Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Reinventing Amazon for the AI Era

章节 1：从疫情扩张到人工智能浪潮

📝 本节摘要：

贾西回顾担任亚马逊首席执行官五年来的变化：疫情期间，公司迅速扩建履约与配送网络，随后通过区域化调整兼顾速度和成本。生成式人工智能兴起后，AWS 的增长和潜在规模进一步扩大，亚马逊也在视频、卫星、自动驾驶、医疗和机器人等领域拓展业务。他强调，快速行动与高标准之间需要权衡，并依靠坦诚文化和数据发现、修复问题。

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: Even spending $220 this year, we're leaving a meaningful amount of demand on the table. We always leave a certain amount for on-demand, but 26 is obviously sold out. 27 is largely sold out. A good chunk of 28 is sold out. The financial markets are saying, "Oh, there's not enough money in the world to finance these things." Everything we do in the world today—stock market, banking, healthcare—they're all using data centers. Our job is to try to figure out how to have as much capacity as we can. We have an opportunity to help across so many more customer experiences and make their lives better and easier every day. The big labs being willing to pay almost anything for power, cooling, chips. Well, maybe we should buy out the old guys and sell them to the new guys, because they'll pay us whatever.

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 即使我们今年投入 2200 亿美元，仍有相当一部分需求无法满足。我们总会留出一些容量供按需使用，但 2026 年的容量显然已经售罄，2027 年的大部分容量也已售罄，2028 年相当一部分容量同样卖完了。金融市场在说：“全世界都没有足够的钱来为这些项目融资。”如今我们生活中的一切——股市、银行、医疗——都在使用数据中心。我们的工作就是想办法尽可能多地 확보容量。我们有机会在更多客户体验中提供帮助，让他们的生活每天都变得更好、更轻松。大型实验室愿意为电力、冷却和芯片几乎不计代价。那也许我们该把老家伙们买下来，再卖给新家伙们，因为他们愿意付多少钱都行。

[原文] [Ben Horowitz]: Andy, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you.

[译文] [Ben Horowitz]: 安迪，欢迎来到播客。很高兴你能来。

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: Thanks for having me.

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 谢谢你们邀请我。

[原文] [Ben Horowitz]: So, it's you're you're 5 years into running Amazon and you've done a lot as being here and a lot is is is coming out as CEO. You know, right now, you know, 220 billion dollars in in in CapEx spend, AWS growing 28%. You know, there's a lot that you've you've achieved. How do you think about the ambition in 2026 as it relates to Amazon relative to 2021 when you took over formally as CEO?

[译文] [Ben Horowitz]: 你执掌亚马逊已经五年，担任首席执行官以来做了很多事。如今资本支出达到 2200 亿美元，AWS 增长 28%，成绩斐然。你怎么看亚马逊在 2026 年的雄心？和你在 2021 年正式接任首席执行官时相比，有哪些变化？

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: 2021 feels so long ago. It feels like a decade ago. But, as you know, the world changes fast. If you compare it to 2021, our overall top line is about 80% higher. The AWS business is almost three times bigger. Ad revenue is about two and a half times bigger. So the business has grown quite a bit, and I think a few things have really happened. Pretty quickly after I started in the role, which was on the tail end of the pandemic, our retail business ended up with a real cost-to-serve challenge. We had basically doubled the size of our fulfillment network, which we'd built over 25 years. We doubled it in about 18 months. And then we built a

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 2021 年感觉已经是很久以前了，像是十年前。不过你也知道，世界变化很快。和 2021 年相比，我们的总营收大约增长了 80%；AWS 业务规模接近原来的三倍；广告收入大约增长了两倍半。所以公司发展了很多，我觉得确实发生了几件大事。我刚上任没多久，正值疫情尾声，我们的零售业务就遇到了服务成本方面的严峻挑战。我们基本上把用了 25 年建起来的履约网络规模翻了一倍，只用了大约 18 个月。随后，我们又建成了一套规模相当于 UPS 的末端配送网络，只用了大约 20 个月。

