Analysis of 15 years of Amazon shareholder letters

Every year the Amazon CEO writes a letter to its shareholders, citing the OG 1997 Jeff Bezos shareholder letter beneath.

We analysed the last 15 years of letters, including the latest one from Andy Jassy, released last week.

Amazon don’t share much about their inner machinations and as someone who has been building around the Alexa ecosystem for 11 years now these letters have become a barometer for the importance the Amazon organisation puts to Alexa which ultimately has a direct impact on our business at Say It Now

Alexa mentions rose sharply from 2016, peaking in 2018, then re-emerging with renewed strategic weight in 2024 and 2025 around Alexa+, positioned as a much more capable assistant, with Amazon linking it directly to deeper customer relationships, higher engagement, and future growth.

That the sentiment and shape of importance of Alexa over the years seems to directly marry the Gartner Hype Cycle, a big peak of inflated expectation just after launch, followed by a fallow period of wayfinding, during which LLM’s came to light, and now we seem to be fast climbing the slope of enlightenment.

Voice is becoming more important again. Not just as a device feature but as a strategic customer interface.

When the interface changes, advertising changes with it. Voice is starting to look a lot less like a channel, and a lot more like the next layer of customer interaction. Has anyone told you about Wispr Flow lately?

TV and Audio advertising have been largely passive for years. A message goes out, very little comes back.

If consumers are increasingly comfortable responding, exploring and acting through voice, then audio and TV no longer have to stop at awareness, it can become interactive, measurable & actionable.

We are seeing this in our data, feel free to get in touch to learn more.

Andy Jassy’s 2025 Amazon shareholder letter here.