Amazon customers in the United States who use Alexa for Shopping spend 50% more per order than those who do not, chief executive Andy Jassy told analysts on October 29, 2026, during the company's third-quarter earnings call. More than 400 million customers used the AI shopping assistant over the previous 12 months, according to Jassy, and customer interactions with it rose 570% year over year. He said Amazon expects Alexa for Shopping to become "the primary shopping agent customers use to shop Amazon," even though the company anticipates working with general-purpose agents built by others, and he told investors that shopping through those outside agents is not meaningfully affecting Amazon's advertising business. None of the analysts on the call asked about the assistant.

In Short

Amazon's chief executive said more than 400 million people used Alexa for Shopping, the company's AI shopping helper, over the past year, and that Americans who use it spend 50% more on each order than people who don't. That matters to the brands and sellers who buy ads on Amazon, because the assistant increasingly sits between shoppers and the products they see, and Amazon already charges advertisers for placements inside it. Amazon wants you to do your Amazon shopping through its own assistant rather than through AI agents made by other companies, which it says are not yet hurting its ad sales.

What Jassy said

The remarks came in Jassy's prepared statement, between an update on Amazon Pharmacy and the company's advertising results, according to a transcript of the call published by Investing.com. "Over 400 million customers have used Alexa for Shopping, our agentic shopping assistant, in the last 12 months, with customer interactions up 570% year over year," Jassy said. "U.S. customers using Alexa for Shopping are spending 50% more per order than those who don't."

He then listed what the assistant does. "It researches products, compares options, checks a full year of price history, gets personalized gift recommendations, and tracks deals and price drops on customers' behalf."

Earlier in the same statement, Jassy had placed AI shopping among the retail priorities he called "force multipliers," a list that ran "from faster delivery, to cost to serve, to groceries and pharmacy, to AI shopping." He did not mention Rufus, the name under which Amazon's shopping assistant operated until May. He gave no figure for the sales the assistant generates, did not say in which countries the 400 million customers were counted, and did not define what Amazon treats as an interaction.

Alexa for Shopping is five and a half months old under that name. On May 13, 2026, Amazon merged Rufus and Alexa+ into one shopping assistant, available to all US customers on the Amazon Shopping app, the Amazon website and Echo Show devices. More than half of the 12-month window Jassy cited therefore predates the product's current name, and the call did not settle whether the 400 million figure includes customers who used Rufus before the merger.

A year of prices, and a buy button that waits

Most of the functions in Jassy's list began in Rufus. On November 18, 2025, Rufus gained memory, price tracking and auto-buying, with 30-day and 90-day price history and auto-buy requests that stayed active for six months. On May 1, 2026, Amazon added a 365-day view of price history, rolling out in the US, UK and India, and said more than 50 million customers had used the price history tool since its 2024 launch.

The Alexa for Shopping launch twelve days later carried those functions over. Amazon described price history for up to a full year on product detail pages, scheduled actions that complete a purchase only if a price falls below a threshold set by the customer, and a memory that stores attributes such as family members, pets, interests and dietary needs. That memory is what makes the "personalized gift recommendations" in Jassy's list possible. Before Prime Big Deal Days on October 6 and 7, Amazon promoted Alexa for Shopping's 365-day price history and Auto-Buy as tools for the sale, although its preview described no cancellation terms for orders placed automatically during the event.

What "50% more per order" measures

The per-order comparison is the latest in a series of performance claims that Amazon has reworded from one quarter to the next. In July, the company said customers who use Alexa for Shopping spend an average of over 40% more per order than those who do not, according to PPC Land's report on the second-quarter results. A year ago it measured something different. At the third-quarter 2025 results, Amazon said customers using Rufus during a shopping trip showed a 60% higher purchase completion rate, and it repeated the 60% figure in February. That was a claim about conversion rate, whether a shopping trip ends in a purchase. The 2026 claims concern the size of the order once it is placed.

