Amazon Leverages Agentic AI for Seller Productivity Boost
Amazon is pushing agentic AI deeper into its marketplace, and its latest move targets third-party sellers. The company expanded Seller Assistant with new workflows that let sellers create recurring automations that run even when they are not logged in to Seller Central.
The assistant now retains memory of a seller's pricing patterns, inventory cycles, and growth goals, and it connects to tools sellers already use, starting with Amazon Quick and Anthropic's Claude. The service is free and optional, so any financial benefit will be indirect, coming through seller productivity, selection, and advertising engagement.
Agentic features are already gaining traction elsewhere in the business. Alexa for Shopping, which combines Rufus and Alexa+, nearly doubled active users in the second quarter, with interactions up more than 5x year over year. U.S. customers using it spend over 40% more per order.
Amazon's fundamentals support this strategy. Second-quarter net sales rose 20% to $200.6 billion, and operating income climbed 43% to $27.5 billion. AWS sales grew 37% to $42.2 billion, and its AI business exceeded a $25 billion annual run rate.