Amazon says more than 400M customers have used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months

More than 400 million customers have now used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months, up from 350 million at the end of July. Meanwhile, customers who use Alexa for Shopping are spending 50% more than those who don’t, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s earnings call on last Thursday. 

The figures represent how AI shopping has become a powerful growth lever for Amazon and a way to nudge shoppers toward more sales, especially in a time when the business has matured and growth in other areas is harder to come by. 

On Thursday, Amazon reported that net sales for the third quarter came in at $201.9 billion, up 12% from last year. The bulk of that came from Amazon Web Services, or AWS, which reported segment sales up 39% year over year. 

Growth in many of Amazon’s e-commerce-related segments slowed during the quarter. However, much of that was because Prime Day was held at the end of June this year, rather than in mid-July. As a result, Amazon recorded the sales growth from Prime Day in the second quarter; last year, it was recorded in the third quarter. 

Online Stores revenue was up 2% year over year. Last year, during the third quarter, Amazon reported that online Stores revenue grew 10% between the third quarter of 2024 and 2025. 

Similarly, third-party seller services and advertising services grew 12% and 24%, respectively, between the third quarter of 2024 and the third quarter of 2025. By contrast, between the third quarter of 2025 and the third quarter of 2026, they grew 9% and 11%, respectively. 

The public-facing history of Alexa for Shopping goes back three years. In February 2024, Amazon released an AI shopping assistant that was then known as Rufus. In May of this year, Amazon rebranded Rufus to Alexa for Shopping, choosing to adopt the name of its conversational voice assistant many shoppers were already used to. 

Since then, Amazon has made Alexa for Shopping more visible on its website and app, and added new capabilities. 

Also on Thursday, Amazon announced more than 100 new capabilities for Alexa for Shopping ahead of the holidays, including the ability to create and edit gift lists and registries, through queries like “show me what’s left on my wedding registry.” Shoppers can now also manage Subscribe and Save through Alexa for Shopping, including pausing or canceling certain subscriptions. 

Amazon has made headlines for its walled-garden approach to AI, as it has blocked platforms like ChatGPT and Meta’s Muse shopping agent from scraping its site. 

Jassy hinted during Thursday’s earnings call that that may eventually change — which he has said before — but ultimately, he said, the company wants to push as many customers to Alexa for Shopping as possible.

“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.