Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) CEO & President Andy Jassy on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” (M-F, 4PM-5PM ET) today, Thursday, July 6. Following are links to video on CNBC.com.
Interview With Amazon CEO & President Andy Jassy
JON FORTT: I am here in Seattle at Amazon headquarters with Andy Jassy, the CEO. Thanks for being with us here on Overtime, Andy.
ANDY JASSY: Thanks for having me.
FORTT: So tight labor market had investors a bit worked up today. We’ve got the jobs report tomorrow and UPS, I mean, looks like there might be a strike because workers want more wages, better hours. What’s the potential impact, say of a UPS strike on Amazon given that you’ve built up your own logistics capabilities over last few years?
JASSY: Well, to your point, because we have built a last mile transportation network roughly the size of UPS over the last couple of years, we’re much less exposed than other companies. Most of our shipments go through our own last mile transportation network.
FORTT: So, in a way it could be good for you if people have to rely on something that’s a little bit more consistent, and they’re going through that.
JASSY: I don’t think of it that way. I don’t think you ever want to see conflict and I think it’s real people’s lives, but just from an Amazon perspective, because we have our own last mile transportation network where most of the shipments run through it, we’re not as exposed.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy: Prime Day Will Have The Most Deals We’ve Ever Had
FORTT: Let’s talk about Prime Day. It’s next week. One Prime Day or two this year?
JASSY: Two days. So Prime Day is July 11 and 12. We’re very excited about it. For us Prime –
FORTT: Like one event or two events because last year you had –
JASSY: It is one event, just two days.
FORTT: You had two events, right? There was the early Prime Day and the –
JASSY: Well, we did one in July and then we did one just before the beginning of the holidays. It was an early access sale for the holidays.
FORTT: Do you know if you’re going to do that again, or is this the one and only?
JASSY: I don’t think we’ve announced it yet, but it was very successful last year and customers loved it as an early way to get a start on the holiday season. But you know, Prime Day for us, which is annually in July and this year it is July 11 and 12, is a great way for us to thank our Prime customers. And for our Prime customers, it’s an opportunity to have a broad array of products at very deep discounts. So this year, we’ll have millions of deals.
The most we’ve ever had across every category you can imagine whether it’s consumer electronics or premium beauty products or home items or kitchen appliances, apparel, or toys, everything you can imagine across, the deals are really broad.
So if you look at – you can get up to half off on Peloton bikes or accessories or apparel related to Peloton or, you know, everyday kitchen items like from Keurig or from Vitamix or laptops from HP or Dell or Samsung or LG – really virtually everything you can imagine.
And it’s also the time where we often provide incredible deals on our own devices whether it’s our 43 inch Omni series TVs or our Echo and Alexa enabled devices, our Fire TVs or Ring or Blink security camera systems or Eero routers – really everything that you can imagine this year for the first time we have this program called Buy with Prime, which allow other third party merchants off of Amazon to be able to offer Prime customers the ability to check out via Prime and they’re going to do Prime Day deals as well.
So customers even off of Amazon will have an extension of Prime Day. So it’s just a great opportunity for customers to get a broad array of items on discount and we’re ready to giddy up.
FORTT: Big driver of new Prime subscriptions?
JASSY: It is.
FORTT: What is the way that you measure success in a year like this when inflation has been pretty high, consumers under strain, a lot of our trading down. What does success look like for this year’s Prime Day?
JASSY: First and foremost, we want – I mean, if you look at what’s happening with consumers right now, they’re buying, but they’re very conscious about price. It’s an uncertain economy. And so whereas in the past you have multiple variations of the product and people might shade towards the higher price variations, you’re seeing the opposite.
People are trading down whenever they can, and they’re quite interested in bargain hunting. And so it’s why we’ve worked with our hundreds of thousands of selling partners to provide millions of deals in this Prime Day.
So we want customers in an uncertain economy where they’re very conscious about price, where they want to extend their dollar, to be able to have a very broad assortment of items they can buy at deeply discounted prices. And so that’s what we’re hopeful they’ll get in Prime Day and I think that’s what they will.
