Progress is rarely a straight line. In the following excerpt from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s latest annual letter to shareholders, he notes that most new jumps forward require invention and experimentation, and pursuing multiple paths gives you the best chance to find the desired trajectory:
Too often, companies focus on what looks most tidy instead of ensuring they have enough efforts in play to achieve an important outcome. Let’s go back to fast delivery in our retail business. We know how much customers crave it, and we see higher order completion rates when delivery promises are faster. Just three years ago, two-day delivery was the gold standard. We pushed that bar to one day, and have been working tirelessly to make it same day.
We’ve invented a new, more streamlined fulfillment center format called Same Day Fulfillment Centers (“SSDs”). We’ve built over 85 SSDs across the U.S. that carry our top 90,000 SKUs, and have enabled us to deliver more than 500 million same day units in 2026 thus far. At the same time, we’ve continued to pursue Prime Air, our drone delivery service. Prime Air now has a design that’ll scale, plans to serve communities with 30 million customers by year-end, and expects to deliver half a billion packages by the end of this decade (with an aim to deliver inside 30 minutes). And, over the last year, starting in India and the UAE, we’ve been working on Amazon Now, ultra-fast delivery on thousands of items within 20 minutes. Customers love this service. In India, where we have more than 360 micro-fulfillment centers (and growing rapidly), Amazon Now orders are increasing 25% month-over-month, with Prime members tripling their shopping frequency once they start using it. We’re starting to expand Amazon Now in the U.S. and Europe, too.
Some companies may have decided to pursue only one of these efforts, arguing for weeks or months which one, all the while pursuing none. A reasonable argument could have been made that just delivering same day would have been enough (“get that done and worry about the other ideas in the future”). But, building an autonomous delivery drone that can deliver millions of items in 30 minutes doesn’t take a year. It’s a multi-year invention cycle. And, ultra-fast delivery from micro-fulfillment centers is already possible and going to happen with or without us. So, we need to have multiple parallel paths to drive this next delivery speed shift. And, we’ve found that they’re complementary. The drones will use SSDs as a building block from which to gather selection and launch. And, while Amazon Now will deliver thousands of items within 20 minutes by leveraging micro-fulfillment centers, Prime Air will deliver a much larger selection of items inside a half hour. They will all serve different needs and drive the inflection better as a group than just having one.
Another example of our pursuing multiple paths is Grocery. We started 20 years ago by adding non-perishables (items you’d find in the middle aisles of grocery stores like consumables, canned goods, beauty, etc.). Customers loved the convenience of buying these items online and having them delivered quickly. Unsurprisingly, they asked for broader grocery coverage, with perishables high on their list. We embarked on several bets to try to find the right economic solution for customers and Amazon. We bought Whole Foods Market (“WFM”) in 2017, the leader in organic grocery. We’ve since launched mainstream physical grocery stores (Amazon Fresh), grocery subscriptions for Prime members, and store-within-a-store concepts (with Amazon offering mainstream brands alongside WFM organic brands). Not all of these experiments have worked, but each one has taught us something important.
What's emerged is a clearer picture of what customers want. Our non-perishables grocery business continues to grow quickly. WFM continues to accelerate, with over 550 stores, 100 more coming in the next few years, and an additional smaller format (Daily Shop) serving quick, frequent grocery missions in city neighborhoods that’s off to a great start. And, a big breakthrough has been adding perishables into our Same-Day Delivery network. Bringing fresh groceries (e.g. produce, dairy, meat) together with millions of everyday items in a single, fast order is resonating with customers for the value and convenience it provides. Since introducing perishables into Same-Day Delivery in early 2025, perishables sales have grown by over 40 times, and now make up nine of the top ten most-ordered items for Same-Day Delivery where they're available. We have Same-Day fresh food delivery in over 2,300 towns and cities across the country. Our grocery business has grown to over $150 billion in gross sales in 2025, making Amazon the second-largest grocer in the U.S.
If there’s an obvious path to changing your trajectory, take it and run. But, most new jumps forward aren’t like that. There’s invention and experimentation required, and pursuing multiple paths gives you the best chance to find it.
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