Amazon AMZN is deepening its bid to dominate conversational commerce. On May 13, 2026, it folded its Rufus shopping assistant and the Alexa+ assistant into a single agentic tool, Alexa for Shopping, now free to U.S. customers across the Amazon app, website, and Echo Show with no Prime membership or device required. The system carries a shopper's history and preferences across surfaces, adding up to a full year of price history, AI overviews in search and on product pages, condition-based auto-purchases, and a Buy for Me agent that completes purchases on other retailers' sites. Rufus had already helped more than 300 million customers in 2025, and Amazon says its AI shopping assistant drove nearly $12 billion in incremental sales that year.
The company is now commercializing that stack. On the heels of the launch, AWS introduced the Agentic Shopping Assistant, packaging the architecture and learnings behind Alexa for Shopping so outside retailers can build branded conversational assistants in roughly 60 days; Tapestry's Kate Spade is an early adopter, and the company notes conversational shopping sessions convert at 3.5 times the rate of traditional keyword search. Within Amazon's own store, Sponsored Products and Brand Prompts now appear inside the assistant, with nearly 20% of shoppers who interact with a prompt continuing the conversation about that brand, supporting advertising revenues that rose 24% to $17.2 billion in the first quarter and topped $70 billion on a trailing 12-month basis. Unit growth reached 15%, the highest since the tail end of the COVID-19 lockdowns; group net sales climbed 17% to $181.5 billion.
The headwinds are cost and unproven economics. Trailing-12-month free cash flow fell to $1.2 billion from $25.9 billion as equipment purchases tied to AI rose to $59.3 billion. Second-quarter guidance projects net sales of $194-$199 billion but operating income of just $20-$24 billion versus $19.2 billion a year earlier, implying margin pressure. Execution will determine whether the buildout converts into durable returns.
How Walmart and Alphabet Are Racing Amazon in AI Shopping
Walmart WMT and Alphabet GOOGL are chasing similar agentic-commerce ambitions. Walmart's Sparky assistant is now live across its e-commerce website, mobile app and stores, having added personalized replenishment and meal planning; the company says Walmart customers using Sparky carry average order values roughly 35% higher than non-users. Alphabet, meanwhile, has woven Gemini-powered "AI Mode" and a "buy for me" agentic checkout into Search, drawing on a Shopping Graph of more than 50 billion product listings, over two billion of which are refreshed hourly. Both Walmart and Alphabet own their assistants rather than ceding the interface, but Alphabet leans hardest into aggregating many merchants—two overlapping routes into the same emerging market.
AMZN’s Share Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates
Amazon shares have jumped 17.1% in the past six-month period compared with the Zacks Internet – Commerce industry and the Zacks Retail-Wholesale sector’s appreciation of 5.9% and 3.7%, respectively.
AMZN’s 6-Month Price Performance
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From a valuation standpoint, AMZN stock appears overvalued, trading at a forward 12-month price/earnings ratio of 29.39X, higher than the industry’s 24.07X. Amazon has a Value Score of D.
AMZN’s Valuation
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The Zacks Consensus Estimate for AMZN’s 2026 earnings is pegged at $8.85 per share, indicating a 23.43% increase from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter.
Amazon.com, Inc. Price and Consensus
Amazon.com, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Amazon.com, Inc. Quote
Amazon currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).