Between July and October the number rose from over 40% to 50%, and the population narrowed. The July figure, as PPC Land reported it, carried no country limit. Jassy's October figure applies to "U.S. customers." Amazon did not say whether the two are calculated the same way.

Spend per order is a version of average order value, and the comparison Jassy offered sets users of the assistant against non-users. It does not show whether the assistant causes larger orders, or whether shoppers who already place larger orders are more likely to open an AI assistant in the first place. Amazon published no methodology, no adjustment for product category or customer type, and no count of the orders involved. Nor did Jassy say whether the 50% describes orders placed through the assistant itself or all orders placed by people who have used it.

From 250 million to 400 million

Amazon has reported a user count for its shopping assistant at most quarterly results since the autumn of 2025. The windows differ, and so does the product's name.

Results published Name used Customers Engagement Purchase claim
October 30, 2025 Rufus 250 million active customers in 2025 Monthly users up 140%, interactions up 210% 60% higher purchase completion; on track for over $10 billion in incremental annualized sales
February 6, 2026 Rufus More than 300 million in 2025 Not reported 60% higher purchase completion
July 30, 2026 Alexa for Shopping More than 350 million over 12 months Active users close to doubling; interactions up more than fivefold Over 40% more per order
October 29, 2026 Alexa for Shopping More than 400 million over 12 months Interactions up 570% US users spend 50% more per order

Sources: Amazon, as reported by PPC Land for October 2025, February 2026 and July 2026; Jassy's remarks on the October 29, 2026 call.

The two trailing-12-month figures differ by at least 50 million customers, by PPC Land's calculation. Because each counts anyone who used the assistant at least once during a rolling year, the difference cannot be read as 50 million new users in three months. An increase of 570% means interactions were about 6.7 times their level of a year earlier, also by PPC Land's calculation, compared with the "more than fivefold" growth Amazon described in July.

What has disappeared from the disclosures is a sales figure. When it created Alexa for Shopping in May, Amazon said Rufus had helped more than 300 million customers in 2025, and PPC Land reported that Rufus generated nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales that year. Jassy gave no comparable number for Alexa for Shopping on October 29.

"The primary shopping agent customers use to shop Amazon"

Jassy also set out what Amazon expects the assistant to become. "Though we anticipate working with horizontal agents, we believe Alexa for Shopping is going to be the primary shopping agent customers use to shop Amazon," Jassy said. "Having a shopping assistant constantly by your side as you browse, get inspired, have questions on product detail pages, and that you can simply ask to buy something based on your prior purchases that already have your history, your shipping address, and payment info, is uniquely helpful and convenient for customers."

Jassy did not define horizontal agents or name any. In context, the term covers general-purpose assistants built by other companies that research and buy across many retailers, as opposed to an assistant that lives inside one store. He gave no timetable and did not say what working with them would involve.

The case he made for Amazon's own agent rests on information Amazon already holds: purchase history, a delivery address and stored payment details. That is first-party data in its most commercially useful form, and an outside agent would have to obtain it from the customer, or act inside the customer's Amazon account, to match it.

Amazon's record with outside agents so far has been restrictive. In an update to its robots.txt file discovered on August 21, 2025, it restricted AI bots from Meta, Google, Huawei, Mistral and other technology firms, after earlier restrictions covering agents from Anthropic, Perplexity and Google's Project Mariner. On November 4, 2025, it sued Perplexity in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that the shopping agent in Perplexity's Comet browser presented itself as Chrome rather than identifying its activity as automated. A judge granted Amazon a preliminary injunction on March 9, 2026, and the Ninth Circuit stayed that order pending appeal later in March.

Jassy has nonetheless left the door open before. On the October 30, 2025 earnings call, days before the lawsuit, he said Amazon was having conversations with potential third-party agent partners. A year later, he still described working with horizontal agents as something Amazon anticipates, and he named no partner. Other companies, meanwhile, are building the plumbing for agents that shop across stores. In January, Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open standard co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart and endorsed by more than 20 other companies. Amazon was not among them.

