 new Whole Foods Market stores over the next few years” as it works to make grocery shopping “easier, faster and more affordable.”

Three Other Call Moments Worth Watching

• Delivery speeds: Amazon said 2025 was its fastest-ever year for Prime delivery globally. In the U.S., it delivered nearly 70% more items same day than the year before. Jassy highlighted “Add to Delivery,” a one-tap feature that already represents about 10% of weekly U.S. Prime volume fulfilled through Amazon’s network.

• OpenAI relationship: Jassy called Amazon’s OpenAI agreement “a big one” and said Amazon hopes to “continue to extend our partnership over time,” while stressing the AI boom will spread across thousands of companies, not just “a couple.”

• Robotics: Jassy said Amazon has “over a million robots” in its fulfillment network today, positioning automation as a lever to lower cost-to-serve (and reduce repetitive work) as delivery speeds keep rising.

Amazon closed the quarter with net sales of $213.4 billion, up 14% year over year (12% excluding foreign exchange). North America revenue was $127.1 billion (+10%), International revenue was $50.7 billion (+17% reported), and AWS revenue was $35.6 billion (+24%). Operating income rose to $25 billion (including about $2.4 billion of special charges), and net income was $21.2 billion, or $1.95 per diluted share. Trailing 12‑month free cash flow was $11.2 billion.

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