Amazon filed its annual report and proxy filing Thursday morning, revealing 2023 compensation for CEO Andy Jassy and chairman Jeff Bezos, with Jassy writing the company’s annual letter to shareholders, with generative artificial intelligence and Amazon’s advertising business both playing major roles.
Jassy’s 2023 pay package was in line with last year, with the executive earning $1.36 million, including a $365,000 salary and $992,764 in other compensation, mostly security services. That was up slightly from 2022, when Jassy earned $1.30 million.
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In comparison, Jassy received a massive $212.7 million compensation package in 2021 connected to his rise to CEO, mostly in the form of Amazon stock.
Bezos, meanwhile, received only a $81,840 salary and $1.6 million in security costs, the same as in 2022.
In conjunction with the company’s annual report, Jassy also wrote his annual letter to shareholders, a tradition that serves as a venue for the CEO to outline his strategic priorities for the year ahead. Not surprisingly, generative AI was the biggest focus, with Amazon also adding AI expert Andrew Ng to its board.
But Jassy also noted that advertising was a priority for the company, noting the addition of ads to Prime Video, and new automated ad options for marketers. “Streaming TV advertising is growing quickly and off to a strong start,” Jassy wrote.
He added in an interview with CNBC that while ads on Prime Video are in its “early stages,” “I expect that we will continue to very thoughtfully find ways to place advertisements in the different entities we have.”
But when it comes to generative AI, Jassy writes that it “may be the largest technology transformation since the cloud (which itself, is still in the early stages), and perhaps since the Internet.”
“We’re building a substantial number of GenAI applications across every Amazon consumer business,” he adds. “These range from Rufus (our new, AI-powered shopping assistant), to an even more intelligent and capable Alexa, to advertising capabilities (making it simple with natural language prompts to generate, customize, and edit high-quality images, advertising copy, and videos), to customer and seller service productivity apps, to dozens of others.”
And of course, Amazon is building tools and cloud products that other companies will build their AI products on top of.
“Unlike the mass modernization of on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, where there’s work required to migrate, this GenAI revolution will be built from the start on top of the cloud,” Jassy writes. “The amount of societal and business benefit from the solutions that will be possible will astound us all.”
As for Prime Video, Jassy said that it continues to be a driver of new Prime subscriptions, but that it is also becoming a viable business on its own terms: “Wwe now have conviction that apart from the value it drives for the rest of the business, it will be a good economic business on its own as well.”
And, yes, sports will be a big part of that, with Jassy praising the NBA’s product (ahead of a potential rights deal), and touting Amazon’s WNBA package: “Sports are very attractive for our customers and you can expect us to do more.”
But one thing users would not expect is a deal for another studio. When asked whether Amazon could be a bidder for Paramount, Jassy told CNBC “I think we’re pretty comfortable with the offering we have right now and we’re continuing to produce, you know, I think really great exclusive content.”
