How Amazon weaned Alexa off Anthropic's pricey models to slash AI costs
Amazon is redesigning its Alexa+ voice assistant to reduce reliance on expensive third-party AI models from Anthropic in favor of in-house solutions. This strategy aims to curb rising cloud costs and improve the efficiency of GPU usage as the company faces significant financial pressure.
Why it matters
As AI adoption grows, companies are shifting focus from model capability to cost-efficiency, marking a new phase in the AI business model.
An Alexa+ signage during an unveiling event in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025. Bloomberg/Getty Images Amazon's Alexa+ looks for ways to reduce its use of Anthropic's Claude models to lower AI costs. Amazon is also trying to use GPUs more efficiently to make Alexa+ cheaper to run. Internal forecasts projected Alexa+'s AWS cloud costs would nearly triple this year. Amazon has redesigned Alexa to rely less on Anthropic models, part of a sweeping effort to lower the cost of running its AI-powered voice assistant, according to internal documents reviewed by Business Insider. The documents, which span late last year through early this year, show Amazon pursuing a series of changes in how Alexa generates answers by routing more requests to its in-house AI models, avoiding unnecessary calls to Anthropic's Claude models, and squeezing more work from each GPU .
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in