Jassy said on Tuesday that while Amazon is trying to keep prices low, price hikes may be unavoidable in some cases.

Amazon is quietly rolling out the last big pillar of its AI-powered Alexa+ vision: the Alexa.com website, bridging the gap between its Echo devices, mobile app, and consumer desktops.

The web portal means users can now interact with Alexa through a keyboard and mouse: accessing and continuing past Alexa chats, starting new ones, going back and forth between voice conversations in the living room and typed chats in the home office, etc. 

(Alexa.com is available initially to a subset users in the Alexa+ early access program, with access likely to expand in the coming weeks, so if you’re not seeing it yet, stay tuned.)

I’ve been trying it out, and I’m already finding it quite useful as an extension of the Alexa experience. In addition to expanding the chat functionality to the browser, the web interface offers fine-grained control over reminders, calendar appointments, uploaded files, and smart home devices. 

For example, I was able to edit a family reminder: changing the assigned person, adjusting the date and time, setting it to repeat weekly, and adding a flag for Alexa to follow up until it’s complete. All of this happened through simple clicks, much easier than talking Alexa through the details, in my experience.

The rollout of Alexa+ earlier this year also introduced the ability to email or upload documents to Alexa for summarization and reference. This made Alexa a lot more useful on its own. Now, with the online portal, it’s much easier to upload, access and delete files.

There’s also some nice smart home integration, with the ability to control lights and plugs, for example. You can also view your Ring cameras through the Alexa.com smart-home section. It’s similar to the Alexa app, but nice to be able to access on the computer. 

In short, it’s a level of point-and-click precision that voice commands and the mobile app can’t offer. Within a few minutes of using Alexa.com, I had this sense of liberation, being able to interact with Alexa in the same way as anything else on the computer. What a concept! 

That said, I couldn’t help but wonder how much I’ll actually use it.

Three years after the launch of ChatGPT, my AI routines have become relatively entrenched. I’m having a hard time envisioning going to Alexa.com on my computer to start a chat rather than Gemini, NotebookLM, Claude, Perplexity or other AI tools that have become daily habits. 

Then again, for me, those tools are about work and individual tasks. Alexa is really the digital hub for my family. The introduction of better AI with Alexa+ has improved that experience over the past few months, and the web portal adds a whole new dimension. Family is why I’ll use it.

The Alexa+ integration goes even further for me since I’ve been talking to Alexa more and more via my Amazon Echo Buds on my phone when I’m out and about, although this is probably more illustrative of me being an edge case than anything else.

Within Amazon, Alexa+ sits at the top of the AI stack that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy talks about. It’s the consumer-facing layer for a company that has made a much bigger mark in AI with its cloud infrastructure and platforms. Alexa’s web launch fills a gap that’s been glaring for a while.

The more Amazon can unify everything inside the web portal, the more useful it will be. No doubt I’ll come up with other feature requests as I continue to use it.

But for now, the simple act of using an AI-powered Alexa in a web browser is so mind-blowing, in such a basic way, that it’s hard not to wonder how much further along Amazon would be in the world of consumer AI if it had been able to make this happen a long time ago. 

Story updated to correct reference to Ring cameras, which are accessible via Alexa.com.

Rohit Prasad, the executive who has led Amazon’s artificial intelligence initiatives and overseen the creation of its homegrown Nova AI models, is leaving the company at the end of the year.

In a memo Wednesday morning, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy named Peter DeSantis, a 27-year company veteran and top cloud infrastructure executive, to lead a new organization that combines its Nova and model research teams with custom silicon and quantum computing.

AI researcher Pieter Abbeel, who joined the company last year when Amazon hired the founders of robotics startup Covariant, will lead the frontier model research team within Amazon’s AGI organization, while continuing his work with the company’s robotics team, according to Jassy’s memo.

News of Prasad’s departure comes two weeks after Amazon unveiled its Nova 2 models at its annual re:Invent conference. The company is attempting to close the gap with AI rivals including OpenAI and Google in the race to develop increasingly capable AI systems.

Prasad joined Amazon in 2013 during the early days of Alexa and was named senior vice president and head scientist for artificial general intelligence in mid-2023 as part of a broader effort to recharge the company’s AI initiatives in the face of stiff competition.

