Amazon will rely on its proprietary assistant, Alexa for Shopping, as the primary way customers buy goods on its marketplace rather than opening up to third-party tools, chief executive Andy Jassy told analysts during the retailer’s third-quarter earnings call in Seattle.
Key points
- Amazon recorded more than 400 million active users for Alexa for Shopping over the past year, with customer interactions jumping 570%.
- Chief executive Andy Jassy dismissed external shopping agents, arguing that coming to a retailer directly offers a smoother purchasing process.
- The retailer blocked Meta‘s Muse agent last month to stop external systems from scraping data and placing orders.
- Rivals such as Walmart and Shopify are taking the opposite path by partnering directly with third-party consumer agents.
Amazon protects its retail moat
Amazon has drawn a firm boundary around its retail ecosystem. Speaking to financial analysts following the company’s third-quarter earnings report, Jassy addressed the rise of autonomous buying tools that can browse online shops, compare prices and complete checkout forms on behalf of shoppers.
External agents, known across the technology sector as horizontal agents, are designed to operate across dozens of different retail websites. Jassy made it clear that Amazon does not want these intermediaries sitting between its marketplace and its consumers. The firm believes direct access yields better conversion rates and keeps customers inside its proprietary checkout loop.
“Few customers are doing much shopping this way yet, as the experience is still not great,” Jassy said during the call, pointing out that shoppers still prefer direct research and one-click buying. Fortune reported that although Jassy addressed the threat directly, he avoided naming specific rival software during his remarks.
The defensive posture follows a decision taken about a month ago, when Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse agent from accessing its website. Muse had attempted to index product catalogues and facilitate autonomous checkouts for social media users, but Amazon cut off the bot’s scrapers.
The confrontation over retail agents comes at a delicate moment for the company’s technology investments. While cloud divisions across the sector show momentum, heavy computing expenses continue to test patience, a dynamic tracked when Amazon AI spending drags Q3 results in corporate filings.
Customer numbers and new features
Amazon defended its walled approach by presenting strong engagement figures for its own built-in assistant. More than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping over the past 12 months, the company said in its financial disclosures. Total interactions with the assistant grew by 570% compared with the same period last year.
Those interactions directly lift the retailer’s bottom line. In the United States, shoppers who interact with the assistant spend 50% more per order than those who browse the marketplace through traditional search bars and product categories, according to company data.
To support that volume, the online retailer rolled out a wave of updates. Amazon introduced more than 100 new features for the tool, detailing the capabilities in an official blog post released alongside the financial results. The assistant can now create, organise and modify shopping lists and gift registries on voice or text command.
American shoppers can also rely on the software to modify recurring subscription deliveries, ask detailed questions about billing or refunds, and adjust physical delivery instructions for courier drivers. Amazon argues that outside agents lack the deep account hooks needed to carry out these account-level tasks reliably.
Because the internal assistant links directly to payment details, default postal addresses, past returns and purchase histories, Amazon claims it can execute orders with fewer errors than external programmes trying to map checkout pages from the outside.
The battle with Meta and open agents
Amazon’s stance puts it on a collision course with Silicon Valley competitors pursuing an open retail model. Meta has moved quickly to establish its Muse assistant as an automated personal shopper, attracting more than 10 million users across the United States and Canada within months of launch.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said shopping had quickly emerged as the single most popular activity on Muse. Demand from automated shoppers rose so fast following rollout that Meta had to negotiate higher transaction processing limits with payments provider Stripe to prevent failed orders.
Unlike Amazon, several major retail chains have chosen to welcome outside bots. Meta signed formal integration agreements with Shopify, Walmart and Best Buy. Walmart confirmed it plans to let external automated programmes order goods directly for mutual customers, treating incoming software agents as a normal stream of online traffic.
The contrasting approaches have sparked debate among Wall Street analysts who track internet commerce. In a note to investors, Bank of America analyst Justin Post pointed out that autonomous buying could alter consumer habits faster than established retailers expect.
“Muse traction will likely drive questions on Amazon’s agentic strategy,” Post wrote, as reported by Axios. Post suggested that if consumers grow accustomed to asking a single assistant to manage all their buying across the web, Amazon could lose direct app visits and brand engagement.
The debate mirrors broader corporate efforts to demonstrate clear financial returns from intelligent agents, a pattern reflected when AI earnings gains appear in third-quarter results across the wider technology sector.
Advertising revenue and marketplace control
Beyond checkout friction, Amazon’s resistance to outside software agents is tied to its lucrative digital advertising business. Sponsored search listings and paid product placements generate high-margin revenue by influencing human shoppers as they scroll through search results.
Autonomous agents strip out that visual discovery layer. When an algorithm selects an item and purchases it programmatically, human eyes never see sponsored banners or competing brand placements. If third-party tools become the standard interface for e-commerce, retail advertising budgets could suffer.
Amazon’s advertising revenue increased by 11% during the third quarter, finishing slightly behind consensus estimates from Wall Street analysts. Jassy denied that automated shopping scrapers or third-party bots had dampened ad performance during the quarter.
Instead, Jassy said the retailer expects ad sales growth to accelerate back towards the high teens during the fourth-quarter holiday period, driven by improved targeting algorithms and higher consumer traffic. Amazon plans to keep third-party scrapers off its catalogue while expanding Alexa for Shopping across international storefronts in 2027.
