Despite tariffs, Andy Jassy says Amazon hasn’t ‘seen prices appreciably go up,’ so far

In a Monday interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the tech giant hasn’t seen significant price increases, and he explained the mitigation strategies his company and its sellers are using.

“We did a lot of forward buying several months ago, and then a lot of our sellers, our third party selling partners, forward deployed a lot of inventory to avoid some of the issues with the uncertainty around where tariffs are going to settle,” he said. “And we have, so far, not seen prices appreciably go up.”

President Donald Trump has issued steep wide-ranging tariffs on imports from a number of countries, including China, which is a major supplier for Amazon and its sellers, as well as for many major U.S. businesses.

Jassy said that Amazon has about two million sellers in its marketplace. Even if some sellers pass on tariff expense to customers by raising prices, he said there will be many that won’t and who will instead “take share and not increase prices.” That kind of diversity in the marketplace helps customers, Jassy added.

He also detailed the way artificial intelligence is changing business broadly and called generative AI “the most transformative technology of our lifetime.” When there is “really unusual transformative technology” like AI, Jassy said, there are two choices — to lean in to and embrace the new technology or “wish it away, and then have it happen to you.” Amazon, he said, has chosen the former — which he said has historically been the better choice.

In a recent a recent memo to employees, Jassy said AI would shrink Amazon’s workforce. He told Cramer that AI would mean less work for employees and make their jobs more interesting, saying they would all be able to “start every task at a more advanced starting spot.” There will also be more hiring over time related to robotics and AI, he said.

AI will change dynamics not only for workers, but for customers, Jassy continued. He suggested that widespread consumer use of robots may not be so far away.

“I think that many, perhaps most, consumers will have robots in the home sometime in the next ten years or so,” Jassy said. “I think you’ll see that really great personal assistants like Alexa will be inside these robots, and she’ll be able to help you quite a bit inside your home.”

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Disclaimer The CNBC Investing Club Charitable Trust holds shares of Amazon.