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: last-mile transportation network the size of UPS in about 20 months. And whenever you build that quickly, you end up with all sorts of things that you haven't optimized. Our cost-to-serve in the fulfillment network wasn't where we wanted it to be. It created a lot of challenges and angst. At the time, I remember people saying, just a year or a little less than a year into my job, "Boy, what a terrible time to start. What bad luck." In retrospect, I think it was a great time to start, a real blessing, because it allowed us to consider a bunch of things we probably wouldn't have considered for many years, but that were really good ideas for our customers and the business. And the biggest of

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 我们又用了大约 20 个月建成规模相当于 UPS 的末端配送网络。扩张得这么快，难免会有很多事情没来得及优化。履约网络的服务成本没有达到我们的预期，这带来了不少挑战和焦虑。我记得当时上任才一年左右，甚至还不到一年，就有人说：“哎呀，这可真不是个好时候，运气真差。”现在回头看，我觉得那其实是个很好的上任时机，甚至是种福气，因为它让我们有机会重新考虑很多原本可能多年都不会去动的事情，而这些对客户和业务来说都是很好的想法。最大的一项就是——

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: which in our fulfillment network ended up being that we regionalized a flat national fulfillment network in the U.S. We regionalized it so we got items much closer to customers, which both lowered our cost-to-serve, because of shorter transportation distances, and got items to customers much more quickly. That reevaluation of our most closely held beliefs, during a time when we were struggling with cost-to-serve, really unleashed delivery speed and a lot of customer demand in our retail business. It was a big piece of why we've grown as fast as we have there. And, of course, pretty quickly thereafter, AI exploded further onto the scene. It's not like AI was new.

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 履约网络最大的变化，是把美国原本统一的全国性网络改成了区域化网络。这样一来，商品离客户更近了，运输距离缩短，服务成本降低，送达速度也快了很多。在服务成本承压时重新审视我们坚信不疑的做法，极大释放了配送速度，也带动了零售业务的客户需求，是我们业务快速增长的重要原因。当然，没过多久，人工智能也迎来了爆发式发展。人工智能并不是新事物。

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: I mean, we have been all doing machine learning for a long time and there've been lots of waves of AI that were supposed to be the real tipping points. But you know, you you get to 2023 and and you really see with generative AI a huge difference. And I would say our AWS business was growing really quickly at that point. you know, we have the you know, with the broadest functionality by fair bit and stronger operational performance and security and you know, I think a a type of partner ecosystem that's different. We were the clear leader and we felt like that business could be a few hundred billion dollars of of revenue over a long period of time, figure over 10 years.

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 我们做机器学习已经很久了，人工智能也经历过好几轮被认为是真正转折点的浪潮。但到了 2023 年，生成式人工智能带来的巨大变化清晰可见。当时 AWS 业务增长很快，我们的功能广度遥遥领先，运营表现和安全性更强，合作伙伴生态也独具优势。我们是明显的领导者，并认为长期来看，比如十年左右，这项业务的营收有望达到数千亿美元。

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: Now we look at what's happening with AI and how every customer experience we know of is going to be reinvented with inference and AI. We think the AWS business is not only growing really rapidly—I mean, last quarter we grew 36.7% year over year on a $169 billion annual revenue run rate business—but the opportunities today are really striking. If you layer on top of that the seeds of new businesses we have, whether it's how the team has progressed our Prime Video business, which is now large and profitable, or the low Earth orbit satellite we're building with Amazon Leo, or our autonomous driving ride-hailing service with Zoox, or our healthcare business, or what we're doing in robotics, we have an opportunity, I think, to help so many more customers

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 如今，人工智能正在重塑我们所知的每一种客户体验，推理和人工智能将发挥作用。我们认为 AWS 不仅增长迅速——上一季度，年化营收规模达 1690 亿美元的业务同比增长了 36.7%——眼下的机会也十分惊人。此外，我们还孕育着一批新业务：团队持续发展 Prime Video，如今它已成为规模可观且盈利的业务；我们通过 Amazon Leo 建设低地球轨道卫星；Zoox 提供自动驾驶网约车服务；我们还有医疗业务和机器人项目。我认为，我们有机会帮助更多客户，

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: across so many more customer experiences and make their lives better and easier every day. That mission of trying to make customers' lives better and easier every day really unifies everything we're doing across the company.

