Andy Jassy’s 2025 shareholder letter dropped yesterday, and the takes are already flying. Modern Retail ran a piece noting that the word “seller” doesn’t appear once in the letter — the first time that’s happened since at least 2016. An independent analyst called it “striking” and “odd” for a company that is, by most definitions, a retail company.
I get why people in the Amazon seller world are uneasy. But I think the reaction is short-sighted — and misreads what the letter actually says.
Retail Is All Over This Letter
Start with what people are glossing over. Jassy dedicates big chunks of the letter to same-day fulfillment — over 85 SSDs now delivering 500M+ same-day units. Grocery is now a $150B gross sales business, making Amazon the second-largest grocer in the U.S. Perishable delivery is up 40x since early 2025, with fresh food dominating same-day orders. Rural delivery got a $4B+ commitment covering 13,000 zip codes and 1.2 million square miles. Amazon Now is rolling out ultra-fast delivery from India to the U.S. and Europe. Prime Air drones are targeting 30-million-customer coverage by year-end with plans for half a billion packages by end of decade.
None of that sounds like a company that’s ignoring retail. It sounds like a company pouring billions into making retail faster and cheaper than it’s ever been.
So Why Aren’t Sellers Mentioned By Name?
The letter doesn’t talk about sellers because it’s about infrastructure, not tenants.
Jassy’s entire framework this year is “primitives” — the building blocks Amazon creates that everything else runs on top of. Fulfillment networks. Custom silicon. Satellite internet. AI inference at scale. Robotics. These are the layers underneath the seller experience, not a replacement for it.
When Jassy talks about AI reshaping “every customer experience,” that includes the buying experience — which is inherently seller-dependent. When he talks about same-day delivery infrastructure, that’s infrastructure sellers use. When he discusses fulfillment center robotics, those robots are picking and packing seller products.
The sellers aren’t absent. They’re just not the protagonist of this particular story — and that makes sense given what the letter is trying to do.
What This Letter Is Actually About
The more important read on this letter is that the foundational architecture of commerce is being rebuilt in real-time. AI, robotics, custom chips, satellite connectivity — these aren’t side projects. They’re the new layer that every seller experience and customer interaction will run on.
If you’re an Amazon seller and your main concern is that Jassy didn’t namecheck you in a shareholder letter, you’re focused on the wrong thing. The right question is: how does this infrastructure shift change my business over the next 3–5 years?
AI-driven discovery is going to change how shoppers find products. Rufus wasn’t mentioned in the letter, but conversational shopping is already live and growing. The entire search-and-browse paradigm is shifting toward AI-mediated discovery.
Agentic commerce — AI agents that research, compare, and purchase on behalf of consumers — is already being piloted through features like “Buy for Me.” Whether sellers like it or not, this is the trajectory.
Fulfillment speed is compressing toward minutes, not days. Sellers who can’t keep up with inventory positioning for same-day and ultra-fast delivery will lose visibility.
And $200B in capex isn’t being spent to maintain the status quo. It’s being spent to build the next version of Amazon. Sellers and brands need to understand what that next version looks like and position accordingly.
The Mistake Is Treating This Like a Snub
Some commentators are framing the omission of “sellers” as a sign that Amazon is deprioritizing its marketplace. I don’t buy it. Third-party sellers still account for 60%+ of units sold on Amazon. Seller fees, FBA, and advertising — all seller-dependent revenue — are among the highest-margin parts of the business. Amazon isn’t walking away from that.
What is true is that the center of gravity in Amazon’s narrative has shifted. The company generated $717B in revenue in 2025, but AWS, advertising, and AI are growing faster than retail. The shareholder letter reflects where the growth acceleration is, not where the majority of transactions still happen.
This is a letter to shareholders, not a letter to sellers. And right now, the story shareholders need to hear is about how Amazon justifies $200 billion in spending. The answer is AI infrastructure, custom chips, and cloud — not marketplace GMV.
What Sellers and Brands Should Actually Do
Instead of reading omission as abandonment:
- Learn the AI stack. Understand how Rufus, AI-driven discovery, and agentic shopping tools will change product visibility and conversion.
- Watch answer engine optimization (AEO). As AI shopping assistants reshape how consumers find products, your brand’s presence in AI-generated answers matters as much as your keyword rankings.
- Optimize for speed. Same-day and ultra-fast delivery are becoming table stakes. Your inventory strategy and fulfillment choices should reflect that.
- Think beyond the listing. The next era of Amazon isn’t about optimizing a product detail page. It’s about where your brand shows up when an AI is doing the shopping.
The sellers who thrive will be the ones who look at Jassy’s letter and see opportunity in the infrastructure being built — not offense in the words left out.