Latest news with #RufusAI
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Members Needed More Time For Deals: Amazon Prime VP
Jamil Ghani, vice president of Amazon Prime, discusses the extension of Amazon's Prime Day from two to four days and how its Rufus AI tool is helping shoppers search deals. He joins Caroline Hyde on "Bloomberg Tech." (Source: Bloomberg)
Forbes
08-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Amazon ‘Buy For Me' Is The Latest Entrant In The AI Shopping Agent Race
GERMANY - 2025/04/06: In this photo illustration, logo is seen displayed on a monitor. ... More (Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) Amazon's new "Buy For Me" feature represents a stunning departure from the company's decades-long strategy of keeping customers within its walled garden. By enabling AI agents to purchase products directly from brand websites when items aren't available on Amazon, the retail giant is sacrificing short-term transaction revenue to maintain its position as consumers' first stop in an increasingly AI-driven shopping landscape. The feature, announced last week, is in beta for select U.S. customers, helps shoppers "discover and seamlessly purchase select products from other brands' sites if those items are not currently sold in Amazon's store," according to Amazon's announcement. What makes this particularly remarkable is how it contradicts Amazon's traditional approach to e-commerce. Scot Wingo, co-founder and CEO of ecommerce tech startup ReFiBuy and former CEO of ChannelAdvisor, called the initiative 'bonkers,' saying that Amazon has spent 31 years building a 'fortress' – a meticulously constructed a walled garden designed to keep shoppers within its ecosystem. Wingo points to the key elements of Amazon's competitive retail moat, being the Prime membership program, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), its own payment processing, and countless other features specifically to ensure transactions flow through Amazon's platform, generating fees and valuable data. While "Buy For Me" keeps users firmly within the Amazon app interface throughout the entire process (as I explain with my own experience with the beta program below) it also abandons almost all of these sacred cows which are central to its core retail business. The question is: why would Amazon seemingly kill its golden goose? The answer likely lies in Amazon's growing concern about AI shopping assistants potentially disrupting product discovery and purchase patterns – both of which are critical not only for its core business of selling physical products, but also for its ancillary but much more lucrative business of selling media space. I recently wrote about in my Forbes article on Amazon's patent for Alexa+, the company is racing to transform how consumers discover products through conversational AI, both within the web and app experience using its Rufus AI shopping assistant, and its nascent Alexa+ voice assistant. Amazon says that Amazon Nova and Anthropic's Claude models support the Amazon Shopping app's agentic capabilities to complete the purchase from start to finish on a customer's behalf. In my analysis of Amazon's 'Nova Act', I highlighted how Amazon is battling with OpenAI and others to control the future of AI-driven shopping agents, like Operator. I argue that the company that owns the AI assistant consumers trust to handle their shopping will dominate retail's future. "Buy For Me" represents another strategic move in this battle. By allowing its AI to complete purchases across the web, Amazon positions itself as the front door for all shopping journeys – even those that end on other websites. I was able to try the feature with footwear brand Rothy's, which began selling on Amazon as a third-party seller just a year ago. After searching for "Rothy's," I found the Buy For Me widget a couple of lines down on the search results page. What I discovered was particularly interesting: the variants in the Buy For Me widget appeared to be styles that aren't sold on Amazon by the brand (The Casual Clog, Rothy's Mens' Clog, The Loafer Mule). This suggests the feature helps brands show their full assortment to Amazon customers without making all variants available there. Screenshot from Amazon app showing how eligible products display in the "Buy For Me" experience. The experience of using Buy For Me was seamless, if not a little cold and joyless – I selected my size, clicked the button to buy, and received an order confirmation, all within the Amazon app without being taken elsewhere. The prices matched those on Rothy's website. Once I placed an order, it appeared in a separate section from my regular Amazon orders. In the workflow, Amazon also references a different feature that quietly appeared a few weeks ago: the ability to show customers products not available on when they search for a specific brand. Amazon said that the experience was designed to continue making shopping on Amazon convenient for customers. 