By Mackenzie Tatananni

Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy spelled out the company's ambitions to "make a bigger impact on the world" and highlighted a new area of focus -- generative artificial intelligence -- in his annual shareholder letter on Thursday.

In the letter wrapping up 2024, Jassy laid out the company's guiding principles, such as its attitudes toward leadership and mission to become "Earth's most customer-centric company." The CEO noted efforts Amazon was taking to better serve its customer base, such as expanding fast delivery to rural towns and targeting new shoppers through the launch of its Project Kuiper satellite network, which will provide broadband connectivity to millions of households.

Jassy also made lofty claims about generative AI, saying it would "reinvent virtually every customer experience we know, and enable altogether new ones about which we've only fantasized." Beyond productivity-boosting measures, the CEO expects the technology to reinvent entire industries, from medicine to robotics.

At its core, Jassy's enthusiasm appears to stem from his desire for Amazon to remain neck-and-neck with rivals as they ramp up their AI capabilities. "If your customer experiences aren't planning to leverage these intelligent models ... you will not be competitive," he wrote. "It won't all happen in a year or two, but, it won't take ten either. It's moving faster than almost anything technology has ever seen."

The CEO defended Amazon's significant capital investment in data centers, chips, and hardware, asserting that customers and shareholders alike would be "well-served by our investing aggressively now."

Shares of Amazon were down 2.7% at $186.23 in premarket trading Thursday. Futures tracking the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 2.1% and 2.5%, respectively.

Also on Thursday, analysts at Piper Sandler trimmed their price target on the stock to $215 from $265 while maintaining an Overweight rating.

Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com

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April 10, 2025 08:39 ET (12:39 GMT)

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