In his memo, Jassy framed the reorganization as an effort to unify Amazon’s most important AI bets at an “inflection point” for the technologies. The new organization will bring together Amazon’s most expansive AI models, including Nova and AGI, with its custom silicon development group, which builds chips including Graviton, Trainium, and Nitro, as well as its quantum computing efforts.

DeSantis, who will report directly to Jassy, has led some of Amazon’s biggest technical initiatives. He launched Amazon EC2, the company’s core cloud computing infrastructure, oversaw the acquisition of chip designer Annapurna Labs in 2015, and most recently ran AWS Utility Computing, which includes compute, storage, database, and AI services.

Jassy called him a leader with “unusual technical depth” and a track record of “solving problems at the edge of what’s technically possible.”

Prasad’s departure was mentioned toward the end of Jassy’s memo, with the Amazon CEO saying that Prasad “has built a strong team, differentiated technology, growing customer momentum, and a culture of ambitious invention.” The memo described the departure as Prasad’s decision, calling him “missionary, passionate, and selfless” and thanking him for “everything he’s built here.”

It’s not yet clear what Prasad will do next.

In a separate memo, AWS CEO Matt Garman laid out a new internal structure consisting of seven AWS groups: Compute, Platform, and AI Services (led by Dave Brown); Storage and Analytics (Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec); Databases (G2 Krishnamoorthy); Security and Observability (Chet Kapoor); Agentic AI (Swami Sivasubramanian); Applied AI Solutions (Colleen Aubrey); and Infrastructure and Region Services (Prasad Kalyanaraman).

Amazon has positioned itself as a major player in enterprise AI through its Bedrock platform. Its Nova models are competitive on industry benchmarks. The Nova Forge service, launched at re:Invent, lets businesses and developers customize models using their own data.

Separately at re:Invent, the company unveiled a series of “frontier agents,” aiming to get ahead of the industry’s push toward autonomous AI systems for businesses.

But Amazon is still generally viewed as a fast follower in generative AI, trailing OpenAI, Google, and others in the perception of frontier model capabilities. Amazon has partnered closely with Claude maker Anthropic as a counterpunch to Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI.

More recently, Amazon has also been in discussions to invest $10 billion or more in OpenAI, according to a report this week from The Information, citing three people familiar with the talks.

In an interview with GeekWire at re:Invent, Prasad gave no hint that he was preparing to leave. He described Nova Forge as “a game changer” and said the company was focused on proving that AI could deliver real value for its business customers.

Prasad took a pragmatic view of artificial general intelligence, pushing back on what he described as Silicon Valley’s tendency to portray AGI as “some kind of a god power.” He spoke instead of developing “generally intelligent systems that you can specialize for your purpose.”

Amazon filed a new notice with Washington state Monday morning signaling that it’s cutting 84 jobs, but the individual separations are part of the regular course of business, unrelated to the 14,000 corporate layoffs it announced globally in October.

The company said each of its businesses regularly reviews its organizational structure and may make adjustments as a result. It’s a routine process, the company said, not tied to broader workforce actions.

The notice stems from a new state law that requires employers to disclose all terminations occurring within 90 days of a prior notice under the state’s new “mini” version of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, known as the WARN Act.

“We’ve informed a relatively small number of employees that their roles will be eliminated as the result of individual business decisions,” said Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser. “We don’t make decisions like this lightly,” he added, noting that the company is providing affected employees with 90 days of full pay and benefits, transitional health coverage, and job placement services.

According to the filing, the separations are scheduled to occur between Feb. 2 and Feb. 23, 2026, across more than 30 Seattle and Bellevue office locations, plus six remote workers based in Washington. They include software development engineers, program managers, recruiters, HR specialists, and UX designers, ranging from entry-level to directors and principals.

Amazon noted in the filing that employees were notified starting in early November and received at least 89 days’ advance notice, exceeding the 60-day minimum required under the law. Those who find internal transfers before their separation date won’t be laid off.

Separately, the company said in October that it was cutting 14,000 corporate jobs globally as part of CEO Andy Jassy’s push to reduce bureaucracy and operate more efficiently. That earlier round included more than 2,300 layoffs in Washington state, according to a filing at the time.

Amazon HR chief Beth Galetti signaled additional cuts could continue into 2026. Reuters has reported the total could ultimately reach 30,000 — which would surpass the 27,000 positions eliminated in 2023 and mark the largest overall layoff in company history.