Amazon a platform company, more than ever

From its humble beginnings as an online bookstore, Amazon has grown into one of the biggest wealth creators in generations with a stock that has meant profits for its shareholders. Today, Amazon's business spanss industries including retail, food, movies, music, appliances, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, while founder Jeff Bezos invests in ventures covering philanthropy, journalism and space travel.

Around 20 years ago, Bezos raised $981 k from 20+ local angels with size between $30k and $50k;

Today amazon has joined the exclusive club open to only the richest companies in the world: the half-a-trillion mark. In 2016, Amazon accounted for half of the sales growth in online retail with a two figure growth.

see the The Mind-Boggling Ascent of Amazon and Jeff Bezos

Who is this giant? What are the main pillars ?

1. Amazon Marketplace his historical business .
2. Amazon Prime to offer membership e-commerce bundled and digital media products
3. Amazon Web Services the tech pack in cloud computing;
4. The voice/Virtual Assistant/AI service - Alexa - as future of service/retail ??

Today’s Amazon is not only a reference in the “retail industry" it become the leader in the consumer-facing AI and enterprise cloud services

What are the today’s main focus of Amazon Strategy ? does it concern only the future of retail or is about IT and Innovation ? How Amazon is about to build is future?

AI:

• Amazon’s potential new pillar is likely to be AI: Voice, virtual assistants, and natural language processing;

“I think there are going to be a bunch of artificially intelligent agents in the world,”  

• The Alexa Fund, (Amazon’s corporate venture arm) to push the usage of Alexa as a universal AI assistant for the developpers and the ecosystem;

Here is a funny video on How Alexa change live of...Alexa!

• Expansion of the AI usage with the interest in GRAIL (healthcare) with a mixture of big data / AI usage.

“There are going to be specialties, and you may not ask the same AI for everything. I bet the average household will use a number of these, but to me that’s a very exciting seed that we’ve planted. I love working on stuff like that, and the team is brilliant.”

M&A and Partnership:

• Amazon is shifting to a more proactive M&A stance to fuel its AI and enterprise ambitions - with 3-4 deals in Q1’17, (a) Harvest.ai, a cybersecurity player; (b) Do.com, a meeting productivity software; (c) Souq.com; to expand into new region.
• Investments and partnership into logistics, cloud apps, and media are in the pipe (ie. Housejoy to expand the the India region, Twilio for AWS).

See all acquisition here

Innovation:

• Lab126 (The Silicon Valley-based R&D lab) will carry on working in innovation. It was behind the Echo and Kindle hardwares. The Lab just expands with 180K square-foot lease in downtown San Francisco (Market Street) now its over 750,000 square feet in the Bay Area.

“I have the best job in the world because I get to work in the future,” says Bezos

• Logistics field where a dedication Amazon’s R&D team is focuses on developing autonomous robot for logistics network. Amazon is forming a couple of new teams to bolster its cloud and logistics businesses, they'll be focused on creating software to help manage the distribution of products across Amazon's network of warehouses. The job listing for Amazon's Supply Chain Optimization Technology group seeks an unspecified number of engineers. 

Retail:

• Amazon operates its own ‘white’ label (ie. shoes, apparel, FMCG, consumer’s goods, as well as consumer goods grouped under its Amazon Basics label).
• Open brick & mortar bookstores (NYC) and launched of the check-out free convenience store concept: ‘Amazon Go’.

Amazon can only keep is leading position if it continues to innovate faster than its IT rivals such as Google, Apple, Alibaba, and Facebook among others.

Starting humbly as a Seattle-based internet bookstore, it has been growing over the past decade to a least 5 different industries: Retail, Logistics, consumer technology, cloud computing, and most recently, media and entertainment.

We may notice over the past year (only) couple of missteps ie. The Fire Phone, but this technology was re-use to work on the Voice (Alexa) – we could call it the Genius Strategic Momentum.

Albert Einstein said: "you never fail until you stop trying", probably part of Jeff Bezos Regret Minimization Framework.