FORTT: Speaking of price conscious consumers. I was looking at the Amazon app today, already big Prime Day stuff there and then I was looking at the Whole Foods app, and it just said you know, Prime members save.
There wasn’t any Prime Day stuff. Your competitor Walmart is doing quite well right now on consumers who are looking for access to grocery, fresh grocery at a better price. You guys have Whole Foods. Why no Prime Day there? Is there a way to connect with that price conscious consumer on food, too?
JASSY: Well, it’s early. I mean remember, Prime Day will start in another week or so and so we leave plenty of time there. But, you know, we have a very significant grocery business today, you know, and some of it is non-traditional grocery.
If you look at, you know, the non-temperature controlled items are consumables and canned goods and pet food and beauty products and we – it’s a very significant business but we also in the physical space, we know that when we will be able to serve more customers in grocery space, we have to have a physical grocery presence.
And if you look at Whole Foods, which really is the pioneer of the organic foods market, it is continuing to grow very well. It’s on a very good profitability trajectory and customers love the service. So we’ll continue to expand it. You can bet that we’re gonna continue to be aggressive there on price as well which is unusual relative to that category and you know, keep looking for it.
FORTT: I will keep looking for it. Shifting gears here, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen just arrived today in China. I believe her people are saying that market access is one of the things that she’s going to be working on. And this is happening at the same time I think this month you’re shutting down access to buying new Kindle books in China. How would you describe Amazon’s market access to China?
JASSY: Well, you know, we haven’t had a large retail business in China for a long time. And, you know, several years ago, we narrowed that considerably. We have an AWS in our cloud computing business, there are Chinese customers who use AWS, both outside of China and other AWS regions around the world, as well as in China.
And then we have a number of Western companies who are used to using AWS and want to use it AWS everywhere they go, who also want to use AWS in China. So we have probably more limited access to it than some other companies, but we still have some.
FORTT: Is that something that it would benefit Amazon – if Yellen, if this administration can get China to open up some market access to U.S. companies?
JASSY: Well, you know, I think the devil is always in the details with respect to which industry you’re talking about. What the rules would be today, again, you know, for the businesses in which we do a meaningful amount of business in China, we have access. What would be helpful is if the rules were more or less symmetric with respect to what U.S. companies are able to do in China with what Chinese companies could do in the U.S.
FORTT: Well let’s talk about that a bit. So one of the things the administration has floated is the idea that Chinese companies wouldn’t have access to kind of AI-grade cloud computing resources through hyper scalers, through cloud providers, like Amazon. Do you have a sense of how that would affect Amazon if Chinese companies couldn’t access AI scale computing on AWS?
JASSY: Well, the reality is that there are some very strong cloud providers who are Chinese cloud providers in China. So Chinese companies in China are going to have access to AI capabilities, whether they come from U.S. companies, European companies, or Chinese companies.
FORTT: But the administration is trying to particularly it seems block off access to high performing AI chips like the top and from Nvidia for example – which U.S. companies can buy, and I guess they don’t want an end around where, hey, if I’m a Chinese customer, I can’t buy those chips directly. Or, you know, my cloud provider in China can’t buy those chips directly, but I can get on Amazon’s cloud or Microsoft’s cloud, etc. and get access that way. Is that how you would see it?
JASSY: Well, I see it a little bit differently, which is just if you’re a company that’s going to use cloud computing, the chip that you use is embedded in the compute – that you use as part of the compute service. And there are compute services in China from companies that are Chinese companies and American companies that are comparable. And so I don’t believe it’s going to shut off access to sophisticated AI for China.
The Government Has To Be Careful With Regulation Of Chinese Retailers
FORTT: Interesting. So then on the e-commerce side, I’m sure you’ve seen this site Temu, right? And it’s not the only one, but offering ridiculously cheap deals on things. And there’s a move in Congress to say that this is unfair, that there’s this sort of rule loophole perhaps that if you’re shipping something directly from China worth less than $800 into the U.S., you don’t pay tax.
And that’s part of what’s helping these companies like Temu to have really cheap access. Is that something that you think needs to change? Is that perhaps an Amazon competitor in China that’s rising up here?
