Amazon CEO says robotics is key for faster delivery, lower costs

On the left, the RIVR TWO robot, and on the right, Fauna Robotics’ Sprout. | Sources: RIVR, Fauna Robotics

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon.com Inc., today gave insight into his company’s robotics strategy in his 2026 letter to shareholders. Amazon is always looking to make its costs lower and its deliveries faster, and it sees robotics as a promising part of this goal, he said.

“While we continue to work on productivity and inventory levels, robotics provides a step-level change for how we can deliver faster, reduce the cost of carrying more selection, and automate movements that cause strains and injuries to our teammates,” Jassy wrote.

Amazon now has more than 1 million robots operating in its fulfillment centers, helping with stowing, picking, sorting, and intra-facility transport. Despite this, Jassy said he believes the company is still in the early stages of figuring out how it will fully use robotics.

Amazon plans to invest in rural and rapid deliveries

Last month, Amazon acquired RIVR, a developer of quadruped wheeled robots for doorstep delivery.

RIVR had been on Amazon’s radar since 2024, when Jeff Bezos led the company’s $22 million seed round through Bezos Expeditions and HongShan. And, having shut down its own Scout delivery robot program back in 2022, Amazon could be looking for a new robotic doorstep delivery option.

The company is certainly investing more in delivery, particularly in its rural delivery network. Jassy said the Amazon will spend $4 billion to expand its rural delivery network. Once the expansion is complete, the e-commerce provider plans to deliver over a billion more packages each year to customers living in more than 13,000 ZIP codes spanning 1.2 million sq. mi. (3.1 million sq. km).

The company also plans to bring Amazon Now, which provides delivery on thousands of items within 20 minutes, to the U.S. and Europe. So far, the company has seen traction with the service in India and the United Arab Emirates.

With Amazon ramping up deliveries on multiple fronts, it could be making room to include more robots in its expanding network.

The company is also still pursuing Prime Air, its drone delivery service. Jassy said Amazon “plans to serve communities with 30 million customers by year’s end and expects to deliver half a billion packages by the end of this decade.” Amazon aims to make these deliveries in 30 minutes.

Will Amazon take another bet on consumer robots?

Amazon plans to keep innovating in form factors, use-case diversity, agility, grasping, and intelligence, Jassy said. The company will also explore leveraging its scale and real-time feedback loop from the robots it has in its fulfillment network to build robotics systems for other industrial and consumer customers.

Jassy didn’t share many details about Amazon’s plans for what these robots could look like, but the company did recently acquire Fauna Robotics, a humanoid robot developer. Fauna’s Sprout is a research platform, not a consumer robot for home use, but Amazon said it is taking a “well thought-out and measured approach to truly understand the potential of personal robots.”

In the past, Amazon hasn’t gained much traction in the consumer robots category. In 2021, it released Amazon Astro, a small robot designed for home or small business security monitoring, remote care of elderly relatives, or as a virtual assistant. Since then, however, Astro hasn’t gained much traction.

Amazon also canceled its acquisition of robotic vacuum maker iRobot in 2024 because of antitrust concerns.

Editor’s note: Aaron Parness, director of applied science at Amazon Robotics, will speak in the opening keynote on “Building Reliable Robots at Scale” and the RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards Dinner at the Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston next month. Registration is now open.