Amazon has officially launched Alexa+, moving it out of early access as of February 4, 2026. This represents a significant upgrade to Amazon’s voice assistant, powered by a combination of Amazon’s Nova models and Anthropic’s Claude.
Why This Matters:
Evolution of Voice Assistants: Alexa+ transforms Amazon’s assistant from a simple command-response tool into an AI capable of multi-day conversations, contextual memory, and complex task execution. This puts Amazon in direct competition with ChatGPT, Google Assistant, and other advanced AI assistants.
Agentic Capabilities: The service can now handle real-world tasks autonomously – booking restaurant reservations through OpenTable, ordering Uber rides, and scheduling home repairs through services like Angi. This shifts Alexa from reactive to proactive, handling entire workflows rather than just single commands.
Pricing Strategy: Amazon is leveraging its Prime membership base by including Alexa+ for free with Prime (normally $14.99/month value). Non-Prime users get limited free text chat or can subscribe for $19.99/month. This bundles advanced AI as a Prime perk, potentially increasing Prime’s value proposition and stickiness.
Cross-Platform Memory: The deep research and better memory features mean Alexa maintains context across devices – you can start a conversation on your Echo Show and continue it in the Alexa app while out. This creates a persistent AI assistant experience.
Market Implications: By combining Amazon’s integration with smart home devices, shopping infrastructure, and third-party services with Claude’s language capabilities, Amazon is creating a comprehensive AI ecosystem. This could accelerate AI adoption in everyday consumer tasks and pressure competitors to enhance their own assistants.
Privacy Considerations: While not explicitly stated, the agentic capabilities require access to third-party accounts and personal information, raising questions about data handling that users should consider before activating.
The move signals Amazon’s serious push into the generative AI space, leveraging its existing hardware ecosystem and Prime membership base to rapidly scale advanced AI assistant capabilities.