Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in shareholder letter says he's committed to cost cutting while investing in AI

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Thursday published his annual shareholder letter, where he pledged to look for ways to keep costs in check even as the company doubles down on investing in new growth areas like artificial intelligence.

"I think every one of us at Amazon believes that we have a long way to go, in every one of our businesses, before we exhaust how we can make customers' lives better and easier, and there is considerable upside in each of the businesses in which we're investing," Jassy wrote in his third shareholder letter since taking the helm at Amazon from former CEO Jeff Bezos, who stepped down in mid-2021.

Under Jassy, Amazon has morphed into a leaner version of itself, as slowing sales and a challenging economy pushed the company to eschew the relentless growth of the Bezos years. Beginning at the end of 2022 and continuing through 2023, Amazon initiated the largest layoffs in its history, cutting more than 27,000 jobs. Those cuts have continued this year, with Amazon announcing layoffs in its cloud computing, Prime Video and Twitch livestreaming units, among others.

Even amid a period of retrenchment in some areas, Jassy said he's focused on finding new areas of growth within the company so that Amazon remains "resilient" in the long term. He stressed the importance of building "primitive services," which he described as "discrete, foundational building blocks" that can spur new projects and businesses.

Jassy used Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing division, as an example. Before he became Amazon's CEO, Jassy oversaw the creation of AWS, which grew from an internal tool powering its retail operations to become the dominant cloud service and one of Amazon's most profitable businesses.

He said he believes