This week, Amazon decided to increase its investment in artificial intelligence, as the e-commerce giant and its competitor Walmart seek to introduce advanced technologies into their services on a large scale so that their market positions remain stable.
Amazon’s $1 billion Industrial Innovation Fund intends to increase funding this year to financially support companies that combine artificial intelligence and robotics. This was announced by Franziska Bossart, head of the corporate venture capital unit. This investment is aimed at improving the efficiency of the logistics network of the e-commerce giant.
Amazon, the owner of the best American delivery service, has already made 12 investments. Part of this funding was received by Mantis Robotics, which is developing a robotic arm that works alongside humans. The e-commerce giant also provided investment funds worth about $ 4 billion to the startup Anthropic, which develops artificial intelligence.
Amazon is also using new machine intelligence capabilities to increase revenue levels through its own B2B offerings. Bedrock, a company’s service specializing in e-commerce, provides customers with access to foundation artificial intelligence models. In this case, it means the AI configurations developed by the mentioned Amazon unit and the corresponding digital products from third-party startups.
Last week Bedrock announced plans to add Mistral AI solutions to its line of artificial intelligence models in its offerings. This startup provides artificial intelligence technologies capable of solving tasks such as text summarization, structuration, question answering, and code completion.
Walmart is also actively introducing machine intelligence into its operations. The company claims that AI can improve the efficiency of its stores. Also, the use of artificial intelligence allows Walmart to reduce labor costs in the Sam’s Club subsidiary. This was announced by Chris Nicholas, President and CEO of Sam’s Club.
The warehouse club chain uses computer vision to eliminate the procedural stage during which an employee must check the receipts of self-service customers at the door.
Walmart generally uses artificial intelligence throughout its business. Company CEO Doug McMillon says that AI provides great opportunities to improve customer interaction, enhance employee experience and productivity, and reduce business costs. According to him, Walmart also uses artificial intelligence to develop search functionality, providing consumers with recommendations at the time of request formulation.
Consumers perceive the introduction of AI tools positively. In the United States, in November, a third of consumers said that artificial intelligence technologies are very important in their daily personal activities.
Amazon and Walmart are currently competing to increase consumer retail spending in the United States. According to information contained in income reports and data from the US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Amazon’s share of the American consumer retail spend is 8.2%. Walmart’s equivalent figure is 7.2%.
