Jassy says Amazon now runs over 1 million warehouse robots

Amazon Amazon.com, Inc. ↗ 1.48% CEO Andy Jassy said on Thursday, Oct. 29, that the company now runs more than 1 million robots in its fulfillment network. He said machines will take over many of the repetitive jobs people do in its warehouses, but that Amazon will still employ a large human workforce. "We will always have a lot of teammates in our fulfillment centers, but I think a lot of the jobs that we have that are more repetitive that we have humans doing will be done by robots," Jassy said on the company's third-quarter earnings call, according to Yahoo Finance and MarketWatch.finance.yahoo.com+1

Still early, Jassy says

Jassy was answering a question from Morgan Stanley ↗ 0.25% analyst Brian Nowak about robotics goals for 2027, Benzinga reported. He said the robots are having "very significant impact on our cost structure and on our productivity and on safety," and that safety numbers in the fulfillment network are "at record low numbers," according to a call transcript. He also said the company is "still so early" in what it has built and deployed. He described the current impact as "small compared to what it's going to be in the next five years" and said new same-day facilities are "very heavy on robotics." He did not say how many jobs would be affected or give a timeline.benzinga.com+1

Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said Amazon doubled its fleet of robotic arms, including the Cardinal and Sparrow systems, during 2026. He added that the company is building robotics foundation models meant to help machines handle more complex physical tasks.freightwaves.com

Earnings miss overshadows results

The comments came alongside quarterly results that fell short of Wall Street expectations. Net sales rose 12% to $201.9 billion, and operating income climbed to $28.1 billion, giving Amazon its highest operating margin ever, according to the company's release. Net income fell to $20.7 billion, or $1.89 a share. Trailing free cash flow swung to an outflow of $42.4 billion as AI spending grew, and Amazon kept its 2026 capital spending forecast at about $220 billion. Shares fell sharply in after-hours trading.cincodias.elpais.com+2

Automation and jobs

Jassy's remarks add to a long-running debate over how automation will reshape Amazon's workforce. In October 2025, The New York Times reported on internal documents showing that Amazon's automation team expected to avoid hiring more than 160,000 U.S. workers by 2027. The documents put that figure at more than 600,000 by 2033, even as Amazon expected to sell twice as many products. Amazon said at the time that the documents "appear to reflect the perspective of just one team and don't represent our overall hiring strategy".washingtontimes.com+1

Jassy said Amazon decides where to deploy robots by asking, "Does it lead to comparable or better productivity, safety, cost structure, and time to delivery?".benzinga.com