JASSY: Again, I don’t really think of it that way. I mean, when you’re talking about regulation, I think you always have to think about what is it that you’re trying to regulate and why. And based on however I define the regulation, will I have unintended negative consequences.
And so I think the thing you have to worry about if you’re talking about applying a tariff to products coming in from China is what are you actually accomplishing and who might you hurt? I think about it, you know, I see it in lots of marketplaces, including our own, where you’ve got Chinese sellers, who used to – who are always manufacturing the products they used to sell to American or European retailers.
They’d sell it wholesale and then they would repackage it and charge more to consumers here in the U.S. Where now, where Chinese sellers have direct access to consumers, they’re selling direct to consumers and at a lower price for consumers. And so you have to make sure that whatever regulation you put in place, you don’t end up accidentally creating higher prices for U.S. consumers, particularly at a time where consumers are sensitive about price.
FORTT: So, it seems like maybe you’re saying even platforms like Amazon, have third party retailers, who are maybe using that access and then offering those prices to Amazon’s customers.
JASSY: Yeah, again, to me on the regulation, you have to make sure you understand what you’re trying to accomplish and you could really hurt U.S. consumers at a time that’s probably not a good time to increase people’s prices.
We Expect 2023 To Have The Fastest Shipping Times For Prime Customers Ever
FORTT: How has the supply chain evened out if it has over the past several quarters since that crunch that we were experiencing, particularly during the pandemic? And how close do you feel like you are to the kind of equilibrium that you wanted in the logistics operation? You had a little bit of overcapacity a few quarters ago.
JASSY: Well, they’re different issues. I would say on the supply chain side, it is – I wouldn’t say it’s completely back to normal, but it’s in a much better state than it was a year or two ago. And you can see that in everybody’s instock levels.
And as I said, you can find places – when you go to physical stores, you can find places where you look on the shelves and you say there must be a problem with these types of products. But it is a lot better than it was before.
You know, and then I would say on the logistics side, you know, I’d say one of the things that the team and I are most proud of right now is just the way that we have substantially improved the speed with which we’re able to get products to our customers. And this year, we’re shipping products faster to customers than we ever have before.
We expect 2023 to be the fastest shipping times for Prime customers we’ve ever had. And customers really care a lot about getting their products and their items and their shipments quickly.
FORTT: Still?
JASSY: Yeah. Oh, I would tell you. I mean, there’s two things that are really interesting about speed in retail. One is that we’ve tested so many different things over the years and have various conditions where over and over again, we learn that when we make a faster promise on a product detail page, customers convert at a higher rate. They really care about faster delivery. And then the other thing is it turns –
FORTT: So people aren’t willing to trade down on speed. They’ll trade down on the product. But like if you were to offer them – and you do in some cases, hey, save a little bit by taking this a day later. They’re like “ Eh, no. I’d rather have it sooner.”?
JASSY: It depends on the person. And you know, it’s a multivariate decision for people, but speed matters an incredible amount to people. And you know, and it turns out that faster speeds equal lower cost for us when we have the right underlying infrastructure.
So when we started moving more and more shipments to one day back in 2019, we didn’t yet have that infrastructure in place. We were building at the same time that we were moving to one day. But you know, and then the pandemic hit and turned everything upside down.
But we’ve spent the last year reevaluating every part of our fulfillment network and doing a bunch of redesigning and you know – return the U.S. network from a national network to a regional network and we changed all our placement logic.
And if you look at our local instocks so that the fulfillment centers closer to end users are ones that have everything they need. We’re getting products to customers much faster than ever before.
And faster delivery means customers are happier, it means lower costs for us because the transportation distances are shorter and it is better for the environment. So there’s a lot of upside still in continuing to improve speed of delivery to customers. And I think we’re not close to the law of diminishing returns there yet.
FORTT: Interesting. And inventory turns are better, you know, time that you have to hold that in a warehouse. It’s just costing you money. And I guess if you deliver it faster, you don’t have to worry about that. Well, I want to talk a lot more about cloud and AI.
We’re going to take a quick break, but there’s a question I always ask you about AWS. And your answer is always a little bit – I mean, it’s kind of the same, but nuance different based on the time. So that’s coming up. We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back.