'We're testing bringing more selection and brands into our search results to help customers find even more of what they want and further improve our shopping experience for customers,' Rajiv Mehta, VP of Search and Conversational Shopping at Amazon said. These two initiatives, when placed side-by-side, demonstrate that Amazon is prepared to take a hit on its core retail business in order to continue being the primary destination for consumers in their shopping journey. While Amazon seemingly sacrifices gross merchandise volume and merchant fees (at least while the program is in beta), the data collected through off-platform purchases provides the retail giant with increased visibility into consumer preferences. Every data point that Amazon collect on what a user's interests, preferences, and behaviors are enables more sophisticated targeting options for advertisers and also informs Amazon's own merchandising decisions. Some industry experts commenting on LinkedIn believe this is primarily a data and advertising play. As Jason Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis noted, "The bigger share of a customer wallet they see, the better they can target ads. They also squeeze out other digital wallets. Get early signals and new products sales velocity, etc." This theory makes sense given Amazon's growing emphasis on its advertising business, which has consistently outpaced its retail sales growth. By capturing data about purchases made on other websites, Amazon expands its ability to provide targeted advertising – potentially charging brands to influence which products are suggested through the Buy For Me feature. For brands, Buy For Me creates an interesting opportunity. It potentially allows them to maintain direct customer relationships while leveraging Amazon's massive traffic. Retailers using the feature can display their complete product assortment without providing their entire catalog on Amazon. Amazon is clearly taking an "innovator's dilemma" approach – focusing on aggregating shopper demand and delivering it, regardless of whether they own the inventory or collect the same merchant fees. One thing is certain: in the battle for AI shopping dominance, Amazon has just made a bold, unexpected move that signals how seriously they're taking the threat – and opportunity – of agentic AI in retail. The company appears willing to sacrifice some of its most cherished principles to ensure it remains the starting point for consumer shopping journeys, no matter where those journeys end.
Yahoo
16-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Trump reciprocal tariffs should terrify bulls in Apple, Amazon, and other tech plays
Big-cap tech stocks are usually priced at hefty premiums to the broader market for a few reasons. One, companies such as Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN) have lucrative recurring revenue streams on products and services that others can't easily replicate. (I was reminded of this on the Opening Bid podcast this week, where a guest told me that Amazon will likely charge Prime members for its coming Rufus AI assistant.) This embedded content is not available in your region. Two, billions of dollars in investments over decades has created a wide moat around the business — see Apple (AAPL) and its iPhones and App store. Three, a company such as Nvidia (NVDA) makes a product super in demand for critical business applications — and ones that are much better than those of its rivals. Mix all these ingredients together, and you can get this simple investment thesis: almost unstoppable business models that warrant major premiums to companies selling, say, commoditized axes, shovels, and gravel. But it may be time to reconsider how financially unstoppable these big tech businesses are — and the multiples the stocks could fetch — in the age of the Trump trade war with the rest of the world. All of these businesses stand to be impacted, and in ways that may surprise investors. At first blush, one would think Amazon could easily withstand a trade war. It has gazillions of Prime members in the US and mints money from Amazon Web Services (AWS). It's spending billions of dollars to add robots in its fulfillment centers and widen its lead over other retailers. But at the end of the day, Amazon is still a retailer. It ships those Prime members all sorts of junk around the clock. Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak estimates that two-thirds of Amazon's first-party merchandise cost of goods sold is non-grocery, with 40% exposure to China. Think of that cheap-as-hell car tire inflator you bought this winter that likely came from China. An extended tariff war may chisel away material chunks of Amazon's profits, something the market isn't factoring in as the stock is valued at 35 times estimated forward earnings. The S&P 500 is valued around 22 times. "It will be important to monitor import cost pressure pass through vs. absorption," Nowak pointed out. This tariff risk could also be applied to also-ran eBay (EBAY) — Nowak estimates about 11% of its revenue is derived from China-based sellers. And, of course, mighty Apple (AAPL) isn't immune to an ugly trade war. The majority of Apple's products are made in China. Evercore analyst Amit Daryanani estimates that Chinese production accounts for about 90% of Apple's capacity. Outside of China, Daryanani estimates 10% to 15% of iPhones are manufactured in India, and a portion of the wearables lineup is manufactured in Vietnam. If the additional 10% tariff on China remains in place and Apple doesn't get an exemption, Daryanani thinks Apple's EPS will be hit to the tune of 3% to 4%. That's real money, and real risk not priced into Apple's stock. Some will say Trump is bluffing with tariffs. The reality is the genie is out the bottle and the trade war has begun (see China tariffs and steel/aluminum tariffs). Even if reciprocal tariffs don't go into effect in April, just the fact that a review is underway is driving up uncertainty and the costs of doing business. "The short run effects of a trade war is certainly painful. Even this might be small numbers, but it's certainly something that's negative," Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Sløk told me on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid podcast (video above). (Disclosure: Yahoo Finance is owned by Apollo Global Management.) Painful to Big Tech companies, quite possibly. Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email Sign in to access your portfolio
