AMZN Amazon.com Inc

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)

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