There is an asymmetry in Amazon's position. Its own assistant is not confined to Amazon. When it launched Alexa for Shopping, Amazon said customers could discover and buy products from retailers across the web, not just Amazon, through a feature called Shop Direct, with its Buy for Me agent completing purchases of eligible products on other sites.

Outside agents and Amazon Ads

Jassy raised the advertising question himself, moments after reporting the quarter's ad revenue. "The natural question is whether agentic shopping from external horizontal agents is meaningfully impacting Amazon Ads. The answer is no," he said. "Few customers are doing much shopping this way yet, as the experience is still not great nor more convenient than coming to a retailer directly to research or one-click order there."

He offered no data to support the assessment: no share of visits, orders or ad impressions arriving through outside agents, and no indication of how Amazon measures that traffic. His reasoning concerned customer behaviour rather than the mechanics of advertising.

The mechanics are the reason the question exists. Amazon's sponsored ads appear in search results and on product pages that a shopper looks at. An agent that searches, compares and checks out on a customer's behalf does not need to show those pages to a person. PPC Land set out that exposure in April, in its analysis of why Amazon's ad business hangs on the Perplexity lawsuit: an assistant shopping for a user does not scroll past sponsored products.

"Yet" is the operative word in Jassy's answer. He described the current state of outside agents, not a forecast, and the phrase "still not great" leaves room for the experience to improve.

Ads inside Amazon's own assistant

Amazon's preferred alternative is an agent it controls, and it already sells placements inside it. Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands prompts launched as a free beta at unBoxed on November 11, 2025, and on March 25, 2026 they became billable under existing cost-per-click bids in the United States, with no separate bid for prompts. At the first-quarter results in April, Amazon said nearly 20% of shoppers who interact with a Brand Prompt in Rufus continue the conversation about that brand. In July, Jassy said shoppers who click a sponsored prompt convert to a sale 48% more often and spend 21% more on average.

The October call added nothing to that record. Jassy did not mention sponsored prompts, did not say how ads appear in Alexa for Shopping conversations on Echo devices, and gave no figure for advertising revenue earned inside the assistant. That gap matters because an assistant's answer is a much shorter list than a results page. Research by Workflow Labs, published in April, found that Rufus compresses discovery from 50 results to roughly five named products. The figure is the firm's, not Amazon's.

On the buying side, Jassy described two products introduced at unBoxed 2026 on September 29. Amazon Ads Agent, he said, "brings together our full advertising offering under a single AI-first platform. Backed by trillions of shopping, browsing, and streaming signals, it supports advertisers at every step with insights, answers, and the ability to optimize and act on their behalf." In full-funnel campaigns, which bring sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV into a single campaign, "Advertisers provide initial inputs, including budget and duration, and Amazon's AI plans, executes, and continually optimizes the rest." Taken together with Alexa for Shopping, Amazon's AI is now positioned to decide both which products a shopper is shown and where an advertiser's money is spent.

The quarter in brief

Advertising revenue was $19.6 billion in the third quarter, up 12% year over year, Jassy said. Amazon's earnings release, published shortly before the call, put advertising services revenue at $19,637 million, up 10.9% as reported and 12% excluding currency effects, against 26% growth in the second quarter. On the call he put a number on the cost of moving Prime Day into the second quarter for most countries: "For advertising, that was 850 basis points sequential impact to Q3 year-over-year growth." He cited two other factors. The second quarter of 2026 included the first season of NBA on Prime, and the third quarter included no NBA games. And the quarter lapped a change Amazon made a year earlier to its search engine marketing.

"In Q3 2025, we changed our search engine marketing programs to drive more traffic to search pages on Amazon," Jassy said. "It's a better experience for customers, and we also monetize that traffic at a higher rate. That helped accelerate advertising revenue growth starting a year ago, and we started lapping that in Q3." Jassy did not say which search engines or ad formats were involved. Nor did he say whether the change was connected to Amazon's withdrawal from Google Shopping ads between July 21 and July 23, 2025, or to its return to Google Shopping on August 25, 2025 in international markets, though not in the United States. He said he expects year-over-year ad growth to "return to the high teens in Q4."