AI Represents One Of The Biggest Transformations In Our Lifetime
FORTT: Welcome back to “Overtime.” I am Jon Fortt, here in Seattle at Amazon Headquarters with Andy Jassy, the CEO. This is a tradition with us now I don’t even know how many years it’s been, probably eight or more. And I’ve tended to ask you just about every time we sit down what is the possibility, the likelihood that you’re going to spin out AWS from Amazon? I mean Lina Khan would like it.
JASSY: Jon, when we’re 80, we’ll get a drink together and you’re gonna be asking me the same question whether or not it’s relevant or not, but I don’t have a new answer for you. We don’t have any intention or plan to do so.
FORTT: So in the AI era, why in particular, is there a different kind of benefit that you get from having the ecommerce business and the cloud business in the same structure? I mean, I know that the profits from cloud, from AWS certainly help. What about the artificial intelligence angle?
JASSY: I don’t think the artificial intelligence angle changes, you know, how you’re structured as a company. Every single business unit inside Amazon is working intensely and very broadly on generative AI and in fact in many ways, sharing what we’re working on and what we’re learning and ways that we can be more effective for customers and models is very useful across different departments inside of Amazon.
FORTT: Okay, so let’s talk about AI because I’m not gonna, you guys haven’t exactly been quiet about it because you’ve been talking about AI for a while, but your rivals, particularly, you know, Microsoft, Google, have been louder.
So Adam Selipsky who is now heading AWS post you said well this is just the first three steps right of an AI race, so don’t pay too much attention to that. You guys were the first movers in cloud. And you’re still ahead, so the risk that because you’re not the first mover here in at least in this AI hype cycle that you can get behind?
JASSY: Well, I mean, hype cycle is pretty different than substance cycle. And so, to me, I think Adam’s right that we’re just a few steps into a marathon here. At you know, to me, I see generative AI is one of the biggest technical transformations in our lifetimes.
And I think it has the ability to transform virtually every customer experience that we know and I think most people are focused on the applications, you know, things like ChatGPT brought everybody’s awareness up, but I think of general AI is having kind of three macro layers and I think they’re all really big and important.
At the bottom layer is the compute that all of the machine learning, training and inference, which are the predictions from the models that are going to be run on and what matters in that computer is the chip in there. And to date, there has really been one chip provider, which is you know, the supply is more scarce and it’s expensive.
FORTT: You’re talking about NVIDIA?
JASSY: And it’s why we’ve invested over the last few years in our own customized training chips that we call training and inference chips that we call Inferentia which will have much better price performance than you’ll find anywhere else. We’re on the second version of those chips and we’re quite optimistic but a lot of machine learning training and inference will be done in AWS chips and compute.
FORTT: Are you benchmarking those versus NVIDIA?
JASSY: We’re benchmarking versus everything that’s out there. It’s meaningfully better price performance, which is going to matter again think about the scale of compute here involved in doing machine learning. Then at that middle layer, it’s really the foundational model on which these large language models in which these applications are built.
And I think there’s gonna really only be my opinion, six to eight of these really large foundational models and they’re going to take billions of dollars a year, and many to train and many years to have models be great. And most companies we speak with on the AWS side say I don’t want to spend billions of dollars on the model or years.
What they really want is they want to take that foundational model and then they want to customize it with their own data without leaking any of that custom data into the generalized model and then they want it with all the same platform capabilities or security capabilities they get in AWS and that’s why we announced Bedrock, which is really foundational models and service, where we expose both our own large language models we’ve built at Amazon, which we call Titan, as well as third party large language models like from Anthropic or Stability AI or AI21 and building more over time and so this is a game changer with respect to how fast a company can build a generative AI application on top of the large language model.
FORTT: So to clarify, Bedrock is your answer to open AI and you know, what Google’s doing with with Bard and—
JASSY: Bedrock is that middle layer where it allows people have a foundational model that they can build their applications on top. That third layer which I was about to get to that top layer is the application layer. And that’s what ChatGPT or Bard are examples of, you know, we think another really big early general AI application is a code assistant where as a developer, I can type in a natural language I want a video web hosting website, and the code gets automatically pulled up that they can implement.
