💼 CEOs All In On AI

Amazon CEO: "AI is a Once-in-a-Lifetime Reinvention"

📦 Amazon’s CEO on AI: This Changes Everything

In his latest annual letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy makes one thing clear: AI isn't just another buzzword—it’s poised to reinvent the way we live, work, and collaborate. He tackles a few big questions about the future of AI at Amazon, including:

• Will AI really have as much impact as people claim—and when?

• Why is Amazon investing so heavily, so fast?

• Why is AI development so expensive?

It’s clear across industry that the top layers of leadership are driving AI adoption from the top down. But will employees actually experience new ways of working?

Here’s the essence of Jassy’s answers:

🤖 1. Yes, the AI hype is real—but it may take a few years to fully materialize
Jassy puts the spotlight on generative AI, a subset of AI that creates things—text, code, images—instead of just classifying or predicting. He claims it’s a force that will “reinvent virtually every customer experience we know.”

Early use cases like customer service, workflows, and translation are already in production and saving companies money. But Jassy points to much bigger shifts that may take more time to implement, including in industries like healthcare, finance, drug research, and even space.

His message: if your company isn’t thinking AI-first, you may soon find yourself left behind.

💸 2. If you believed in AI, you’d invest this much too
Amazon is betting big because they believe this moment only comes once. With over 1,000 generative AI projects in motion, Amazon isn’t dabbling—they’re going all in. From turbocharged shopping experiences to AI-assisted healthcare, they’re weaving intelligence into everything.

Behind the curtain, AWS is building the engine room: custom chips like Trainium, platforms like Bedrock and SageMaker, and even their own foundation models (Nova) to make AI faster, cheaper, and more accessible.

AI demand at Amazon is growing at triple-digit rates—a pace Jassy calls “unlike anything we’ve seen before.” That kind of growth is proof the interest is real, not just hype.

🧠 3. Why is AI so expensive? Mostly, it’s the chips
Right now, a single chipmaker dominates the market (ahem, Nvidia), driving up costs. Amazon’s Trainium2 chips promise 30–40% better price-performance, aiming to lower costs and unlock broader adoption.

Lower costs → more usage → more innovation → even greater AI spend. Sound familiar? That’s exactly how AWS revolutionized cloud computing.

🚀 Final Thoughts from the CEO’s Desk
"We continue to believe AI is a once-in-a-lifetime reinvention of everything we know, the demand is unlike anything we’ve seen before."

The top-down momentum is real. With statements like that, it’s hard not to get swept up in the momentum.

The only question left: are you ready to work in a whole new way?

Thought for the weekend: AI won’t replace your job, but people who use AI will.

Heard in the Server Room

Survey of 4200+ AI Researchers Reveals Cautious Optimism For AI Future

Turns out AI researchers are way more hyped for the future than your average Brit, with 54% of researchers believing the technology will bring more benefits than risks compared to just 13% of the UK public (the other 87% were probably too busy complaining about the weather). The excitement isn’t without caution though, as researchers list concerns around AI-related misinformation, data privacy, and cybercrime. Additionally, only 25% of these researchers support training AI on public data without consent, and less than a third favor rapid AI development. In other words, develop AI, but do it slowly and transparently.

Whistleblower Claims Meta Deeply Involved With Chinese Government

Meta's China entanglements just got a whole lot messier. Former exec Sarah Wynn-Williams dropped bombshell testimony claiming the company not only played ball with Chinese censorship demands (including removing a U.S.-based dissident) but also gave Chinese AI firm DeepSeek access to its Llama model. She painted Zuckerberg as deeply involved in the China strategy while raising red flags about potential access to American user data, prompting lawmakers to sharpen their investigative knives.

DOGE Accused Of Using AI To Flag Disloyalty

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is reportedly deploying AI to sniff out "disloyal" sentiments toward the Trump administration in federal employees' communications. The digital dragnet has critics sounding alarm bells about transparency, record-keeping violations, and the effect on dissent in what should be a non-partisan civil service. In the meantime, the pink slips keep piling up as DOGE aims to save over $1 Trillion.

Shopify CEO: Work Hard, Prompt Harder

Above, we covered Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s public, big-picture vision for AI. Now let’s turn to Shopify, where CEO Tobi Lutke’s vision became public unintentionally—via a leaked internal memo.

The tone here is less “strategic roadmap” and more “get moving.” It’s an interesting contrast between the world’s largest online retailer and the world’s largest personal storefront.

Here’s what Lutke made crystal clear:

• Using AI in your job is now a baseline expectation.

  AI is “a tool of all trades today, and will only grow in importance. Frankly, I don't think it's feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying AI in your craft.”

• Performance reviews will include how well you can prompt (aka interact with an LLM).
  “a lot of people give up after writing a prompt and not getting the ideal thing back immediately. Learning to prompt and load context is important”

• No headcount requests without an AI pass.
  Before asking for more people, teams must “demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI”—or how an agent might help.

The takeaway? This isn’t a gentle nudge—it’s a fundamental cultural reset.

As Lutke puts it: “If you're not climbing, you're sliding.”

📣The good news? You don’t need to be the CEO to champion AI at work. Imagine how impressed your leaders would be if you sparked a grassroots AI movement inside your team.