The remark explains part of the ad slowdown, and it also describes where Amazon wants shoppers to land: on its own search results, where sponsored placements are sold and where, by Jassy's account, the traffic earns more.

Jassy also said Amazon had launched "our most powerful devices lineup yet with 34 new products across Echo, Kindle, Alexa tablets, Fire TV, Ring, and Bee." Several of those devices run Alexa. He gave no sales figures: "It's early, but we're off to a very strong start and excited for more customers to get their hands on these as we head into the holidays."

What the call did not cover

None of the six analysts who asked questions raised Alexa for Shopping, and none asked about advertising. Their questions covered AWS growth and margins, Jassy's view that AWS could become a trillion-dollar revenue business, robotics, perishable grocery delivery, Amazon Bedrock, external sales of Trainium chips and capital spending. Several points about the assistant were therefore left unaddressed:

  • Whether the 400 million figure counts customers who used Rufus before the May 13 merger, and in which countries it was measured.
  • What Amazon counts as a customer interaction.
  • How the 50% per-order gap is calculated, and whether it covers orders placed through the assistant or all orders by people who have used it.
  • Incremental sales attributable to Alexa for Shopping, comparable to the figure given for Rufus in 2025.
  • Revenue, impression or click figures for sponsored prompts or any other advertising inside the assistant.
  • Which horizontal agents Amazon expects to work with, on what terms and from when.
  • How much traffic, or how many orders, reach Amazon through outside agents.

Why it matters for marketers

For brands that sell on Amazon, an assistant used by 400 million customers changes where the shelf is. A search results page shows dozens of products and several sponsored slots. An assistant's answer names a handful, and Amazon's systems decide which ones. If Jassy is right that Alexa for Shopping becomes the main way customers shop Amazon, the placements that count will increasingly be those inside the conversation, priced through the same cost-per-click auction as Amazon's sponsored ads.

The second implication concerns the boundary of Amazon's retail media network. Jassy's two statements on agents fit together. Outside agents are not yet a threat to ad revenue because few customers use them, and Amazon intends its own agent to be the one customers do use. Both depend on shoppers continuing to start their journeys on Amazon, whether in the app, on the website or on an Echo device.

Every number Jassy gave about the assistant is Amazon's own, unaudited and without a published method, which is normal for an earnings call. The 50% gap, the 570% growth and the 400 million total show how widely the assistant is used and how its users differ from everyone else. They do not show what the assistant changes about how people buy.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Amazon.com, Inc. and its chief executive Andy Jassy, who spoke on the company's third-quarter earnings call; the brands, sellers and agencies that advertise on Amazon; and the operators of general-purpose AI agents, whom Jassy did not name.

What: Jassy said more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping, the assistant Amazon formed by merging Rufus and Alexa+, over the previous 12 months, that customer interactions rose 570% year over year, and that US customers who use it spend 50% more per order than those who do not. He said Amazon expects Alexa for Shopping to be the primary agent customers use to shop Amazon while anticipating work with horizontal agents, and that shopping through outside agents is not meaningfully affecting Amazon Ads because few customers shop that way yet. He gave no sales figure for the assistant, no methodology for the per-order comparison and no data on advertising inside it.

When: The call took place on October 29, 2026, after Amazon published results for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. Alexa for Shopping has carried that name since May 13, 2026.

Where: Alexa for Shopping is available to US customers on the Amazon Shopping app, the Amazon website and Echo Show devices. The 50% per-order figure covers US customers; Amazon did not say where the 400 million customers were counted. Sponsored prompts are billable in the United States.

Why: The assistant increasingly sits between shoppers and product listings on Amazon, narrows the choice a shopper sees, and carries ad placements priced through cost-per-click bids. Amazon's ad business depends on shoppers browsing its own pages, which is why Jassy chose to address outside agents unprompted, and why the lack of method behind the 50% and 570% figures limits what they show about the assistant's effect on buying.