We have a service called CodeWhisperer that allows you to do that. That’s a huge game changer with respect to developer productivity. And we have in every single one of our internal businesses at Amazon, all those teams are really reinventing their customer experiences using generative AI so we’re building a bunch of those applications. But the overwhelming majority of those generative AI applications will be built by other companies. And we’re quite optimistic that people will build them on top of AWS so I think all three of those layers matter and we have a giant investment in all three.
FORTT: So developer mindshare is important here, right? Because on top of Bedrock, you’re going to need by industry key players, you know, key technology providers to be building models that work specifically for customer service or that work for construction or that work, you know, etc., or that work in healthcare for example. What’s Amazon’s unique advantage in building out that developer ecosystem that’s going to have those models available so the right applications can be built and enabled with that AI?
JASSY: I think it really is applicable to all three of those layers. So if you’re a company with the technical aptitude and will to want to build your own models and train your own models, what you’re really care about is the compute associated with doing machine learning, training and ultimately inference.
The funny thing is today because most models are still being trained, most of the expense is in the machine learning training, but once the model graduates to production, almost all the expenses in the inference like think about Alexa, you only train Alexa periodically but think about the billions of predictions that Alexa is spitting out every day. And so I think for those building their own models, they’re going to care a lot about the compute and chips.
For those that basically want to take the models not build themselves, but actually build applications on top of, they’re going to care about that middle layer, which is something like Bedrock, which there really isn’t an equivalent out there today like that. And we have experienced, if you think about Jon that we talked to reinvent many years ago when we were launching SageMaker which really makes a call a non-generative AI much easier to do.
It allows everyday developers to have access to it versus having to be an expert machine learning practitioner. That totally changed the game with respect to the ease with which you can do AI. I think BedRock can do the same thing for those trying to use generative, large language models to build generative AI applications so we’re gonna and we’re not done remember this is we tend not to be big hand wavers, we tend to talk about the things as we have them and we—
FORTT: Sometimes you wave the handd.
JASSY: Not that much. So we have a lot more coming and we have a giant investment there. And so we have some capabilities that are unique today but we also have some other things coming as well.
FORTT: So at that base layer, though you are in effect, not to reduce everything to a boxing match but you are competing with NVIDIA in in Trainium, in your inferencing chip with the pronunciation of—
JASSY: Inferentia.
FORTT: Inferentia, I always screw that up.
JASSY: It’s so easy to pronounce.
FORTT: Right. Trainium and Inferentia, you are competing in the sense that you’re saying our, our value here on these chips is going to be better and you’re going to want to be on our cloud because you’re going to be able to build on top of that. Right?
JASSY: I think that the customers, you know, there’s there is such a high appetite right now to do machine, generative AI and large language model training inference that people are going to use as much compute as you can give them. In fact, my prediction is that there’s going to be real scarcity on the ability to have this compute and so I think there’ll be several successful players and successful winners there too.
And by the way, we use NVIDIA for a number of things and so I think customers will use a lot of different chips but you know, when you talk about these types of opportunities to transform your business and your customer experience, and the amount of cost that’s involved if you listen to those who’ve trained large models and we’ve trained a lot of large models, having compelling price performance like Trainium and Inferentia is a big deal.
FORTT: So we’re talking a lot about chips. Let’s go back to bring China into the picture for a moment because there’s a lot of concern, a lot of these chips these custom chip designs are being manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan, and there’s a geopolitical shadow over Taiwan right now. How important is it to you to have domestic and other say western chip capability so that you can get these key chips for that AI future made in a diversity of places?
JASSY: I think it’s important. I think diversity of supply is incredibly important always. And what happens is, everybody intellectually knows that and then they kind of get lax on it and everything’s working and they’re getting everything and then there’s some kind of crisis, and then you realize that you wished you had, you know, supply diversity. And so, look, we’ve just gone through a pretty significant supply crisis over the last few years and we should learn from it.
FORTT: TSMC and Samsung are certainly working to build up capability here in the U.S. Intel is working particularly hard at it, not a lot of people betting that they’re going to succeed. Is that an important effort?
JASSY: I think the more successful capable high scaled players we have the better. You know, I have, I think we’ll have Pat Gelsinger and I think we’ll have Intel, they’ve been a very significant partner over the years for Amazon, and so I’m hopeful.
