Amazon Says It Has Over 10,000 Employees Working on Alexa, Echo
November 13 2018 - 4:19PM
Dow Jones News
By Douglas MacMillan
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. -- Amazon.com Inc. has more than 10,000
employees working on its Alexa virtual assistant and the Echo
devices it powers, the executive in charge of the business said,
double the staff in that division a little more than a year
ago.
Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's WSJ Tech D.Live conference
on Tuesday, Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon Devices,
outlined new areas where Alexa can expand in the coming years,
including in offices, cars and hotel rooms.
Amazon is investing to rapidly expand its workforce as it seeks
to dominate areas of cutting-edge technology such as artificial
intelligence. The company says it plans to hire some 50,000 workers
across two new hubs it plans to build in New York City and Northern
Virginia.
Amazon announced its decision Tuesday on those two locations,
after its yearlong review of possible cities to establish a second
headquarters. Mr. Limp said Amazon picked them because of the
availability of talent.
"The tie went to where we could recruit and where people would
want to live," Mr. Limp said.
Amazon said in September 2017 it had 5,000 employees working on
Alexa and Echo. The company's total workforce has grown 13% to more
than 600,000 over the past year.
New York is set to become a new battleground in the war for
talent between Amazon and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, with the search
giant confirming plans this week to double its staff in the city to
more than 14,000 over the next decade.
Amazon has expanded its virtual-assistant service to a wide
variety of devices over the past year, from Echo Auto for cars to
an Alexa-enabled microwave oven. The company has sold an estimated
47 million-plus devices in the Echo family since its launch in late
2014, giving it a roughly 51% share of the smart-speaker market,
according to Loup Ventures.
Mr. Limp said he thinks Alexa could be useful for a wide range
of common tasks in hotel rooms, from opening and closing the blinds
to setting alarms and ordering room service.
The Amazon executive said the impact of President Trump's
tariffs on imports from China has been "pretty small" for Amazon so
far, but he expressed concern that the measures could result in
customers paying more for products on the e-commerce site.
The Trump administration has imposed tariffs of 10% on $200
billion of Chinese imports, and threatened to raise that rate to
25%.
If tariffs escalate, "it effectively becomes a tax not on
countries or businesses, but in the end it becomes a tax on
customers," Mr. Limp said.
U.S. companies from Stanley Black & Decker Inc. to Mohawk
Industries Inc., which makes flooring and countertops, have
announced plans to raise prices to adjust for tariffs imposed this
fall, while others such as Caterpillar Inc. have said they face
higher raw material costs.
Write to Douglas MacMillan at douglas.macmillan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 13, 2018 16:04 ET (21:04 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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