Amazon has named Amit Agarwal, senior vice president of international stores, to lead its Selling Partner Services division, one of the company’s highest-impact businesses. Agarwal will oversee a team of over 5,000 engineers and operations staff across 20 global markets, responsible for onboarding more than 2 million third-party merchants and processing over $70 billion in annual gross merchandise value. Concurrently, Dharmesh Mehta, vice president of worldwide selling partner services, will become CEO Andy Jassy’s technical advisor starting in March. The advisory role—often referred to internally as the “shadow” position—has historically accelerated career trajectories; previous holders have gone on to lead major Amazon businesses such as AWS and Prime Video.

Amazon has expanded access to Alexa+, its large-language-model–powered digital assistant, making the service available to all U.S. users. The company is offering Alexa+ free for Prime members and at $19.99 per month for non-subscribers. Alexa+ can manage multi-step tasks—such as booking travel, coordinating smart-home systems and handling calendar events—across Echo devices, mobile apps and the web. In its early access period, Alexa+ handled over 10 million multi-turn queries, reducing task completion times by an average of 30%, according to internal data.

Building on last summer’s launch of its internal AI Studio, Amazon MGM Studios will invite industry partners—including producer Robert Stromberg and animator Colin Brady—to a closed beta of proprietary AI tools in March. These tools aim to enhance character consistency, automate continuity checks and accelerate editing workflows. Amazon expects to share initial program outcomes by May, after having already deployed 350 AI-generated shots in the second season of its “House of David” series. The AI Studio team collaborates with Amazon Web Services and multiple large-language-model providers, and emphasizes IP protection by preventing model retraining on customer content.

Amazon is in advanced discussions to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, potentially securing preferential access to its models for Alexa and other internal projects. As part of the talks, OpenAI could leverage Amazon’s AI-optimized chip portfolio and AWS compute infrastructure, while Amazon would integrate OpenAI’s technology to bolster its shopping chatbot Rufus and enterprise services. The proposed deal remains subject to final terms, with CEO Andy Jassy and OpenAI’s Sam Altman leading negotiations. If completed, the partnership could reshape Amazon’s AI roadmap across retail, cloud and device businesses.