FORTT: So right now, the economy has been choppy. The markets have been up very strongly in the first half. But is it still sort of hazy what the conditions are going to be like in the second half or has it gotten clearer?
JASSY: I think it’s pretty uncertain. It’s really I mean, it’s hard to know and you probably know this better than me Jon because you talk to so many people that it every day, but people have divergent views on what’s going to happen in the second half and then what’s going to happen in 2024. And so, you know, I think everybody is proceeding cautiously. There are certain parts of the world that haven’t been as bad as everybody expected them to be and there are other parts where you can just see that tentativeness and so we’ll have to see.
FORTT: Are you referring to Europe when you’re saying not as bad as it can—
JASSY: Yeah, yeah.
FORTT: What are you seeing there?
JASSY: I think that, I think everybody planned something worse in Europe. And I think that it just didn’t pan out that way and the energy crisis wasn’t as bad as everybody thought it was gonna be and some of the government stepped in and helped. And so I think we’ve seen what probably other folks are seeing too is just we planned for worse there.
FORTT: So what, has that made you shift when you expect for the rest of the year there, there is some pretty intense inflationary pressure especially in the UK, which is like geographically, Europe, if not economically.
JASSY: Well, I don’t think, I don’t think any of us believe we’re out of the woods with the economy. I, as I said, I think there’s a lot of uncertainty and I don’t think anybody knows what the next several months are gonna be like, and, you know, like everybody, we’ve got a plan and, you know, we had a plan the last few years to and things change.
So we’re pretty, you know, we’re being, we spent a lot of time as a company, we continue to spend time really looking hard at all our businesses and trying to be as lean as we can be on cost while making sure we preserve the key investments and whether we think can meaningfully change customer experiences in the company long term. I think so far we’ve done a pretty good job of that.
I’m Very Bullish On Where Prime Video Is Headed
FORTT: Speaking of, there’s some people saying that you’re looking very closely at the cost of associated with content in Prime Video. Put that into context for me. It costs a lot of money to make content ,you guys have spent a lot “Lord of the Rings,” some other shows. Are you going back and saying show me why this stuff has to cost so much?
JASSY: I’m looking hard at the cost of every one of our businesses all the time. And I actually think leadership teams do that, you know, you’re, we have a pretty significant number of bets that we’re making and they’re long-term bets.
But, you know, you always have to look at whether you’re allocating the resource as efficiently as you possibly could even when you’re making bets and you’re pursuing them over a long period of time. I, you know, to me in the in the case of Prime Video, I’m very bullish on where we’re headed.
You know, as we continue to grow the number of people watching Prime Video content, the content continues to get better and better, you know, “Lord of the Rings” had over 100 million viewers, Thursday Night Football had a great first year. Look at “Jack Ryan” and “Reacher,” “Terminal List” and “Citadel,” “Jury Duty” if you haven’t seen “Jury Duty,” you guys should all watch to “Jury Duty,” it’s very funny.
But the content continues to get better and better. And, you know, and then I look at our, our, more and more customers are joining Prime because of the Prime Video benefit then when they join—
FORTT: Because of the benefit not because of the shipping.
JASSY: Because of the benefit more and more customers particularly out of the United States join because of the Prime Video benefit and then when they join, they very often will end up shopping in our ecommerce business so really drives Prime and then if you look at the marketplace part of the Prime Video business, it’s also pretty compelling so you can rent or buy anything on demand virtually anything on demand and then we have a channels program with third party media providers that can adjust their content in Prime Video and they can sell subscriptions to Prime members and that has been a very successful business and so that you know that marketplace part of the business also it’s significant.
It’s gotten big, we like the economics and while Prime Video is really good at driving our Prime value for our consumer business, I also think it’s going to have good standalone economics. I’m very bullish about our Prime Video business.
FORTT: Okay, we’ll have to talk more about that. Now, I want to pivot last minute and talk Supreme Court because last week decision about racial preferences in higher education. You and I have talked about education in the past community college efforts that Amazon has, the efforts inside your warehouses to get access to education for that workforce. Post that decision, have you looked are you looking at Amazon’s policies as they regard diversity and as they regard education for any changes or no?
