Amazon Learns a New Skill: Making Money From Alexa
Charging for premium news and entertainment. Partnering with Spotify. All options are under discussion as Amazon shifts its attention from making sure Alexa is everywhere to making money from the voice assistant.
For most of Alexa’s five years in existence, Amazon has focused on making its voice assistant as ubiquitous as possible, putting it in everything from microwaves to wearable rings to its growing family of Echo devices. Now Amazon has a new focus for Alexa: making money from it.
The company is exploring how it can profit from premium content on Alexa, such as video, music, and news, according to two people familiar with the matter. Amazon could take a cut of subscription and ad revenue from such content, the people said. Meanwhile, Amazon is keeping a closer eye on costs at the large organization responsible for its voice assistant. After several years of rapid growth saw the unit balloon to more than 10,000 people, the group’s headcount has stopped swelling, said three current or former employees.