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 在更多客户体验中提供帮助，让他们每天的生活变得更好、更轻松。努力让客户每天过得更好、更轻松的使命，真正串联起公司所做的一切。

[原文] [Ben Horowitz]: So so a couple of follow-ups on that. So when you know, you kind of mentioned when you're building out the fulfillment network so fast that it's going to be a little inefficient. It's going to be you know, when you go that fast there's some sloppiness to it. How do you and then you mentioned there was kind of angst around that internally like from a CEO perspective like how do you communicate what you're doing without like lowering the cultural standard of you know I mean Amazon's known for its excellence in operating efficiency, being frugal, all these kinds of things, but here you are going like we're going to build UPS and like that.

[译文] [Ben Horowitz]: 我想接着问两个问题。你提到，履约网络扩张得那么快，难免会有些低效，做得也不够细致。从首席执行官的角度，你怎么向大家说明正在做的事，同时又不降低亚马逊的文化标准？亚马逊以卓越运营、效率和节俭著称，可你们当时却在说：“我们要建出一个 UPS 的规模。”你怎么调和这两者？

[原文] [Ben Horowitz]: And so how do you reconcile those?

[译文] [Ben Horowitz]: 所以，你怎么调和这两者？

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: What's interesting is that we have this set of leadership principles that a lot of people know about. We have 16 leadership principles. They're supposed to—and they do—govern the way we think about operating as a team and culturally. But several of them are in tension with one another, and sometimes people are confused about that. The reality is, it reflects how the real world works. Nothing is perfectly clean. You're always making trade-offs. So if you go back to when we decided to build out the fulfillment network and last-mile transportation network that aggressively, that quickly, the question the team was facing was: We know if we go this fast, it's going to be really hard. It'll probably be

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 有意思的是，很多人都知道我们有一套领导力准则，一共 16 条。这些准则本来就是、实际上也确实在指导我们如何作为团队运作，以及如何塑造文化。不过其中有些准则彼此之间存在张力，有时大家会对此感到困惑。但现实世界就是如此：事情很少能做到面面俱到，总要有所取舍。回到当初决定如此迅速、大规模扩建履约和末端配送网络的时候，团队面对的问题是：我们知道这么快地推进会很难，成本可能也会比放慢速度更高，而且我们可能无法做到事事最优，但客户和卖家确实需要这些服务。要不要选择——

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: more expensive than if we went slower. We will probably not get everything as optimized as we would if we went slower, but customers and sellers really need it. So are we going to actually shade on the side of enabling? Remember back in the early part of the pandemic, no physical stores were open. If you look at the role Amazon played in everybody's lives during the pandemic, it was very seminal. We had to ask ourselves: Are we going to build fast, maybe not as optimally as we can, with the trade-off of serving customers and sellers who are also trying to sustain their businesses, or not? That's the first decision you have to make, and we decided, as we almost always do, to

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 成本可能会比放慢速度更高，也可能无法做到像慢慢建设那样优化到位，但客户和卖家确实需要。那我们是否应该倾向于提供支持？还记得疫情初期，实体店都关门了。亚马逊在那段时间对每个人生活的影响可以说至关重要。我们必须问自己：要不要快速建设，即使可能不够理想，以此服务客户和卖家，帮助他们维持生意？这是首先要做的决定。我们的选择和大多数时候一样，是——

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: shade on the side of customers. You know and then it was it was fairly obvious that as we were building, it was obvious that not everything that we were planning was going perfectly. We had a lot of, you know, our fulfillment team was more in the office than most of the rest of the company, but still a lot of people that have to participate in a lot of the designing and the planning and the assessing. You had people all over the place and and remote. And, you know, and then now you're balancing the combination or the the tension of bias for action or speed and you know, relentlessly high standards, which means you deliver at the cost structure and the delivery and the design that that, you know, you'd always plan for.