JASSY: Well, we will, look, we will always abide by the law of the land and the Supreme Court obviously made a decision but I think if you, if you think about what we do at Amazon across all the businesses across how many hundreds of millions of customers that we serve and the diversity across all those hundreds of millions of customers if you want to do what we do and do it well, you must have a diverse workforce or you won’t build the right products. And so we have believed for a very long time that that’s important.
The team and I continue to passionately believe that and we will keep working on it. And you know you and I have talked about this a lot and I think I think in the U.S. that we really underrate the educational crisis we have right now in the country. We are ranked 35 out of 50 developed countries in education. And if we don’t believe that’s going to impact our future, we’re kidding ourselves. And there are a number of kids in lower socio-economic parts, you know, areas of the country who don’t get access to the same quality of education that people in more affluent neighborhoods do and I think that’s not right and I think we have to work together as a country to address that.
FORTT: Okay. Now finally, there are a lot of responsibilities, opportunities that come with being a CEO and lately one of them a little bit of a surprise to me, but it’s it’s become prominent in tech. Cage matches. Are we going to see you turning up challenging anybody to a cage match?
JASSY: I wouldn’t bet on that.
FORTT: But if you were to get into one, I might bet and probably bet on you because you have a strong track record and all kinds of—
JASSY: I don’t know if you’ve seen me fight before Jon.
FORTT: I haven’t seen any major CEOs fight but it looks like we might not say that at this time next year.
JASSY: Yeah, it’s possible. It’s certainly a lot of people talking about it.
We Have A Lot Of Growth In Front Of Us
FORTT: I said finally but I got a mark the moment it’s been two years that you’ve been in this seat as CEO, and very often, it happened to Steve Ballmer, right when Bill Gates stepped out right as Microsoft stock was hitting a peak, it seems to have happened to you too looking back at 2021. Give me your sense of what’s been the most challenging thing about these two years and how does the stock price fit into that if it does at all?
JASSY: Well, you know, I think that it’s an incredible honor to be the CEO of Amazon. I grew up with the company. I’ve been here for 26 years. And I love Amazon and I am so passionate like so many of my teammates about the mission of what we do to to have a mission to make customers’ lives easier and better every day and to relentlessly invent to do so I mean, we’re all customers of a lot of businesses. It’s an inspiring mission so I feel very lucky to do it.
Every era that you lead whether it’s a team or group or business unit or company is different. And so, you know, I think the last couple of years, I don’t think any of us predicted that we would have a global pandemic or that we would have the labor shortage we had or we would have the war in Ukraine or that we would have the economy.
I mean there were a lot of things that you didn’t, you wouldn’t have predicted and so anything you thought the job might be, go out the door pretty quickly, where you know, depending on the circumstances in which you’re in, but, you know, we like a lot of companies.
We had to make a lot of hard decisions, and they’ve been there’s been a lot of change, but I’ll tell you, I mean, it’s the thing that makes it easier at a place like Amazon is that the culture is so strong and it is so strong about knowing that what matters most is what customers care about and then building all your strategies and tactics backwards from there.
And that has been really our compass throughout this and when I look at when I look at what’s happening with the business, I look at simple, like two simple facts in our two biggest businesses. In our retail business, we have about 1% of the global retail market segment share and 85% of it lives in physical stores still and we still have about a $470 billion business in retail. And in AWS, we have an $85 billion revenue run rate business in 90 plus percent of the global IT spend is on premises.
So if you believe that the equations in those two businesses are going to flip from physical to online, or on premises to the cloud, which I do, we have a lot of growth in front of us if we continue to provide the best customer experience. By the way, that takes a lot of work. We have about three to five years of roadmap, roadmap items to continue on that path. But we have a lot of growth in front of us and that doesn’t include all the new investments and businesses that we’re working on so I am incredibly optimistic about what lies ahead for customers and for our company.
FORTT: By the way I see it, that means there’s a lot more conversations for us to have about this big business that you’re growing and have had a big part and growing to this size. Andy, thanks for having me here at Amazon headquarters.
JASSY: Thanks Jon.
