What happened
Like many technology companies, Amazon (AMZN 1.62%) had a difficult year in 2022. CEO Andy Jassy said as much when he released his annual letter to shareholders today. But he also said some things that investors liked. That helped push Amazon shares higher by 3% as of 11:10 a.m. ET Thursday.
The company is offering a new cloud service for generative artificial intelligence (AI), which has become popular since the launch of ChatGPT late last year.
So what
In his letter to shareholders, Jassy called 2022 "one of the harder macroeconomic years in recent memory" with the company cutting tens of thousands of jobs. That came on the heels of a growth spurt that resulted in total net sales in 2022 topping $500 billion. That compares to about $280 billion in 2019 prior to a spike in consumer spending during the pandemic.
Jassy said the company will now focus on keeping costs under control as well as investing in new technologies. Regarding the retail side of the business, Jassy stated "Overall, we remain confident about our plans to lower costs, reduce delivery times, and build a meaningfully larger retail business with healthy operating margins."
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
One technology the company will invest in is generative AI. Jassy said Amazon is investing in its own large language models for generative AI and will offer those services to its cloud computing customers.
Users of Amazon Web Services can use a service called Bedrock that will compete with other generative AI platforms, including those in which rival Microsoft has invested. Investors were pleased to hear that Amazon plans to continue investing for the future while focusing on keeping costs under control.