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 站在客户这一边。建设过程中，很明显并非所有计划都进展顺利。我们的履约团队到办公室上班的时间比公司其他大多数团队更多，但许多参与设计、规划和评估的人仍分散各地、远程办公。这时，你就得在崇尚行动、追求速度与始终坚持高标准之间权衡；高标准意味着要达到原先规划的成本结构、配送表现和设计要求。

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: And so, again, you have to make trade-offs. We made the trade-off to to side with customers and to move quickly to be able to serve sellers and consumers. And we thought there'd be some amount of cleanup. Now, did we know exactly how the how the topography would work out in in the way it did? No, and there were certain things that that we didn't have optimized and I'm not sure we foresaw wouldn't be optimized, but if you have good metrics and if you're a culture that's a truth-telling culture, which you know, that is another really important part of our culture, is that we are, you know, we get the data on the table, we get the issues on the table, we're direct with one another, we don't allow people to paper over issues.

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 还是那句话，必须有所取舍。我们选择站在客户这一边，快速行动，以便服务卖家和消费者。我们也预计之后会有一些收尾工作。我们当时是否准确预见到网络最终会形成现在这样的布局？没有。有些地方没有优化好，我也不确定我们是否预料到了会出现这些问题。但只要指标完善，文化鼓励讲真话——这是我们文化中另一项非常重要的部分——我们就会摆出数据和问题，彼此坦诚，不让任何人掩盖问题。

[原文] [Andy Jassy]: If you have that type of culture, it's it's fairly obvious in the metrics and it's fairly obvious in the discussion and then you just have to go about figuring out how you want to improve it and which pieces are just kind of small productivity things and which are architectural pieces. We went back and really re-architected key parts of the network after we got, you know, that capacity installed that you know, we we was probably at the time for that team was was maybe eight or nine on their list of priorities, but became a much higher priority in a way to actually get the combination of speed and cost.

[译文] [Andy Jassy]: 有了这样的文化，指标和讨论就能让问题一目了然。接下来要找出改进办法，区分哪些只是小的效率提升，哪些需要调整架构。装好那些容量之后，我们回头重新设计了网络中的关键部分。当时这项工作在团队的优先事项清单上可能只排第八或第九，但后来优先级大幅提升，因为我们需要同时做好速度与成本。

[原文] [Ben Horowitz]: All right. Now, fascinating. you know, you you kind of like at the beginning, you know, when you started AWS, you like started AWS. The it was kind of build it and they will come and that, you know, okay, you're building all this infrastructure and then you're going to rent it. and so they needed to come or you'd be in a lot of trouble. but this is that at a much bigger scale in that you you and others, but like I would say primarily you, or at least you're you're certainly one of the biggest players, are building data center and chip capacity so fast that like the financial markets are saying things like "Oh, there's not enough money in the world to finance these things." And then, you know, and we just kind of saw that skittishness in like the corporate debt

[译文] [Ben Horowitz]: 好，真有意思。最初你创办 AWS 时，思路有点像“先建起来，客户自然会来”：你们建好基础设施，再把它租出去，所以客户必须得来，否则麻烦就大了。但眼下的规模要大得多。你和其他公司——不过我觉得主要是你们，至少你们肯定是最大的参与者之一——正在如此迅速地扩建数据中心和芯片产能，以至于金融市场都在说：“全世界都没有足够的钱为这些项目融资。”我们已经看到企业债券和股票市场因此变得谨慎起来。我们想知道，